- WRITTEN BY PULASTYA
More than a vacation, an experience that changed one’s life.
A dear friend of mine who is the distributor of PMC decided to call me for an installation of his recently commissioned sale of a PMC Fact 3 Stand Mount Loudspeaker. Nice, I thought to myself as I would get an opportunity to assist him in setting them up at the owner’s place and have a little listening session of the same as a little cherry on the cake.
We arrived at the place of the install, which had already been done by the dealer’s team some time back and all that the owner was asked to do is to let the system play for atleast a 100 hours prior to my friend coming to personally set-up the speakers optimally in the listening area of the room. We were greeted by the owner’s of the set-up & post introductions, get down to inspecting the set-up, cable management and so on. The next thing we do is alter the positioning of the speakers placement in relation to the room, making note of the measurements, eyeballing the distance and then the actual placement changes of the speakers takes place keeping in mind where the owner & his family will be seated when they are listening to the music. The set of chosen audio cd’s hand carried specifically for the job go into the cd player one by one, guiding us with specific inputs in respect to the subtle changes that need to be made to the speaker’s placement and the exercise continues till we are satisfied that we have achieved the optimal placement of the speaker’s in relation to the sweet spots/furniture in the room and basic interaction with the room and its associated acoustics. The owner and his wife are both observing us intermittently whilst we are going about our business, interspersed with tea/coffee and general chit chat. Post completion of the set-up positioning finalized, we generally get into a discussion with how they arrived at the junction of where they eventually landed up with their decision and this is where the whole experience got very very interesting.
It goes like this: the owner and his wife were on vacation in Europe where they experienced a certain audio set-up consisting of a brand of speakers (Let’s call them ‘B’) The experience they had of listening to the music played through that set-up they heard with speakers ‘B’ so enchanted them that after they got back from their vacation, they decided to do some research on the brand of these speakers as they felt they would like to replicate that sound in their listening room back home. They contacted the owner of the place they had visited whilst on vacation to get the brand and model number of those speakers, post which they make inquiries about the availability of the same in India, contacting the distributor of Brand ‘B’ and inquiring about the particular model. They received the relevant info from the distributor about availability and its price, which made them happy and sad at the same time, happy as it was available in India and sad that it was costing a lot more in comparison to what it sold for in Europe. They now decided to look at other options in the market that would come close or better still super cede what they liked in the brand ‘B’ speakers they so cherished.
After extensive demo sessions of various brands and their models available in the home audio market, they zeroed – in onto the PMC Fact3’s. This too was achieved after they met a sales person who:
a) realized what they were looking for,
b) ensured that they went for the speakers that would be ideally suited to their requirements and most importantly
c) convincing them to buy these speakers inspite of the said speakers costing 5 times the budget that they had allocated when they set out to look for a pair of speakers!
The purchase ultimately was made on 2 factors:
1) The original plan for buying the speakers they liked was scuppered by the cost advised and of the attitude of the distributor sales staff of Brand ‘B’. Though to be fair to them, they did offer a reduction in the earlier advised price but it was too late by then for the interested buyers to consider them again.
2) The knowledge of the product being sold, passion and sound acumen of the salesman of a dealer dealing with multi brands, knowing exactly what the client requires, showcasing the right product and going the extra mile to convince them of upping their original intended budget.
Not every day does one come across a story that is so interesting not only from the audio stand point but more importantly from the WAF point of view as that decision was ultimately made by the wife of the buyer for the better even though the connection was something more than just with the music heard, atleast in her scheme of things! Her second chain of thought was even more interesting, she wanted their children to get accustomed to listening to their music on a proper audio set-up. This train of thought to me spoke volumes of her noble intentions and that her priorities lay in the right place as far as paying attention to something that’s very important to atleast us people passionate about listening to music.
Chapeau Time Indeed!