Mr. Tennis,
If you and I, together, attended a concert where the sound was clearly off, we would most likely be in agreement. It wouldn't be a case of where I thought it was great and you were looking at me in bewilderment as if I was tone deaf.
In my experience, 99% of the time when I heard a sonic improvement, the client heard it as well. Sadly, clients don't trust their own ears enough and I wish they would. I am not keen on selling people individual components based on a review that the client read somewhere. A systems approach is what we both preach and practice.
You and I (and others in this thread) ALL AGREE that only the client knows what sounds most pleasing to him or her -and this sound can change over the course of one's life, too.
There isn't a perfect speaker that suits all. Everyone has a favorite flavor of sound. If they know which flavor and can communicate it to me then great - I will know exactly how to advise them.
If they can't describe what they are looking for then I start from ground zero - asking them what speakers they have owned - what they recently heard and liked and by playing for them 3 different sounding systems (warm, neutral, bright) to determine their preference and then fine tune from there. When I sit down with clients to design a system around their lifestyle - I design it with them in mind - not me.
I do not have to sell what I have in inventory - this is old school thinking. When you deal with the very best in hifi - special orders are a must. I cannot stock every custom finish that Verity offers for every model in their line-up. I stock one finish and if the customer likes what they hear from my demo pair then I special order a pair in their preferred finish. I never understood why some dealers went to the trouble to open a speaker, dial it in, break it in, and then just sell it at a discount to then have to unbox another and start the process over. We keep our demos on hand and view that inventory as the cost of doing business.
Please understand that from my point of view, based on years of experience, there is no hard sell to high-end AV. A-B-C doesn't apply (always be closing). The equipment sells itself. I make a recommendation and demo a system or I bring an individual item over to the client's home - we listen to a few tracks prior to installing the new item and both the client and I know if we have a winner. It doesn't matter how much or how little the component retails for - I was making house calls with $500 dacs and USB to S/PDIF converters.
Finally, many of my clients are close friends and they are welcome to spend many, many hours chit-chatting about hifi with me but we do it outide of the shop - as friends should. We talk during hikes, over a game of chess, fishing on the lakes or rivers of Washington, during long lunches, or weekend dinners, etc.
I own the company so I am, in essence, a commissioned salesperson, right? However, I do not see the dealer to client relationship as one vs. the other.
