A group of seven theatres within the confines of greater Copenhagen constitute the members of the Copenhagen Theatre Society (CTS); four of them have recently invested in new house audio consoles, and all have elected to venture down the Yamaha Digital route. Making the digital commitment is not so unusual in this day and age, but why simultaneously, and what prompted them all to select the same manufacturer?
You might be expecting a story of a master sales company; well yes, that’s a part of it, but truth is there are many more good reasons beyond pure salesmanship that make the purchase of these desks so interesting; Bjorn Rennemo Henriksen of Moto Audio Sales takes up the story.
“When the Yamaha PM5D was launched we already knew it was coming, even if we didn’t know the exact detail of the final product. We knew this was to be a significant new sound desk, certainly from the point of view of our company as a leading supplier of top range pro audio products, so we determined to put a lot of focus on it.” Their marketing insight was clear.
“First off we bought www.PM5D.dk, this is an unofficial site (not part of Yamaha) but it gives us a powerful reference resource point for our customers in Scandinavia to use.”
“Our second strategy took more planning; we knew the desk was very powerful, especially for a desk of this physical size, and we also knew it contained many more features and capabilities that we as sales people would ever be able to fully master. Put simply, a professional working sound engineer will always pose questions to us that we will not immediately be able to answer.”
“Now Yamaha always give us excellent back up and service - in fact for these theatre desks they have been really generous in supplying them to us in such a short period of time - but that has always meant that when the difficult questions come we’ve often had to refer back to them; which takes time. To make the sound engineers comfortable with their new products we wanted to be able to provide instant answers.”
The Moto Audio Sales solution was to recruit a top class chief sound engineer from the theatre world, one already well experienced with Yamaha Digital desks, and provide him with all available Yamaha knowledge and operational training on this new product. “We now have Anders Stadelund working for us in this important support role; any customer who calls with a question on the Yamaha Digital consoles, not just the four CTS theatres, has their call immediately re-routed to his mobile for a quick answer.”
The concept is obviously working well, Moto Audio Sales, as well as sales to the CTS theatres (three PM5Ds and one DM2000) has recently added the Bellevue Teatret to their list or installations, Technical Manager Martin Vive Rasmussen also selecting the PM5D as his console of choice.
Henriksen summed up their recent successes, “In this day and age you can buy a digital console anywhere, go on the internet and you’ll find the cheapest price. But the PM5D is a sophisticated piece of equipment, technical support is very important. For example, all these buyers eventually decided on the standard PM5D rather than the HR variant; as they said, when doing a theatre show we tend to set the gain structure and leave it, so why buy the PM5D with recallable head amps? But they’ve also been persuaded in that decision by the versatility of the desk, buying the remote AD8HR units with the latest PM5000 analogue head amps, and using them as sophisticated stage boxes. It gives them much more flexibility, overall that’s a real economic benefit.”
Contact:
Bjorn Rennemo Henriksen
Director of Sales
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Moto Audio Sales ApS.
Njalsgade 21, 15N
DK - 2300 Copenhagen S.
Tel. +45 32 64 10 80 - Fax +45 32 54 02 44
GSM: +45 26 89 06 03
E-mail: brh@moto.dk
Web: www.motoaudiosales.dk
CTS Theatres
1.Oestre Gasvaerk
Technical Manager: Anders Stadelund
Bought: PM5D
http://www.oestre-gasvaerk.dk/
2.Noerrebros Teater
Technical Manager: Morten Oxholm
Bought: PM5D
http://www.noerrebros-teater.dk
3.Gladsaxe Teater
Technical Manager: Thomas Langkjaer
Bought: PM5D
http://www.gladsaxeteater.dk/
