The Steinway Sales Approach

twocats

Continuing the conversation from another thread (starting here-ish).

Gombessa twocats The local Steinway dealer is run by the former manager of the Bösendorfer dealer.

As an interesting aside, I've been to three separate piano dealers locally where the person talking to me said they used to be the #1 sales rep for Bosendorfer in the US, and they all had pictures/plaques to show to prove it. As part of their pitch they all told me why they moved on from selling Bosendorfer to X/Y/Z brand, and how they felt that Bosendorfer just couldn't compete because of A/B/C.

No hate, nothing against them or even criticism--learly it didn't really matter to me or affect my purchase decision-- it was just odd and memorable to me how this could be such a common theme. Is there something that explains it (maybe Bosendorfer had a bigger sales network a few decades back and everyone was part of it) or have other folks run into the same thing while piano shopping?

Steinway now has showrooms owned by the company that only sell Steinway/Boston/Essex pianos. I suspect it's easy to go to the competing dealer and offer their manager a nice raise to come run the showroom and be in a position to say "I used to sell Bösendorfers and Steinways are better".

Edit: can't figure out nested quotes but the initial quote at the top is mine and the rest is Gombessa's response 🙂

twocats

As an interesting aside, I've been to three separate piano dealers locally where the person talking to me said they used to be the #1 sales rep for Bosendorfer in the US

I'm wondering if they're all part of the Classic Pianos family? Because as a chain (that started in Portland and now is becoming quite an empire nationwide as they take over smaller shops), Classic sells the most Bösendorfers in the country. So a rep could say that they were #1 in sales but really mean that the company was #1.

Gombessa

No idea! I wasn't really aware of Classic at the time, but I do suspect that piano sales must be a very small world and sales people know each other and move back and forth quite a bit.

At least two of the folks I had talked to showed some kind of plaque with their name on it, which made me think the title was personal rather than associated with the shop. But while I had very little interest in diving into specifically what the award was, I did wonder in the back of my mind if there were different categories of "top sales" by # pianos sold, or # pianos bought, or highest rating by customer survey, etc., Or if there were separate awards given by Bosendorfer Ltd. the distributor or Bosendorfer Inc. the US operator (these are all just fictional constructs in my mind).

I just kind of assumed it meant "you're good at what you do," which honestly doesn't really matter to me much since I'm looking to buy a piano, not a salesman!

twocats

Gombessa I'm looking to buy a piano, not a salesman!

Haha, love it!

Yeah, I don't think that kind of thing means much. Like that guy (ugh, I know too much about him) who started the online tuning school! You can get a "certificate" and presumably start a tuning business after you're done, and you don't even have to have had a minute of in-person instruction.

HeartKeys

While on the topic of Classic Pianos-- we got our piano from Classic Pianos Portland. The store got an unsolicited five star from me on Google, primarily because of the sales person.