News

BADA announces a roster of new training courses (4/9/2009)

At the recent Annual General Meeting of the UK industry’s trade body, the British Audio-Visual Dealers Association, the Association unveiled its new roster of training courses and set out its plans for the forthcoming year.

With the Demcraft training programme having been completed and the UK now having, for the first time, a network of hi-fi retailers all trained to the same standard, the Association presented its members with information on the next stage of its training programme; namely the Salescraft, Visioncraft and marketing courses.

Salescraft is the first sales course designed from the ground up for the hi-fi retail industry and takes a tried and tested, common sense approach to the sales process. Structured around the concept of the customers’ journey through the retail experience, Salescraft is a one day course that launched recently and is managed by well known industry figure, Ian Galloway. Dates and locations are already planned for the next few months and reaction from candidates who have already participated has been overwhelmingly positive. BADA will be offering the course to its members and also to non members.

Terry Murphy, formerly of Yamaha, is spearheading the development of the new Visioncraft course, which is effectively the next step on from Demcraft. It focuses on the skills necessary to properly understand and setup what are often very complicated vision based multi-channel systems. Subjects covered will include flat panel and projector display types, picure calibration, projector and screen installation, HD audio formats, HDMI and HDCP de-mystified, audio calibration and future technologies, with network and server based systems discussed. Visioncraft will launch in Q4 of 2009.

The last of the new courses announced at the meeting was a marketing course. Being written by Ian Williams, a former Santander, American Express and Smith & Nephew marketor, the course will present retail principals (and manufacturers) with a basic grounding in what marketing really is and why it’s far more involved than just advertising.

Focusing on three key areas: the marketing propostion, channel and experience, the course will dispel many of the myths and jargon typical of marketing theory and present delegates with grounded techniques in basic marketing to maximise the effectiveness of their businesses.

Other presentations came from GfK, with an overview of the current market conditions and What Hi-Fi?, who presented the findings of their recent readership survey.

Chairman of BADA, Simon Byles, was joined on the board for 2009-10 by the following group of people:

Ian Anderson (ex officio) of Billy Vee Sound Systems, Chris Henry (company secretary) of Overture, Geoff Mathews (treasurer) of Soundcraft, Vernon Hamblin (vice chairman) of Unilet Sound & Vision, Geoff Coleman of Acoustica, George Barltett of Bartlett’s Hi-Fi, Peter Thomas of PMC. Being appointed on for the first time this year were Simon Jackson of Ceritech Audio and Robert Hay of The Multi-Room Company.

Simon Byles said “I am very pleased to welcome the new board and look forward to working with them over the coming year. Completing the Demcraft course, with all customer facing members of staff trained, is an incredible achievement and presents some very solid foundations as we move forwards with a suite of three new courses over the next few months. BADA members will benefit enormously from these courses and opening them up to non members underlines BADA’s commitment to ensuring the whole industry improves and prospers, not just the members of the Association.”

www.bada.co.uk