NAMM Retail Summit (2015 Summer NAMM), Joe Lamond Intro

2015 Summer NAMM began with the “NAMM Retail Summit,” a NAMM U Breakfast Session that explored the strategies of NAMM Top 100 Dealers—namely 2014’s Top 100 category winners. In a series of one-on-one interviews with NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond, the session looked at how these music products retailers are rising above the rest in a hyper-competitive marketplace.

Lamond kicked off the session by looking at seven qualities of 2014’s NAMM Top 100 Dealers.

“How do you win a NAMM Top 100 award?” he asked. “It’s a big question, but to get started today, I thought I’d share a couple of things that we found.

“We had a lot of variety in last year’s Top 100—those of you who were there saw that. We had full-line stores. We had combo. We had a chain. It was really diverse. But there are some key themes among these stores.” (Watch the video for Lamond’s complete speech.)

1. Involved ownership
“For starters, these stores and these companies have strong ownership. The people who run these stores—they don’t sit back and collect a paycheck. The people who run these stores come to work every day eager to take on the next project and, most importantly, to lead.”

2. Tenacious customer service
“These retailers have a tenacious drive to serve their customers, and not surprisingly, it starts at the top. These owners don’t just leave customer service to the frontline employees. They’re just as eager and just as hungry to interact with their customers, too.”

3. Opportunity seekers
“These retailers relentlessly, relentlessly seek out opportunities and weaknesses in the market, not to mention in their own businesses. And they do it constantly.”

4. Consistency
“Along those lines, I think they’re also consistent. They’re consistent in everything from their showroom presentation to the way they represent themselves online to how they treat their customers and their employees. There’s uniformity. And for these dealers, consistency is the key to their success.”

5. Online marketing
“They’re also good online marketers. They all approach it differently—some have really big online advertising campaigns; some have powerful social media. And they don’t necessarily try to be everywhere. But they know where their customers are, and they know how to reach them.”

6. Selling their value
“They’re really good at telling their stories—and really good at selling their unique value. Clearly, the Top 100 judges picked up on this.”

7. Successful events
​“Simply put, they just host really cool events. These are the places that you and I would want to hang out at.”