Thinking about installing a DVD player in your truck? If you happen to be in the Roanoke Rapids, N.C. area, your competitor, Doug Simms Jr., would just as soon you don't; he's found it to be a great selling tool.
Simms, who became a Matco Tools distributor after working 21 years as a General Motors service technician, doesn't hesitate to keep adding to his DVD collection, which currently numbers more than 50. He keeps a DVD playing the whole time his truck is parked at a stop. The DVD player hangs from the ceiling over on his desk, plugged into an electrical outlet. He has no way of knowing how many sales the DVDs have generated. That's because he's usually busy with his customers while the DVD is "silently" selling something to someone.
But he has no doubt the DVDs help sell tools.
"It's a silent salesman," Simms affirms. "That's one more way to sell the tool on the truck. You (the customer) see the guy (in the DVD) using it (a tool). You (as tool salesman) can use it instead of just showing him (the customer) the package."
Simms got the idea for a DVD player after visiting a website for mobile tool trucks. Some of the interior pictures showed DVD players in trucks, and it struck him as a good idea. "I had to have one," Simms notes.
He installed his DVD player in 2009, and since then, he hasn't looked back.
Simms credits the Electronic Specialties DVD for helping sell the LOADPro Dynamic Voltmeter. This diagnostic tool is complex, and the DVD does a better job demonstrating it to customers than Simms can sometimes demonstrate himself in the time typically allotted for each customer.
He gives high marks to Power Probe for its DVDs. As soon as Power Probe came out with its Key Assist, he wasted no time getting the Key Assist DVD.
Simms credits his flag, Matco Tools, with helping him get tool DVDs and the DVD version of the Matco Tools "Torque" magazine.
He also appreciates the promotional DVD from Don Schumacher Racing Iron Eagle Club with driver Anton Brown.
Simms is glad he got into the mobile distribution business at a time when more and more tool manufacturers began making video demonstrations to help sell their products.
