Sonus Car Audio Fast Facts FEATURED STORE
Sonus Car Audio, 550 Heritage Drive, Clarksville, Tenn. One 7,800 square-foot store, which celebrated its grand opening last December. Founded in 2008.
EMPLOYEES
Micah Williams, founder and owner Nick Akin, operations director Ray West, installation director/special projects Jason Carlisle, installer William Jenkins, installer Jeff Siefman, installer/window treatment tech
TOTAL NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES : 6
The industry, Williams said, has changed quite a bit even since when he opened, but the key is adapting. “We change things here on-the-fly, and I know a lot of other places aren’t built to do that.” That along with comprehensive training has been important to keeping the
staff motivated, but Williams hasn’t added in any retention incentives or big bo- nuses. In fact, he’s not entirely sure what keeps everyone coming back every day. “We work 80 to 90 hours a week,” he noted. “We work Monday through
Saturday, and there are some Sundays thrown in there just to keep up with work. Obviously, the employees are paid well. But to be honest, I don’t know why these guys stay other than it’s fast-paced and someone is always reading our name, and I think they like that. I know for a fact that they love what they do because I have to push them out of here sometimes.”
lis training,” Williams said. “Everyone here is trained to answer the phone a certain way and deal with clients a certain way. They can all do presentations. If Nick is stacked up and I’m busy, then anybody in the back can go to the front, and the customer is going to get — plus or minus — the same experience. It’s not uncommon for us to have 15 or 20 people in the front of the store at one time, so the staff knows how to prioritize people.”
Another challenge was that only two staff members — one being Williams — could use the POS system. “It tracks from an iPad to an iMac,” he ex- plained. “You can do anything from anywhere, but it’s confusing and hard to use. We just didn’t show anyone that for the longest time because you had to know all the little quirks. But last year, we spent a quite a bit of money and a lot of time just making sure it didn’t really matter who was where.”
Get’em In Te Door
At Sonus, doing things differently works best by getting folks in the door. “We know that over the phone, we will lose you,” said Williams. “So
everything we do is designed to get the customer in the store. How we have our conversations, the questions that we ask, how we take control of phone conversations when customers do call.” That is why Williams spent the money he did on the building — the way it is
constructed and set up. “When a customer is in here, it is as one-on-one as it possibly could be,” he said. “Every person who comes in here — and I don’t care if they come in here for a wire harness — is brought to the front of the shop and into the back. We explain all the areas by basically taking them on a tour. We show them all the systems we have in place — how every car is taped up and has drapes on it. We show them all the documentation for each car — they can see the paperwork.” A big difference at Sonus, said Williams, is the shop’s strategy once a car
comes into the shop for work. “What I’ve noticed coming up is that most shops seem to get the cars in the bay and then relax,” he explained. “For us,
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