Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Stampede Breaks New Ground in Dealer Education with Launch of Industry's First Online Courses at Stampede University

Stampede Presentation Products Inc., the leading value-added distributor of ProAV solutions, today announced the addition of a completely integrated series of online courses to its Stampede University training curriculum, making Stampede the first ProAV distributor to offer online courses to its dealers at times that meet each dealer’s unique requirements. In addition, Stampede President & COO Kevin Kelly said that the University is now offering new categories of courses to address the larger business issues confronting today’s dealer, including mergers and acquisitions and new market development.


“Today’s ProAV dealer is challenged as never before to find new ways to grow and expand their business that go far beyond the basics of product knowledge,” Kelly emphasized. “To be sure, dealers must be fully educated on the products they sell, but they now need to be experts in long term business planning, business transition, and new market development. What’s more, their businesses run virtually around the clock. All of this means that a university tasked to meet their needs must keep pace with the demands of the times. That is what we are doing with Stampede University.”

According to Kelly, Stampede University’s training programs now include more business-oriented courses, including courses on transitions and mergers and acquisitions, as well as a consulting program designed to help residential dealers develop commercial markets and vice versa. What’s more, many of these courses will now be available online 24/7/365 to allow learners to proceed at their own pace and on their own schedule.

These new course offerings come in addition to Stampede University’s already substantial collection of dealer and integrator learning aids found on the website. These include training materials in the form of webinars, how-to videos, white papers and other media that cover the breadth of the AV technology experience from video walls to distance-learning technology, and represent large numbers of major equipment manufacturers, including Hitachi, Sharp, VUKUNET, InFocus, NEC and Samsung.

No other AV systems distributor offers a more comprehensive and knowledgeable array of training materials than Stampede University, and Stampede has established its learning proposition to be a bridge between manufacturers and dealer/integrators, achieving unprecedented synergies by serving the needs of both simultaneously. “Part of our mission is that not only do we have to offer a value to our customers but also we have to offer a value to our suppliers,” explained Kelly. “A significant part of the value we offer to a manufacturer through Stampede University is by educating the marketplace in new technologies, and manufacturers do want to teach dealers how to use their products and how to sell their products. In that way, we act as a very necessary bridge between the manufacturer and the dealer.”

Kelly pointed out that Stampede University’s training hub not only disseminates product training widely but also does it cost-effectively for manufacturers: instead of multiple manufacturers redundantly mimicking each others’ training efforts, Stampede University acts as a portal through which dealers and systems integrators can search for and find new products and platforms as well as the training and information they’ll need to best leverage them. The enhanced availability of information through Stampede University has enabled many dealers to broaden their product and services offerings to customers, and that’s helping the AV industry as a whole, as it continues to operate in a challenging economic environment.

“More than ever, knowledge is power, as dealer/integrators seek out new markets, add core competencies and expand their knowledge base, in the effort to bolster revenues. Stampede University is the sole commercial resource nationally that can offer that necessary link between manufacturer and integrator to assure the needed exchange of information that will guarantee future success. “We know that knowledge and training are the keys to the future in this industry,” said Kelly. “And Stampede University exists to make sure they are always available to our customers.”

About Stampede
Known for its value-added distribution, Amherst, New York-based Stampede is the leading distributor of presentation equipment including LCD/DLP projectors and flat panel displays. Stampede provides a complete range of brand name presentation equipment to a variety of audio/video, computer, and home theater resellers and integrators in the United States, Canada and Latin America. These resellers rely on Stampede for value-added services in distribution, marketing and solution- based sales. Stampede annually produces the “Big Book of AV,” an 816-page catalog and companion website (www.BigBookofAV.com) providing hundreds of sales, installation and spec tips for Stampede’s dealers in addition to product details on more than 5,000 SKUs. For more information on Stampede, log onto www.stampedeglobal.com.

No comments:

Post a Comment