Hello Ed Reps!
I hope you’ve had an incredible rental season this fall! It’s always the most exciting and craziest time of the year, and in many ways one of the most rewarding. But it’s also exhausting, and I know we all look forward to getting to the other side of it. I hope yours was great and that it laid the groundwork for a lot of success over the next 12 months.
Now that rental season is over, it’s time to shift our focus a little bit. For the last 90 days, we’ve viewed almost everything through the rental lens. How do we get more rentals? How do we get the instruments out faster? How do we make the meetings run more smoothly? Now it’s time to start thinking about sales and how we can help our directors and their students by connecting them with the products they need between now and the end of the year.
The next time you’re visiting your band and orchestra rooms, take a hard look around and talk with your directors about what their programs need NOW. School is well underway, everyone is getting into a bit of a flow, and there are probably some immediate needs starting to surface. Do they have a Halloween parade coming up? A marching assessment where they need to make sure all the gear is in good shape? Is there an eighth-grade night coming up where those students suddenly need lyres and flip folders because they don’t have the music memorized? And don’t forget your orchestra folks. They may not have marching season, but they probably have a fall concert coming up. Do they have everything they need to get through it successfully?
Once you’ve made that assessment, start looking a little farther down the road. Christmas and holiday concerts will be here before we know it. Maybe there’s an assessment right after the new year and your director needs to start selecting and ordering music. And as we approach the holidays, it’s always time to start thinking about step-up and upgraded instruments, both for the school and for individual students. The point is to start looking ahead instead of waiting until the need becomes urgent.
In addition to asking directors what they need, make sure you’re bringing opportunities you’ve thought about to their attention. What are your store’s sales priorities for the end of the year? Do you have a big step-up promotion coming? Start talking about it now. Does your store usually run a lesson promotion so students are signed up after Christmas? Start planting those seeds. Has your store picked up a new brand or started working with a new vendor that you need to introduce to your educators? Look at the next few weeks, decide when you’re going to talk about it, and make a point of doing it.
Finally, I think it’s important that you know your sales number. We’re not going to dive too deeply into that here, but you should know two things: What is your 2026 sales target, and where are you right now? Where does store leadership expect you to be at the end of the year? If there’s a gap, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to close it. If there isn’t a gap, good for you! Now, how much can you add to it?
This is one of my favorite times of year. Rental season is behind us, the weather has turned, the leaves are starting to change, and it’s a great time to settle into that weekly Ed Rep groove of helping our directors. Take a little time to prepare, keep a few ideas in your hip pocket, and you’ll have a fantastic fall.
See you here next week!