CE Pro July 2023 - 29

automotive audio, burgeoning sales skills
and willingness to working 6-7 days a week
selling, Dohman soon became Tweeter's top
car audio salesman among 180 stores.
After a few years, however, he discovered
that the real financial opportunity
- which he saw in the sharply dressed,
Mercedes-driving older salespeople - was
in home entertainment. " I was like, 'How am
I working so much harder and these guys are
making so much more money?' " he recalls.
" But I knew nothing about home stuff at all. "
Dohman spent the next year deep diving
into Internet forums and other online avenues,
before YouTube, doing his homework
so he would be ready to enter the high-end
home AV world. " I like to know about everything
about something to be confident about
it before I step in front of somebody and say,
'Now, this is what I suggest is, this is what
you need,' because I don't want to ever rip
somebody off, " he says. " So, I was patient, I
learned ... and when I got into the home side,
the first year I was part of [Tweeter's] Premier
Club, which is the top 2% of all home sales. "
As fate would have it, as soon as Dohman
reached that career milestone, Tweeter declared
bankruptcy. It was 2006, and he was
only 23 but knew he didn't want to work for
someone else again. The time had come for
Dohman to launch his own company and do
whatever it took to make it work.
Branching Out as His Own Brand
Armed with a clientele base from selling car
audio, Dohman began marketing himself to
them, informing them he was going out on
his own and if they needed any help with
their new house he'd love to help.
" I'll be honest, I'd never installed anything
in a house before. I didn't know what I was
doing, " he says. Again, he started doing
his homework only this time it was on the
installation side. A benefit of Tweeter's bankruptcy
was that he began grabbing liquidation
inventory to practice how to hook up
AVRs, mount displays, fish wires and pick the
brains of technicians who were still there.
" I had a non-stop book of clients, and all
these people were coming in to buy this
expensive stuff but didn't have anyone to
install it, " he says. " Somebody would come
in and buy a TV at 60% off, a receiver at 60%
cepro.com
off, a pair of tower speakers and a pair of
in-ceiling rears and his wife would say, 'Now,
how are you going to install this?' "
The older salespeople would ask if he
could install it that night, and for about
five months during the liquidation period
Dohman worked all day and then performed
installations at nights and on weekends. It
was all essential training and practice.
He says customers appreciated
the honesty of his sales pitch
that he was not necessarily
skilled in home theater installation,
but had extensive
car stereo experience.
He fired off thousands
of cold emails to try and
attract potential business.
And while he may
not have known much yet
about AV installations, he
had taken coursework in how
to create web pages and knew
about SEO, and that people were
searching for " home theater Dallas " or
similar queries. " So, I built a website based
off that, and just hoped and prayed. "
For the majority of the first 10-12 years,
Elite AV was a true one-man shop (an early
partner was there for the first 3+ years before
leaving to go to law school) as Dohman
did it all: sales, design, install, janitorial ...
" anything and everything I did myself. "
His customer base grew and revenues
surged, but it was a $1.4 million, 18-month
job on a 15,000-square-foot residence that
both saved and spurred Elite AV. The timing
coincided with the Great Recession, " and
I tell everyone that it was my saving grace,
because I don't think I would have made it
had it not been for that one project. "
Building an 'Elite' Team
That huge project also forced Dohman
to learn more about home automation,
because until then he'd been centered on
media rooms. His sales savvy and ability to
think outside the box had worked well as
he put together a half-dozen repeatable
packages with displays and surround sound
- for a $4K install it included a projector
and 120-inch screen, for $7K it was the
next step up, then another bump for a
" Do not allow
your quality to
dip just because
a customer
talked you into
a cheaper price.
Once I stopped
discounting and
started to focus
on the quality of
installations, my
business began
growing 20% to
50% yearly. "
-Justin Dohman
July 2023 CE Pro | 29
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CE Pro July 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CE Pro July 2023
