The Future of AV Is Human, Not Technical

There is a familiar type of technology presentation in which the presenter arrives with 42 slides and a quiet determination to use every one of them.

The audience may have questions. They may even have urgent problems. But first they must hear about the company history, the global office footprint and several products that are not relevant to anything currently happening in the building.

The deck must be completed. It has apparently travelled a long way.

Mark Coxon offers a better definition of success: the objective of a presentation is not completion. It is connection.

That idea reaches beyond sales technique. It points towards a larger change in audiovisual technology. The future of AV will not be determined solely by improvements in resolution, bandwidth, automation or artificial intelligence. It will depend on whether the industry can connect those capabilities to useful human and business outcomes.

An Accidental Career

Mark did not begin with a carefully designed AV career plan. He considered veterinary work and studied biomedical engineering before switching to zoology. At one stage, his imagined future involved field biology and counting fish in Arizona streams.

He eventually took a job selling IBM equipment to IT managers. The training was largely about finding inventory rather than understanding every technical detail. Customers nevertheless asked technical questions, as customers have an inconvenient habit of doing.

Mark developed a practical method. If he did not know, he admitted it. He found somebody who knew the answer. Then he asked why the customer cared.

That final question transformed the information.

A salesperson can memorise a processor specification and repeat it accurately. That is useful, but limited. Understanding why the specification matters to a graphics company turns the same fact into advice.

Curiosity became the consistent element in a career that later covered residential AV, museums, manufacturing and workplace experience. It allowed Mark to acquire technical knowledge without pretending he had always possessed it.

This is commercially important because sales cultures often reward the appearance of certainty. Yet customers rarely need a flawless performance of knowing everything. They need somebody honest enough not to invent the answer and capable enough to find it.

Technical Knowledge Creates Freedom

Mark began his AV career in smaller integration businesses. There was no large team of sales engineers waiting to translate promises into designs.

He had to understand the products, assemble bills of materials, communicate with project managers and eventually show the customer how the finished system worked.

He could not walk away after the order was signed. He would see whether the work survived contact with reality.

That creates accountability. It is easy to make confident promises when somebody else will handle the final conversation. It is harder when you know you will be standing in the completed room, pressing the button and waiting with the customer.

Technical credibility also allows a salesperson to explain trade-offs honestly. The most expensive option may have four capabilities the customer genuinely needs. If so, explain them. If those capabilities do not matter, recommend the cheaper option.

That can reduce the immediate order value. It also demonstrates that the advice is not simply a price list wearing a polo shirt.

The longer-term commercial objective is to become involved before the customer has selected the product and requested a quote. Trust is what earns that earlier invitation.

The Margin Is Not in the Mystery

Professional AV once relied heavily on information asymmetry. Product information was gated, pricing was protected and customers could not easily compare alternatives.

Mark recalls a supplier whose recommended price for the same product changed according to the value of the customer's house. The hardware remained identical, but the postcode apparently performed a substantial firmware update.

This approach is sometimes romanticised as putting the margin in the mystery.

Mystery is not a customer benefit. It is simply a method of making the transaction harder to inspect.

Today's buyer can research products, compare prices and arrive with a preferred solution before contacting a salesperson. This does not make salespeople irrelevant. It changes where they must add value.

Mark suggests asking the customer to explain how they reached their current decision.

It is a respectful question. It acknowledges that the buyer has already done some work. It also reveals the initial problem, the alternatives considered and the assumptions used to eliminate them.

There may be a significant gap. There may not. The requested product could still be entirely correct.

Either way, the customer finishes with a clearer decision. If the conversation was valuable, the salesperson may be invited into the next project before the research begins.

That is considerably more defensible than possessing a secret PDF.

Presentations Should Create Conversation

A presentation deck remains useful. It provides a structure and ensures that the meeting can continue if the audience offers nothing beyond polite blinking.

But the deck is not the objective.

If somebody interrupts after five minutes with a genuine business problem, the presentation has started doing its job. The skilled presenter notices the interest and follows it.

This means watching people rather than reading slides. Who has leaned forward? Which phrase created recognition? Where did several stakeholders exchange a look suggesting that somebody has finally described the problem they have been discussing for six months?

The ability to change direction depends on preparation. Someone who understands only the script will experience questions as a threat. Someone who understands the subject can treat questions as useful information.

Connection is therefore not the soft, friendly alternative to commercial discipline. It is a way of discovering where commercial value actually exists.

The Connected Workplace Opportunity

For years, AV discussed convergence with IT. That shift is now established. AV signals move across networks, meeting platforms form part of business infrastructure and integrators regularly work with IT departments.

The next convergence may involve business information.

Facilities teams hold occupancy data. IT sees meeting-room performance. HR has workforce and access information. Security monitors threats. Sales operates through the CRM. Operations depends on supply-chain and delivery systems.

Each team can be well informed while the organisation remains fragmented.

A business disruption does not stay obediently inside one department. A supply problem can affect operations, customer delivery dates, forecasts, staffing and sales communications. If systems remain isolated, people must manually discover and distribute every connection.

AV integrators already work at an interesting intersection. They understand rooms, devices, networks and collaboration. They may have relationships across AV, IT, facilities and the wider business.

This creates an opportunity to become something broader: an integrator of workplace experiences and information.

Capturing it will require more than adding another category to the equipment list. Integrators will need capabilities in software, data, experience design and business analysis. They will need to understand what the organisation is trying to achieve before deciding what technology belongs in the room.

Human-Centred Is Still Technical

None of this means technical expertise becomes less important.

The network must work. The audio must be intelligible. The system must be secure, supportable and reliable. Human-centred design is not an invitation to replace engineering with encouraging thoughts.

It changes the starting point.

Begin with the people, the work and the outcome. Then apply technical expertise to build the appropriate experience.

Mark describes this as moving from inputs and outputs to impact and outcomes. The inputs and outputs remain. They now have a job.

The future AV professional will need a demanding combination of technical depth, commercial judgement, curiosity and humility. Technology will continue changing, and customers will continue arriving with complicated organisations rather than conveniently isolated rooms.

The competitive advantage will not come from access to equipment that other companies can also purchase.

It will come from knowing what to connect, why it matters and how it should improve the working lives of the people expected to use it.

The future of AV is not less technical.

It is more human, which is considerably harder.

Further reading

• Create a Conversation, Not a Presentation — Harvard Business Review
• A Great Sales Pitch Hinges on the Right Story — Harvard Business Review
• Tech at Work: How to Get the Most Out of Digital Collaboration Tools — Harvard Business Review
• How Johnson & Johnson Transformed Its Corporate Business-Technology Operating Model — McKinsey & Company
• Making Hybrid Work Human — Economist Impact