If interior detonators are involved, they want our stuff to go away and when style is given a seat at the adult table, we end up with the little kids. It's hard to do what we need to unless we can make them understand that they need the good stuff if they want the theater/system to do what they said they want. There's no compromising with some people (designers), so I usually recommend something up front that makes them happy, even if I say it as a joke only because I knew where she had worked before going out on her own (light bulb speakers in the master bath, when she turned her nose up when I said I wanted to use in-ceiling speakers).

I have the luxury of getting most of my business from a small group of clients, through repeat business or referrals, without needing to worry about whether they can afford the work- they can. Even people who I had done work for in the past eventually meet, so I need to be careful to do things well and make sure everything works easily because I know the topic will come up. One of my equipment reps referred someone to me and I got three more jobs out of that but those were about fixing operational problems, organizing cables/streamlining the systems and adding some functionality by feeding network cabling & hard wiring, rather than relying on WiFi in homes that eat the signal.

In qualifying the client, I start by asking them what they want the system to do- what they watch/listen to and where they want this. I don't get into budget until I have an idea about the scale of the work because they won't know how much it will cost to do distributed audio the right way, but I also ask how important it is to have great sound and video, rather than 'good enough'. It's important to be realistic in our proposals- not everyone wants or needs the best even as much as we think it's important. I went to look at the wiring and check out some problems yesterday- I have written about a client who sends me the most work- it's his wife's parents. They asked if the receiver and speakers could go away, since they're OK with small portable speakers that can play Spotify from their phones and tablets. These speakers are in the living room and they just don't sit there to listen to music- it's mostly the office, kitchen, dining room and sun room, which has their main TV. Sound quality isn't as important and he even said "Well, I'm not Tom (the son in law), who has Dynaudio speakers as the 5.1 system and others throughout the main areas of the house.