On November 30, 2017 at 09:05, highfigh said...
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.
Same here. Just wanted to add that we are a full service/turnkey solutions*.
so what I want to add is
1) the meeting is at the clients home/ installation place (need to know what we are working with)
2) we find it useful if a GC or ID is involved to have them there at the initial meeting so that scope can be well understood by all (if a designer has talked them into a 32" TV in the top right corner here is no need for us to be there, if the GC will take care of pulling wire, soundproofing, painting or building the proscenium... then there is no use including it in the cost)
3) for the initial part (aka "tell me your dream") we find it is better to include other family members if it makes sense (is there a 4 year old that should not touch
anything, a 6 year old that can use it, a 12 year old gamer, a 90 year old that is half blind) it also helps with the user profiles (we tend to create user profiles on the remotes with presets and favourite channels)
* what I mean is if some construction is needed we can take care of it, if design is needed we can take care of it, we see the room as being just as important to the experience as the equipment itself, if your neck hurts because of display placement wrt seats, if you "need to turn it down because others are sleeping" ..... you won't enjoy the experience as much.
