Instead of free, how about working out a plan to kick a little money to the builders for sending you leads (assuming that they pan out).

My experience is that most builders will do everything in their power to get the house built and closed as quickly as possible and with the least amount of disruption to their daily lives. Most adopt new technologies only when they're forced to. There are of course exceptions to the rule.

I have a few builder customers that are very progressive about trying new things. These people think with the customer first, and not just of themselves, but the majority of builders in the area are not always receptive to new new things.

A few will actually try to talk their clients out of putting in high end audio and automation system.

It didn't take me long to figure out why some of them do that. I've concluded two points:

#1 They've had bad experiences in the past working with guys who botched up the job.

#2 They were unneccesarily burdened with having to deal with issues revolving around low votage stuff.

Both of those points lead back to the premise that they've worked with incompetent installers who didn't do their job right.

There's nothing that a contractor hates worse then having an irate customer calling them to complain about one of their subs.

Therefore, my advice is to align yourself with a handful of contractors that you can work well with. Once you have a good base, make it worth their while to send you customers. Remember that for every additional sub that's on a project, the contractors life gets that much more complicated.

Do your best to uncomplicate it. First and foremost, do a good job at whatever you do. Secondly, don't involve the builder for unncessary things. These are busy guys who typically don't like to be called 400 times a day with questions. Thirdly, make it worth their while. Forthly, treat them as business partners. If they have a problem with their own personal system, go out of your way to help them. If you leave a good impression in that regard they'll be more apt to recommend you to their customers.

Lastly, make it worth their while to partner with you.

This can come in various forms. Some guys give the builder money for referalls, other guys give them credit towards merchandise, others will trade them labor.

In any regard, the old addage that "nothing is free" should apply here too. To me, doing a free prewire with the hopes that they'll buy equipment is dangerously similar to giving a free vacation with the hopes that they'll buy a time share.

I'd like to thing that most people in this business are above that.