What I'm hoping will happen is that you guys will see the BS here too. I am not worried about it killing my business... just muddying the waters even more... and it feels like a major backstab from someone who just shouldn't be trying to get into the end user sales part of this business.
Their excuse is that some guru predicted that the consumer electronics market will soon be controlled by Best Buy and Wal-Mart so they need to "Brand" small dealers together. Whatever... that shows me how little they understand the market... NO builder is going to walk into a Wal-Mart looking for a custom installer to wire up his houses. We've dealt with Circuit S----y and Best Buy for a long time now and WOW look... we're still here! It is a given that these companies will lead the consumer electronics market because the average consumer isn't the kind of client we deal with... nor want to.
I've had the hardest time here convincing builders to heave ho the sparkie and give us the wiring jobs... been doing it for years... banging my head against the wall... well, the houses are still wired like crap with pie in the sky promises about what can be done. As a result... my company is mostly retrofit (we just signed up $16,000.00 to completely rewire a house that was labeled as a "smart home"). When, I consider all of the time this battle has taken me for the results it has produced (we do have a number of loyal happy builders), it makes me wonder how they feel they can dedicate the kind of time and energy to forming these relationships... it's going to take more than a few mailers. If they do get a builder... what the hell is the process going to be to provide the "lead". Are they going to shove seven dealers together in a lowest bidder scenario? Are they going to reward the highest performer? the most recent $2500.00? I see it as a big time mess thats going to create some real hard feelings somewhere.
Anyway, my main focus is to spread the word that this is coming... both to you AND especially to my builders. Telling my builder that the lead that they'll be getting is only based on payola will almost certainly get the literature tossed in the proverbial "round file". This forum is a way to keep each other informed about what is out there to keep our businesses strong
