Another good way to make the builder your client without fail?

Do his home for equipment cost. No labor. NADA!

And the more elaborate and easy to use the system is, the better. Because the builder will be using his own personal home to help sell YOUR services.

Best thing you can ever do.

Want to sell a TON of Russound ABus systems (or better)? Put one in the builders home for free. Doesn't cost you an arm and a leg, and you'll quickly be inundated with requests to install that system, or something better in all the homes he builds.

WAY better than most advertising that you can do.

Q,

Thanks for the well thought out responses. We actually employ a lot of the tactics you mention. Our motto is that we want to save the world from bad system design... one client at a time. We have a number of fine custom builders that will use only us and 4 different electricians that we use. We are general contractors so it is legal for us to subcontract an electrician (in this state... if you don't carry the extra insurance, bond etc to be a general contractor you CAN NOT legally sub an electrician). We have been able to insert our electricians into jobs now that our credibility is there.

We have a bright side to our business... actually a lot of bright sides. It just doesn't seem as fun to me to laud our accomplishments as it does to vent frustrations sarcastically and anonymously.

Basically, around here, a builder can be a great ally or a shopper. The frustration is that these guys build fantastic houses with amazing finish work and they leave the wiring to a rookie. We recently re-ran all of the cable in a 2+ million dollar manse because sparky had hammered all of it flat with romex staples. We won't stop trying to educate (and you KNOW we took pictures... provided pieces of cable and contacted the builder). When we do find a f----d one we employ some of the tactics you mentioned but try not to be adversarial. In the end we can only hope for the best.

By the way... we recently participated in the 2004 Seattle Home Show. We presented a beautiful OnQ panel with a plexi door and our logo screened on. Beside it were pics of some of the crap we've run into and examples of battered and twisted cable next to the line "you wouldn't put up with this kind of finish work on your kitchen countertops... why put up with it in your wiring enclosure"... opened a lot of eyes and had a lot of people looking at the s----y ones and saying "yep...thats what mine looks like".

Sounds like you do great work rhm9. BTW, I have a confession. I like to rant too. I just usually do it about other things and not here. You might get a kick out of how often I take on people at AVSForum that like to complain about custom installers and our "high markups".