The best advice was something we learned, then said to ourselves: no matter how friendly the client appears to be, create a parallel structure that ties progress of the job to progress of the payments. This way the client knows from the outset at which stages payments are expected. We learned this from several clients who accepted the low, low prices we quoted, but then after all work was done and several thousand were owed, said, "let's negotiate the price now." We had zero leverage. NEVER have zero leverage.


This may be the most important piece of advice here. We all have some sense of how honest people are, and we have to be unexcited enough by the cool stuff we're going to do that we hear our own better selves warning us. (You Christians out there, this is the 'still, small voice' that's spoken of.)


Ali had the wonderful experience of fighting that advice, then doing it, then being humble enough to learn to listen to advice and do what's recommended. AND he insisted on knowing why. That's a BIG part of learning!

Plus, I'll bet nobody made such good fun of anybody's name here as the member who went by "Ali Has a Hemi."

I was a young man apprenticing an old school antenna/dish installer. We did all kinds of jobs together and although he wasn't on the cutting edge of everything I still learned as much from his approach as anyone, ever.

He told me to always remember two things 1) Don't sweat the small stuff, and 2) It's all small stuff.

Does it work and is it safe.

I heard something similar- "don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things".

Do NOT be afraid to make a profit! PERIOD. Dont discount your products and services to meet a budget. Change the product and services instead.

Oh, and never pet a burning dog.

LOL, HELL NO!!! BUT--I have ran CAT cable everywhere since day 1. You guys taught me that lesson before I did my first job!

I still haven't figured out if that was QQQ or not!

Words to live by.

This ^^^^. If you don't present it, you'll never sell it! I learned this when I was younger and in A/V sale at a big box. Just because I think it's crazy expensive and I can't justify the price, doesn't mean it's not the right product for a customer.

Even when I started in the CI business I used to simplify systems, or worse, complicate them by making them less expensive.

Now a days I don't ask a person how much they want to spend. I qualify them. I educate them. I ask them what do they want the system to do? I design that system and tell them what it will cost. Either they go for it, or they don't. Sometimes they go right for it. Some times they are blown away having had no idea what things cost and I lose the job. That's fine. If that's the case I never had the business to begin with. . Mostly I make adjustments and we find a solution that works.

What never happens is that I'm in a situation where the system performs below the customers expectations and they are saying to me, "Well I wish we knew we could have that. We would have paid for it".

My clients are always aware of exactly what they can have. They get what they want to pay for. If they aren't completely happy with the result it's because they didn't want to pay. Not because I didn't provide it.

And on that note. Always be honest with your client and don't sugar coat. It is what it is.

Also. The world is a very small place. Never trash talk a client or another CI. This came back to bite me in the ass early in my career when I talked shit about another car stereo installer. I was 19 and knew everything. Not realizing that the guy I was talking to had known the installer I was trashing for a long time. The guy I was trashing had made some bad life decisions but was a friend. We are no longer friends and it's because I was an asshole. My loss.

Craig.

Bingo.


But when there's a decorator in the mix, sometimes there's no direct access to the client. This always makes things difficult.


Yes! That's the same "bingo!" in different words.


This is a good lesson to learn early, too! Sometimes I wonder about the trunk-slammers who act as though there's an infinite pool of customers. Those poor guys will never enjoy the pleasure of having a customer call up and say "I'm moving! Let's get together and work out what we're going to put in at the new place." A good relationship sure beats the heck out of cold sales!

For many years, people at sales meetings have told us that it's easier to sell from top-down, meaning that it's easier to show the best and move down the line than start at a lower price and try to get them to pay more. Some customers are far too willing to try to prove that wrong because they don't want to spend what it takes to get the cheap stuff and those are the ones we need to walk away from. They think we can sell at cost and break even, but there's no way to do that because they ignore the fact that being in business has costs, regardless of whether we sell anything, or not.

What seems like hundreds of years ago, I saw my first Pronto remote at a client's house. I found out it cost him $400, and I thought that this guy must be really stupid to spend that kind of money.

Fast forward a few years to my first RTI training. I took home a T3 remote from the training, and showed it to a client on the way home. I knew full well that nobody in their right mind would spend $1000 on a remote. "I want that" was all it took.

Good, better, best selling is pretty helpful as well. My favorite remote is the better one, but I always make sure that I show the best one. It sells for a few hundred dollars more than my favorite one, but it establishes a reference point that makes my favorite the best value.

I like the good better best approach too and use it when I can.

I find often there isn't much that can be substituted. Here's your HEOS gear for example. But with things like speakers I'll often do two or three choices. That's a tough one as in my case I can't do demos of all of the speakers I can access. So in the end I often get , "What would you suggest?". I have my go tos and help with those decisions but people like to have choice. Gives them a sense of control.

Remotes are for sure another item where good and better works.

Craig

Pick several good products an learn them well. Don't try to sell everything to everyone. Sell packages with variations. Not all jobs have to be a new design.

A line I like to use; There is nothing I provide that you need, I am in the want business.