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The following page was printed from RemoteCentral.com:
| Topic: | Putting together new structured wiring packages This thread has 46 replies. Displaying posts 31 through 45. |
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| Post 31 made on Friday October 28, 2005 at 23:40 |
idodishez Select Member |
Joined:
Posts: | May 2003
2,433 |
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On 10/28/05 10:01 ET, Trip109 said...
For the sake of your business and family.... get
over this attitude.
You only want PROFITABLE jobs. You can lose money
sitting at home watching TV, why spend the energy
in an attic or crawl space losing money.
If you are not doing thorough job costing, you
have no idea how much profit (loss) there is in
a particular type job.
We found that we ALWAYS lost money doing straight
prewires. If a customer understands the value
in validation/certification and is willing to
pay a premium for this then we will do it, but
we still sub out the actual labor.
Business Success Axiom #1: Revenue does not equal
profit. I wish I COULD get over this, but like Installz, I feel that if only took the "cherry" jobs, I woldnt be working AT ALL! I wish I HAD the excess business that many on here appear to have. But for now I dont. As far as LOSING on pre-wiring. I too dont see how you can lose on a pre-wire. Granted it may not be as profitable as another aspect of the job, but if you charge your needed per drop rate, or hourly rate, where is the loss? By doing "straight" pre-wires, are you referring to trying to compete w the sparkys?
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No, I wont install your plasma with an orange extension cord hanging down the wall. www.customdigitalinc.com |
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| Post 32 made on Friday October 28, 2005 at 23:43 |
idodishez Select Member |
Joined:
Posts: | May 2003
2,433 |
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On 10/28/05 17:35 ET, Instalz said...
. I advertise
in the yellow pages, 450.00 per year. I maintain
a website, 150.00 per year. I make my own business
cards that I must say look really professional. I wish my overhead/payroll was that cheap. How do you get yellow pages for $450/YEAR? We were paying more than that per MONTH last year. (2 books)
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No, I wont install your plasma with an orange extension cord hanging down the wall. www.customdigitalinc.com |
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| Post 33 made on Friday October 28, 2005 at 23:54 |
djnorm Founding Member |
Joined:
Posts: | January 2002
1,693 |
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We don't lose money on pre-wires, but we don't make money either... The boss is always reminding us that we only really make money if we're moving boxes at the same time.
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| Post 34 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 01:36 |
Wesley Mullings Long Time Member |
Joined:
Posts: | February 2003
152 |
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Gentlemen, Once again I offer www.ha-ready.org go to the "Professional" link at the top of the page: User: build PW: tech I agree that per drop pricing is selling yourself very short. It's like quoting a client on the specific number of shoelace holes for their shoes, or number of nails to build their house. If they're nitpicking and micromanaging this hard now, they'll kill you during the install until you DO lose money for the job! Using HA-Ready, (sorry, had to do this) we provide quotes in terms of "per square foot" because the design covers the entire home as a standard application. If they ask for a quote on what can be taken out of the design, it constitutes a scenario change, and they pay for another design. This keeps the client from nitpicking your design. The cheapest builder does this to keep the client from nitpicking HIS design, so why shouldn't you? It keeps the client from thinking your pricing is wrong or too much because it's given in differing terms. If you sidetrack the client's mental calculator, you will be the first candidate that gets fired! I've had this happen to me very often when I first started by business! My $0.02, thank you.
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What remains consistent for every single project? The home! www.digilifellc.com |
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| Post 35 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 07:56 |
ejfiii Select Member |
Joined:
Posts: | July 2003
2,021 |
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On 10/28/05 23:31 ET, idodishez said...
So are these YOUR subs that your paying, or are
they the sparkys that your paying. By your post,
Im gathering their your subs, and you bill the
customer for the labor.
If so, how is this different than just quoting
the customer $40/drop for example. Yeah, maybe
WE need $70/drop to be profitable, but if we can
pay a sub less, and still bill the cust $40/drop,
its all the same to the customer isnt it? Its
just that you pay an employee/sub to pull the
wire, instead of YOU PERSONALLY pulling the wire.
Am I looking at this wrong? Both Frank. Usually I'll use my subs. But sometimes if I know sparky on the site I'll let him do it. Either way, its time and materials. My point was that there is no way I can compete with the low dollar slammers or alarm/sparkys who think they know what they are doing - whether I use subs or not. But using subs at a cheaper labor rate than mine, I can do it for a bit cheaper. But with that said, we are now transitioning a bit to a new model. We are starting to charge a design fee and an hourly management fee to the client. Then we sell the wire to the sparky or other guy on site. They pull the wire as part of their install/rough fee. This has worked well lately as we work in nicer homes as the builder is comfortable with the subs they already use. This way I still make some money but am not on site for days pulling the wire - freeing me up to do more sales and more profitable installs. Seems to be working well so far.
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| OP | Post 36 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 10:33 |
Instalz Active Member |
Joined:
Posts: | April 2005
628 |
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ceied, No harm done. I didn't think that you were disrespecting me. It all boils down to your market area. Example: the difference in what we all pay for yellow page ads.
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| Post 37 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 14:01 |
BigPapa Super Member |
Joined:
Posts: | October 2005
3,139 |
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Instalz, I think you're well on your way there.
Keep setting yourself apart from the electrician. It's more of a challlenge in the market you're in, but stick to it. It'll happen.
Hell, even in the Ultra Luxury market, there's still electricians who try to do whole house AV and automation.
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| OP | Post 38 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 14:22 |
Instalz Active Member |
Joined:
Posts: | April 2005
628 |
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bigPapa, I just picked up a job this week. I got a call from a customer who was refered to me by the catv company. The customer had her electrician wire and mount a 42" pani plasma over the fireplace in her bedroom. CATV co. came out to install an hd box. Guess what? All that was run behind the plasma was an rg-6.
I explained to the customer what she needed, gave her some options. I am placing her hd box, and dvd player in a closet off the bedroom, putting in IR. The catv co. has a temp drop running to her guest house, then a 2 way splitter and another temp drop layed on the ground to the main house. House was wired 10 years ago, so is a rg59 loop system. The catv co. won't be able to put in a new direct buried drop until next spring/summer, I called dig safe, and where burying 2 rg-11's from the pole to the main house, about 100' (hand dig)
Then she's buying a 50" plasm & 32" lcd from me for 2 other rooms in the house.
Did I mention that this customer is a very high end realtor?
Again, I'm not dogging sparky, it just shows that what they do and what we do are 2 different fields.
This job should get me allot of referals.
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| Post 39 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 14:53 |
BigPapa Super Member |
Joined:
Posts: | October 2005
3,139 |
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Instalz,
Yes, we shouldn't dog sparky, and I don't think anybody means to. There are electricians who are pretty savvy out there and know what's going on, but it's a lot to ask of a guy to master signal and power into one profitable career.
I know how lighting systems and 3 way switches work, and can program them, but I'm not an electrician nor a lighting system programmer.
As long as people think our profession is just pulling speaker cable and phone jacks, then we're going to be dealing with these issues.
Give our industry 5 to 10 more years.
Nice pull on the real estate agent. Take care of here!
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| OP | Post 40 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 16:26 |
Instalz Active Member |
Joined:
Posts: | April 2005
628 |
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| Post 41 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 16:47 |
ceied Loyal Member |
Joined:
Posts: | February 2002
5,754 |
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i say dog sparky every chance you get...they do more harm to our industry than good. just dont dog them to badly infront of the customer..that is bad biz.
look sparky has his place and put him there....lol
realtors can be good people to know. make her happy.....be honest and take time to explain. this will go along way for her to refer you to her customer base.
ed
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Ed will be known as the Tiger Woods of the integration business, followed closely with the renaming of his company to "Hotties A/V". The tag line will be "We like big racks and tight holes"... |
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| OP | Post 42 made on Saturday October 29, 2005 at 17:36 |
Instalz Active Member |
Joined:
Posts: | April 2005
628 |
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Hey Ed, I will take real good care of her... She could definately get me rolling in some big dollar projects...
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| Post 43 made on Sunday October 30, 2005 at 00:00 |
hitagain Long Time Member |
Joined:
Posts: | August 2005
146 |
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As a sparky I'm glad you can keep putting all of in our place. Don't think for one minute all sparkys can't do this. The ones who can stay the hell out of the small home systems. Our latest system we installed required over 700 miles of fiber in 3 sq mile area.
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| Post 44 made on Sunday October 30, 2005 at 04:41 |
On 10/28/05 00:32 ET, idodishez said...
I too would like to put something together like
this. Ive had customers hand me "menu's" from
the competition. Not sure if that's a good or
bad approach, but it seems it would help streamline
the proposal and site survey w the customer.
This kinda hit a sore spot today, as I just finished
a site survey w a customer. I recommended all
the needed cabling for dual tuner DVR's, disributed
bvideo, remote location of HD boxes for flat screens,
OTA, etc etc etc. An estimate was put together
from HIS input. (Wanted no boxes by the TV, wanted
local HD via OTA, wanted HD Plasma above a fireplace,
etc.) All this time ,and he calls today to
tell me all he wants now is the pre-wire from
the dish to the home run. hes going to have the
security guys run the extra coax for the dual
tuners, casue they were $40/drop, verses my $70
(WITH phone). Hes going to use rabbit ears for
OTA. HEs gonna put the boxes by the TV's, and
scrapped the plasma above the FP (wife nixed
the idea)
Maybe if I went in w a "menu", I could have headed
this off, and not wasted my time only to get a
dish pre-wire. (Although we WILL be doing the
Direcway and Sat TV)
Do many of you use "menu's"? Just to give the
customer a "ballpark" of what it mught cost, before
you spend oodles of time puttng together a full
blown proposal.
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| Post 45 made on Sunday October 30, 2005 at 05:09 |
Frank,
Run away as fast as u can, if u still can.
you specd the job the way t was sposd to be done.
I can so predict any problems in the future will be related to the "security guys", and they'll be long gone.(the security system will be fine).
All you out there have to refuse to allow someone else to do a prewire that in the end you'll be responsible to make work, wether it's a phone system, surround sound, network, or even a doorbell.
If you give in and let the homeowner let the "electrician" do the wiring ("It's just another wire"); not that i have anything against electricians, my pops a contractor; nothing but problems will ensue.
ie.: Troubleshoot a problem, are all cables labled?, etc...
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