The vibration thread got me to wondering how you guys go about landing conference room jobs. Board rooms and ect...
What types of contacts do you make to get a gig like this?

A few years back we did a whole house and theater system for client that was new to town.

Three month's later he called to say he was very happy with our work and asked if we also did conference rooms.

I asked him what he had in mind(having never actually done one before).

I wrote down what he was interested in, did some quick homework, shot him a bid, and got the job.

In the business world word must travel fairly fast!

It has evolved into a large part of our work, probably 40%.

I just got back tonight from finishing a prewire for 4 conference rooms in a much larger city than my own.

The bad news is.... it's 90 miles one way.

The good news is.... they didn't have a problem paying the hourly rate for road time.

That doesn't offer much help but, it's how we got started.

Thanks Pilgram

most of our residential jobs are for people who own large companies....large companies have board room or training rooms so its a natural....

The real problem with most commercial work is that it is very different animal from residential. Often it involves assisted listening systems, lecturns, more computer interfaces ( which has gotten much easier as the displays more readily accept computer inputs but such was not always such ) and specifications involve equipment that I rarely if ever deal with. Limiters, Duckers, fiber optic wiring and products ( Foxcm SDTV Plus to accomodate multiple D* IRDs over a single coax--which is what Verizon is attempting to do currently to challange the cable companies ), wireless and wired microphones ( anyone know which polar pattern is best for which application?). Anyone familiar with a Symetrix 8x8 DSP? How about a TV One C2-5200 scaler? Anyone need to use buffer amps on their wiring, such as the RDL TXLC-2?

If any of you were to read the requirements in most commercial bids, not just if ISCA certified technians, certified programmers for the control system but for the required test equipment for both audio, video, data, and wire many of you would choose to stay out of commercial. Margins are almost uniformly 20-25 % though this per cent is often from a very large number. You deal with consultants who know little but act as if they are god. Their specification and wiring diagrams are often wrong or incomplete and you, the contractor, are supposed to know this and fix it. Yet you cannot substitute any product without permission.

Small board rooms can be similiar to what many of us do. However when they include video and audio converencing they often exceed our experience. Add to that the programming specification that may have you writing a control program that turns microphones on and off depending on which microphone receives signal or moves a camera based on this information and you may get some idea why commercial is a very different animal from residential.

I do very little commercial work but I am took much of the above from a commercial bid sitting on my desk.

Alan

I will be honest with you Instalz we have been doing the commercial so darn long I don't remember exactly how we did it at first. I know that it is a big part of our business now though. If I was starting out I would do some leg work to get on the contractors list of the big companys. Give them a call and talk to purchasing and explain you want to get on their contractors list for AV electronics it usually is that simple. They do have prefered vendors but if they have a new job in the works you will get sent the quote request. We dont get in a lot of bid situations and even if we do we never win but word of mouth and reputation does wonders as you know!