I spent the weekend doing a retro job and a "cabin" (house) in the mountains. Just a 5.1 one with 3 zones of DA and basic URC control. 

THis was a half trade/favor for an old client. I will be getting 3 weekends of stay at the palce. There's a ski resort close by and summers are nice as well. 

This job was something i did sort of on the side of my normal business and i'm using the money to justify going to Cedia. Flights have gone up about $50 (expected since i'm late). Now I just have to try and find somewhere cheap to stay.

I don't know about cheap but the Marriott around the corner from the show has openings. $150/night. The prices drop dramatically as soon as you leave the downtown area.

Check out Snap's video on how to sell racks. I did and ever since have been pushing racks. Every client so far has taken me on the offer, not that I have that many clients.
Bottom line, the $700 is only 8-10 hours of labor. Figure an extra hour for 2 or 3 service calls and now you're saving them money.

About the only type of system I'll install without a rack is a very simple system with only cable/sat box & Blu-ray and maybe an AppleTV or Game console.  Once you add an AVR or more than 3 components it really starts to make sense.

I don't separate the rack cost in a proposal, but I do include a paragraph with all the reasons they really need one.  This way if the client gets a competing bid for less that doesn't include a rack, they know the difference and in most cases start to wonder why the competitor didn't include one.

Same thing for cooling... any time you put more than a cable/sat box & Blu-ray in a cabinet you need some type of cooling.  I see a lot of installers that simply leave this out of the original proposal and then have to go back and charge more to install cooling when it becomes a problem.  Even worse, the customer just ends up leaving the cabinet door open (sometimes for years).

Here's a couple examples for you guys that are having trouble selling racks.

This customer spent a lot of money with his cabinet maker to install nice sliding shelves with high quality hardware and cutouts in the back for wiring.  The original installer didn't challenge this and was able to get all the equipment wired and installed.  The first night, the equipment overheated, so the client opened the doors.  Original installer came back and put a Middle Atlantic fan in place to move air, but the doors still couldn't be closed.  The reality is that once a shelf was pulled out, all the wires bunched up behind and you couldn't push them back in and close the doors anyway.

This system ran like this for for several years.  I met the client initially to do some simple repairs on the Russound system and ended up adding a Middle Atlantic SRSR and proper cooling:





Here's another one from a couple weeks ago.  It's just a little Sonos setup that really didn't need a rack, but it was a mess and the client didn't like how it looked.  I added an amp for an outside zone and stuck in one of the Middle Atlantic CFR racks to clean it all up.  Only took about 1.5hrs:

Before and after:




I've found that most people are willing to pay a little more for an installation that looks professional and has been well thought out.  I'm not a very good salesman, so if I can sell racks any one can.

 

The slide out shelves like that are the worst case scenario. I cant stand them.

What did I do today? Called the IRS to go over why my tax bill is $23,496,000. Yes, 23 million. LOL.

I feel for you.  The IRS mis-applied one of my payments and posted it to a prior tax year?  It's taken 5 months and 9 phone calls totalling around 7 hours to resolve.

send them an invoice for your time, start adding interest, then hire debt collection company to harass them repeatedly.

I dont think it works that way man

awesomeness

HAHAHA

Just got an email to go see NIRV at Cedia.

I think it was from the past.

Interesting day from a sales (hunting) perspective...

I have had one midsize prewire just hanging out there for three weeks on a project that should be starting next week. The guy simply hasn't responded to follow ups at all. No biggie, he's clearly the type that would be difficult to work with long time. I had actually written him off until I watched some videos at SnapAV. Inspired, I called this cat to apologize for whatever I had done to offend him. Man, did that set him back on his heels. He ended up copping to the fact that he had shopped my bid, found it was right in the ballpark with two others submitted and was surprised at the cost. Kind of fun.

Second meeting was with a player in oil whom I've worked with before. Single guy, 6000 sq.ft. joint on the 22nd floor of his building. He put up zero resistance and jumped at everything I threw at him. ~$40-50K without breaking a sweat. Strangely, that one bored me.

Antz, the ones you have to work for always are more rewarding. It always feels better when you know it was your own extra effort that makes the bank deposits.

He put up zero resistance and jumped at everything I threw at him. ~$40-50K without breaking a sweat. Strangely, that one bored me.

Haha.  You're turning into a salesman.  I feel the exact same way most of the time.

Ha this is funny but so true. This outdoor project i proposed (now working on) i was all most positive that i was going to have a fight among me. Went to the second meeting with the architect prepared to go into "battle" after the meeting the wife turned to me and said, well; I assume you need a deposit how much do you need.

and well, im bored with the project and am so ready for it to be done.

However i have another project i am working on and had to fight for this one and so far i am enjoying every bit of it and cannot wait for the outcome.