Features
Best Buy and the Client Experience
Surprising lessons from an unlikely source about the power of long-term vision.
Jason Griffing
Features
Are Your Customers Successful?
How you can leverage the popular discipline of customer success to create happier clients and a healthier bottom line.
Features
The Important Difference Between Leadership and Management
How to achieve optimal results by understanding and embracing these distinct disciplines.
Blogs
How to Get More Done with Less Stress Using GTD
A primer on one of the most effective productivity techniques out there.
Blogs
Why Best Buy’s “Total Tech Support” Is Great News
The company’s paid 24/7 support offering sets a much-needed precedent for RMR service models in the connected home
Blogs
What Are You Really Selling?
How Understanding the Three Product Levels Allows You to Differentiate Your Market Position
Blogs
Frustrated Clients Want Options. Not Apologies.
Research Shows That Saying ‘Sorry’ Can Make it Worse. Spend Your Energy Finding Creative Solutions Instead
Blogs
Want to Get Ahead? Just Be More Helpful
Have you ever considered what makes some people a pleasure to work with, while others feel like a chore? There are the obvious factors...
Blogs
Speakers are Smart. But Now What?
Immediately following the holidays, Amazon triumphantly announced that tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices were sold worldwide, news that some are heralding at a...
Blogs
Want to Provide Great Service? Start by Making Promises You Can Keep
What lessons from internet hosting company Rackspace can you apply in your own businesses to achieve a similar level of service excellence?
Blogs
Are Amazon’s Custom Home Services a Deal with the Devil?
Some integrators believe that Amazon will play a significant role in the future of the smart home, while others point out that Amazon annihilates...
Back to Business
Closing Out the Last 5 Percent of a Project
When it comes to closing out a project, a detailed scope-of-work statement is one of the most important documents you can have in your...
Blogs
Using Emotional Intelligence to Build Stronger Trade Partnerships
Want your company to stand out from the competition? Technical expertise alone is not enough.
Blogs
3 Keys to Product Evaluation at CEDIA 2017
Packing your bags for San Diego? The home technology industry is more dynamic than ever, making CEDIA 2017 as pivotal a show as ever....
Blogs
Ideas are Good. Execution is Better.
The fact is that most of us come up with great ideas every day. You easily identify problems in our businesses and, with a...
Back to Business
Service Contracts: An Understood Benefit
How do you handle the topic of ongoing service and maintenance during your sales process?
Blogs
Why “Best-Effort” Service Falls Short
Take a look at the day-to-day operations of any integration company: salesmen keep the pipeline full, engineers crank out schematics, project managers move between...
Blogs
Builders Want Smart Homes. Can CEDIA Help?
These are clear signs of healthy demand for connected home technologies amongst the target market of home builders, who surely wouldn’t be going to...
Blogs
Act Yourself Into a New Way of Thinking
Simply Taking Action Can be the Best Way to Tackle Big Problems in Your Business
Back to Business
The Customer Experience Equation
If you were asked to define how you ensure a great experience for your clients, how would you reply?
Blogs
Are Your Client Service Efforts Running on Square Wheels?
Two cavemen pull a square-wheeled cart full of rocks. A fellow caveman in the background, holds up a round tire, trying to get their...
Blogs
Why You Should be Thankful for Difficult Clients
We all have a client like Stan. Stan is never satisfied. Since the day you turned the system over to him, he’s done nothing...
Blogs
Don’t ‘Wow’ Your Clients. Just Make Life Easier
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about how companies in general can improve their overall customer experience. The gist is simple: if we...
Blogs
The Three Most-Effective Project Management Traits
In more than a decade of working in this business, I’ve found that that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for project management. What I have...
Blogs
My Top 5 Stories to Watch for at ISE
ISE can be a bit of paradox for home technology professionals. Many of the stories we see surface out of Amsterdam are retreads of...
Back to Business
Managing Your AV Guilt
They say the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.
Blogs
Don’t Sell ‘Remote Monitoring.’ Sell Solutions
“Why monitor a problem if you don’t fix it?” asks the narrator. It’s a good question, and one that should stay top of...
Blogs
Service Plans: Setting Realistic Expectations for Your Client
While it’s been a long, drawn-out battle for the CEDIA channel to find success with selling service plans, 2017 feels like the year that...
Blogs
The 5 Biggest Home Tech Stories of 2016
With 2016 rapidly coming to a close, it’s time to take stock of what became of the last 12 months in home technology stories....
Back to Business
DIY Manufacturers: Meet Us in the Middle
If you are a maker of a DIY product, there’s ample opportunity for partnerships here. But if you’re looking for sustainable success with a...
Blogs
Are Consumer-Grade Mesh Wi-Fi Systems a Threat or Opportunity?
Had you asked me a year ago to predict the biggest home technology stories of 2016, a number of ideas would have jumped to...
Blogs
Consumers Will Lose in the Battle for Input-Zero
A relatively new term, “Input-Zero” describes the first and primary source that users turn to in looking for something to watch. For the vast...
Blogs
5 Ways to Conquer the Tyranny of Your Inbox
More often than not, the time spent in our inboxes is a distraction from the deep, meaningful work that could actually move the needle...
Blogs
Thinking Beyond Voice Control – What’s Your AI Strategy?
Last week’s “Made by Google” event featured a number of new hardware products, including the company’s answer to Amazon Echo, Google Home. As my Residential Systems...
Blogs
The Three Ps: Following Up on Your CEDIA Week Connections
With a head full of ideas, and all of the day-to-day fires hopefully contained, now’s the time to start to thinking about the show...
Blogs
CEDIA 2016 and the Birth of the RSM Category
This category is so new in fact that there isn’t yet an agreed-upon name for it. I’ve heard it referred to as managed services,...
Blogs
The Importance of Understanding Apple HomeKit
Preparing ourselves to speak in an educated manner about the Home app, and the broader HomeKit platform, is the key to using Apple’s initiative...
Blogs
4 Trends I Plan to Investigate at CEDIA 2016
Forming a plan is easiest when looking at the show through the lens of a few key themes. For me, these are voice control,...
Blogs
Why I Wasn’t Surprised by Kaleidescape’s Demise
The news of Kaleidescape’s imminent demise last week sent shockwaves through our industry. ...
Blogs
Don’t Call Me a Technologist
In all of the various settings I can imagine myself describing my work, I can’t think of one where calling myself a “home technologist”...
Blogs
CEDIA is Wise to Embrace the DIY Convergence
CEDIA’s number one responsibility is to look out for the long-term business interests of its constituents. As the smart home DIY convergence continues its...
Blogs
Nest Cam Outdoor: On the Fence Between CI, DIY
It’s been awhile since we’ve seen anything new from Nest. Last week that all changed when the company threw back the curtain to unveil...
Blogs
The Future of the Cable Box is in Jeopardy
The battle of the future of set-top boxes is one worth paying close attention to. Whether they are unlocked, or ditched altogether, we will...
Blogs
Apple is Getting Serious About the Smart Home
With iOS 10’s release later this year, tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of users will have a highly capable smart home system installed in...
Blogs
The Smart Home is About ‘Unhappy Paths’
Our clients tell us constantly that all they want is a system that “just works” every time. We do our best to deliver that...
Blogs
The Voice Control Call to Arms
Google's entry into voice control is a sure sign that the CEDIA channel needs to pay close attention.
Blogs
The Big Boys May Be Struggling. But Don’t Bet Against Them
With Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developer Conference scheduled to kick off June 13, the famed Apple rumor mill has begun to grind into motion. One...