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Focusing on The ‘Middle’
It goes without saying that our industry is currently undergoing massive change in terms of the products we sell (or used to sell) and...
New Skills, New Reality
Most ESCs in business today either started or have helped grow companies that possess the skills required for delivering many or all of the...
How Do You Define Success?
Embracing and Learning from Our Failures Can Lead to Success
It All Starts on Day 1
Seven Ingredients for Creating an Effective Employee Manual As business owners, one byproduct of our continuous...
Simplifying Technology
Our Clients Expect a Lot More From Us, But Can We Deliver? Based on my 20-plus years of...
Our Game Is Changing
Five Market Challenges That Can’t Be Ignored By Your Company ...
Listen to Win
As we enter a new decade my big question is this: Are the manufacturers who serve our industry going to continue churning out...
What’s on the Inside?
Improving The Perception Of Your Company’s Inner Workings ...
Fix That First Impression
Elevating Your Status From Sub-Trade To Project Professional “You never get a second chance to make a...
The Face of the Business
Why Your People Are Fundamental To Your Long-Term Success Well, that was quite a year wasn’t it? Regardless...
Commercial AV Pitfalls
Why residential escs should think twice before ‘going pro’ A high school basketball area installation of Electro-Voice speakers like this one is not a...
Get Your Game Face On
New Technology From E3 Will Help Change Our Business Focus During Microsoft’s E3 demo, the movements ofthis gamer were accurately captured by the ProjectNatal...
Back to the Drawing Board
Why Project Drawings Can Be So Critical To Your Success Most people familiar with the workflow of a typical, new-construction, residential project can likely...
Targeting Your Product Mix
When It Comes To The Lines You Sell, Sometimes Less Is More As electronic systems contractors, we all make a variety of decisions every...
Tightening the Ties that Bind
How Manufacturers’ Rep Firms Can Better Serve Our Industry During these challenging times, every company in our industry should be looking for better ways...
There is a Better Way
Five Critical Ideas For Improving Your Sales And Operations If you have been in this business for a while and attended your share of...
Killing the Killer Showroom
Ditch Your Design Center For A More Productive Work Space So if you are like most integrators these days, then you are probably looking...
Simplifying the Interface
It’s safe to say that the world has changed. For all but the wealthiest of our clients, discretionary income has been replaced with a...
Raising Your Standards
How do your customers and your prospects perceive you and your installation company? It is important to understand the components of your image and...
Riding Out the Storm
Wall Street is in the midst of a Category 5 financial hurricane, and it’s time to hunker down. The storm’s damage is already in...
Moving Up-Market
Every year there is a consistent flow of new companies jumping into the custom installation business. Unfortunately, most make the same initial mistakes. ...
Surviving Tough Times
Our economic crisis has grown to immense portions. More than 250 home mortgage companies have gone out of business or have entirely left the...
The Future of Home Control
I recently visited Disney World to see one of its most enduring attractions: the Carousel of Progress. This revolving presentation clarifies how accelerating technology...
Get XP While You Still Can
Business PC users are pretty much stuck with Windows. Yes, I also have a Mac and I love working on it with ProTools, Final...
Gauging Your Financials
Editors Note: Last month, Leslie Shiner answered questions about using QuickBooks on the financial side of your business. This month, Rich Riehl adds his...
Earning a Place at the Table
It took weeks of calling and lots of patience to finally break through and get the go ahead for this important sales meeting. You...
Riding Business Waves
I had been pondering the growing mortgage crisis and how it was affecting our entire economy. I was trying to process stories I had...
The Busy-ness of Business
Nobody likes red tape. Nobody likes spending hours reconciling bank statements and comparing a pile of purchase orders with a pile of packing lists...
The Future of High Fidelity
A lot has changed on the technology landscape since I started writing this column in January 2000. As I move into my eighth year...
Planting Seeds that Grow
As we begin this New Year, I believe we can learn something from the pioneers of the Old West. In those days, there were...
Windows of Opportunity
I finally did it: I upgraded my personal home system to a 42-inch flat screen HDTV with a Blu-ray DVD and added a new...
Building a Business System
Running your custom installation business profitably requires putting systems in place to manage your products and prices. It is not possible to build a...
Charging What Youre Worth
Properly setting prices can have a huge impact on the success or failure of a custom installation business. To casually decide that your company...
The Bosss Long Vacation
We all work hard in this business. Our personal energy is the fuel many of our small businesses run on. We give it all...
A Womans Wishes First
I visited a big-box AV retailer recently and was surrounded by what seems like 100 flat-screen displays. After so many years in this business,...
Three Cheers for Sales Reps
Reps are the unsung road warriors of our industry. They pay the price to travel to make house calls to all the small dealerships...
Securing Your Place
The custom AV installation business is a hot market to be in. While our small installation companies may never make it to the NASDAQ,...
Racing Against Time
Whenever I talk shop with someone in the installation business, they always mention that they just dont have enough time. This constant stress is...
Battling Big Box Retailers
Most custom AV installation companies are pretty small. Even those generating a few million in annual sales generally operate with a handful of talented...
Computer Technology at Work
This is an important year in the world of computer software. Microsoft is releasing several versions of the long-awaited Vista operating system. On top...