I like to “put my money where my mouth is,” when it comes to the products that I recommend to clients. I will not install anything in a client’s home that I haven’t tested extensively in my own home or office. Not only is it good practice to sell what you know but you never want a client to be a guinea pig for a new integration.
Collaboration is another area where I try to walk the talk. Several times in this space I’ve written about home tech pros working together to share expertise, support each other, and share workloads. For those of you who have been reading this blog for a number of years you may remember the Home Theater Rebuild, an effort I put forth in 2009/2010 to help new home tech pros get their businesses off the ground and run their companies profitably and for the long term. While I haven’t written about The Rebuild in while, I have continued to work with new and up-and-coming companies.
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For example, after recently becoming a Sonos dealer, the NY/NJ sales team of Greg Yurcisin and Alberto Aguilar came to my home to give a product training presentation, and talk about the Sonos product line and some recent news like the integration with control systems and Amazon’s Alexa. I took the opportunity to invite two companies I greatly respect to join us. Home Theater Advisors has long been a Sonos dealer, and I valued having them there as they would know more about the products and installations than I would, and they would have some good questions and feedback. Intelligent Automation does not yet sell Sonos but they are considering doing so, and this was a great chance for them to get exposed to the product lineup and the sales team. So we had a fantastic cross-section of skills, abilities, and familiarity with the product line and the meeting was better for it.
The discussion was robust, with both neophyte questions and suggestions and solutions for those more experienced with Sonos. We all got something out of the meeting. Even the Home Theater Advisors team learned something new: they didn’t realize that the Sonos Playbar passes IR commands through itself out the back, so that if it is in front a TV, it won’t block the IR signals going to the TV’s IR receiver. The Sonos team was happy to have everyone there, as well, and was impressed at how well we all worked together and how well we got along and cared about each other’s success.
Do you have any examples of working closely with another home tech pro to make a meeting or a project go better than it would have had it been just one company there? I’d love to hear other examples of how you all make this work well and how you’ve worked together with others to give our readers and me more examples and success stories.
