What many said was impossible has come to pass. Apple has announced that they’re making a stylus. That sound you hear is Steve Jobs rolling over in his grave. But for as much static as Apple is getting from the commentariat, how could they not? There are already a lot of aftermarket styli available […]

I’ve already chronicled my pursuit of achieving 100% coverage in my home’s light fixtures with LED bulbs. One impediment that has slowed my progress has been cost: when Costco had a great deal on 3-packs of LED bulbs I stocked up, twice. But LED still isn’t “cheap” per se. So I try to wait for […]

As a consequence of not being as compelling a story as things like the latest development in display technologies, something that almost never gets talked about in the trade media is receivables insurance. In fact, I’d even suggest that articles on install processes and white papers on esoteric control system concepts get more press. As […]

All good things must come to an end. The DVD player in my Media Room system appears to have croaked. It’s a trusty Denon DVD-2200 that, if I recall correctly, just had its tenth birthday. Troubleshooting it was easy: it’s not working. More specifically, if you care, it’s not loading discs, and the front panel […]

Not every tale from the archives of Strange ReTales is of Employees Behaving Badly. No, sometimes there are tales of Customers Behaving Badly. And sometimes there are tales of Bosses Behaving Badly. This is one of those. My boss-at-the-time, particularly. In one particular instance, I had a salesperson who began to show a lack of […]

Nobody’s business operates in a vacuum. Your company is surrounded by a network of clients, vendors, collaborators and competitors. Everyone in that network has their own challenges that they’re dealing with. Some of it won’t impact you and some of it will. The key is to maintain awareness of the world outside your own little […]

Recently, I had a great discussion with a couple of business acquaintances about business ethics, specifically, on the subject of poaching clients from rivals. It was the consensus of the group that picking up a client who’s dumped their last contractor can be dangerous, unless a client has clear material reasons for abandoning a company they previously […]

I recently had a conversation with my peers, the consensus of which I thought would be entertaining and informative for rAVe readers as a whole. We’re looking for new business.  I think it’s safe to say that many of us out there are. As much as we love our existing customers, we can’t expect them […]

AV is serious business. That’s why it’s often helpful to use levity brighten the mood. I joked around a lot back when I worked in retail. I still do in truth. My favorite joke when it came to the outdoor landscaping speakers that look like rocks was to tell customers “but you can only play […]

Although it’s not my focus these days, I still frequently get asked to coach and train salespeople. It’s not always sales skills that I’m asked to coach either. Personal growth means working on your weaknesses, and not every salesperson needs more sales training. A little while ago I was asked to provide some coaching for […]

Spoiler Alert: Today’s blog post isn’t going to disrupt any paradigms. Not all issues we face in the business world are life or death/do or die. Many of them are decidedly trivial. Even more than a decade after I first saw them appear, I remain vexed by the use of emoticons (or emojiis, as the […]

I regularly make the point that we should look for positive business lessons wherever we find them. Some lessons transcend all channels and industries. One of those is that the personal connection is everything. The one person I’ve known who absolutely personified that principle is my friend Barry Candelora. Barry and I have never worked […]

One of my old co-workers told me a story about a time early in his career when he was hired by a snack food manufacturer to be a delivery truck driver. His job was to call on grocery and convenience stores in his territory, restock the shelves from the inventory on his truck, and whenever […]

In the past, I’ve talked about problem solving and how much AV pros love to do it. I also cautioned against being so fond of problem solving that you subconsciously engineer situations where you can swoop into the middle of a crisis and be the hero. After all, as I pointed out, the only thing […]

Readers of rAVe Pubs may have noticed, or indeed commented upon my obsession with lightbulbs. Back in May I mentioned scoring a great deal on LED bulbs at Costco, and I’ve been experimenting with connected bulbs of all sorts. I thought that energy conscious readers might be interesting to know where I’ve gotten to in […]

Some time ago,  Mark Coxon wrote a compelling editorial entitled “Stay in Your Box” and other Bad Ideas. Mark did his usual great job, and compelled me to want to build on his thesis: that it’s imperative to challenge yourself with taking on new directions. Looking back, the cognitive framework that makes the most sense […]

Some of the wisest advice I was ever given was “you can’t chase every rabbit.” It’s true. Not everyone can be your customer. Nor would you want them to be. Once long ago the department store I worked at was rocked by a nightmare customer. The customer had ordered and took delivery of $20,000 worth […]

We all have pet peeves. I have many. The good news is that gives me lots of fodder to produce regular blogs for rAVe. Today the pet peeve I’m going to zero in on is scripted sales calls. Someone that I’ve known for years has recently moved into a professional sales position. Part of the […]

I dislike the term, “common sense.” I dislike it because people use it to mean “I already know this, and I expect that everyone else does to.” Obviously, that’s seldom true. An analogy I often use when talking about training makes reference to baking bread. Knowing how to bake bread is a learned skill. If […]

It’s been awhile since we’ve checked in on Strange ReTales, and reminisced about examples of Employees Behaving Badly. So I’ll take a break from posting semi-serious blogs and share a couple of reminiscences. Good sales people share common traits. They typically include diligence, attention to detail, and a good work ethic. Then there are those […]

A few weeks back, I wrote an overview of Sengled’s new Boost, a combination LED bulb and Wi-Fi extender. At the time the product was just announced, and wasn’t yet available. Once it became available, Sengled was kind enough to furnish me with a unit in order to do an actual product review. To recap, […]

Last week there was an interesting thinkpiece published on Salon.com entitled “Sell your records, sell your soul?: How I learned to stop hoarding and embrace the cloud.” It’s quite long, but worth the read. The takeaway was that the author struggles with her music collection: keeping it is a burden, the thought of getting rid […]

  It’s strange the turns you find your life takes. Lately I feel like I spend a lot of my time thinking about and writing about lightbulbs. Green lightbulbs, not-so-green lightbulbs, LED lightbulbs, smart lightbulbs, WiFi-enabled lightbulbs, and connected lightbulbs of all kinds. Of course, it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy: every time I make […]

Up here in Canada, the land of hockey and Tim Hortons another shot has been fired in the struggle over the remote controls in Canadian TV viewers’ hands. In what can best be described as a major move, homegrown streaming TV service Shomi, the product of collaboration between Canadian broadcasters Rogers and Shaw is now […]

When business owners think about education and training for their employees, the most obvious reason for training is to equip employees with the necessary skills and abilities to perform their job to a minimum standard of competence. But there are more important reasons than that, not least of which is the ability to excel, and […]

I’ve always wondered about the expression “Tire Kickers.” I mean, I don’t wonder about the expression, I know where it comes from: the car business. From Urban Dictionary: Someone who is indecisive about purchasing a product or service, and never feels satisfied with what they are offered. In the end a tire kicker may or […]

Not long ago I was chatting with my friend Aaron Craig, owner of NT Designs, a freelance automation programming company. One of the themes in our discussion was that “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same). The touchscreens that programmers are creating GUIs for […]

StarTech.com has debuted a new 2-in-1 Mini DisplayPort to HDMI or VGA adapter, which enables users to connect their Mini DisplayPort-equipped laptops to either an HDMI or VGA display, eliminating the need to carry multiple Mini DisplayPort adapters. While corresponding with StarTech.com’s PR person, I thought this sounded awfully familiar. Last fall I had already […]

Finding a humorous pop-culture reference to segue into the main point of my blog posts isn’t always easy. I’ve been holding on to this one for months, struggling with trying to make it work without being awkward. I’m still not sure I’ve done it, so I’m just going to go for it: In the classic […]

If there’s a single word that summarizes what AV dealers need, it’s this one: efficiency. Dealers need to have efficient installation, efficient project management, and most of all efficient back office processes. Time, after all, is money. It’s one thing to say it, it’s a lot harder to achieve. Seeing an opportunity to help dealers […]

  It’s a quirk of mine that, given a choice, I’d rather patronize a small, locally owned business than a big, corporate, national one. In addition to being a locavore I guess that would make me a locaemptor. Sometimes that desire pays off, such as when I shop at the small, family-owned shoe store not […]

Like any business, AV pros face many challenges. Margins, product availability deadlines — all the ones you might expect. I want to focus on just one for this column: Your prospective customers don’t like you. This is not a challenge that’s unique to the AV channel by any means. I don’t like car dealerships, their […]