Latest headlines: Murphy Daley on engagement and goodwill, Omar Prashad on clarity and confidence before making a buying decision and more
June 30, 2021 | Volume: 15 | Issue: 12
Happy Wednesday to my Rental and Staging AV pros and fans! We here at rAVe have been busy watching and editing ISE 2021 coverage! Our friend Gordon Dutch of Re-Sauce took us on a booth tour for the in-person London show, and you don’t want to miss those! One video features Gordon talking with John Hooker of LANG UK. Though many of us couldn’t get to ISE this year due to COVID, these videos might just be the next best thing. Anyways, on to our columns, #RentalTweeps!
Murphy Daley gave us an informative column this week about teamwork. Though it seems like an all-encompassing theme, Murphy offers some specialized advice for a successful project. In “Where the Magic Happens: Engagement and Goodwill,” you’ll find insight on how to best manage different rental projects — including the importance of individual needs.
Our next column is a great blog about the confusion many AV clients face when renting or buying AV equipment. Don’t let the title fool you — “Are You a Dragon Fruit or a Banana?” by Omar Prashad brings awareness to more than just the uniqueness of dragon fruit. My favorite quote really sums it up: “Scale the level of guidance to the level of commitment (monetary and emotionally) of the AV system(s) your customer needs.” Whatever we’re renting, buying or selling, we all need a little clarity and confidence before we make a decision.
I hope you’ve had a great week so far and enjoy the upcoming weekend. If you’re looking for a COVID-safe activity for your 4th of July celebrations (if you’re in the states), check out this interview with ISE managing manager, Mike Blackman — we got the first interview of the night! That’s it for today. I’ll see ya next time!
As a project manager studying for the PMP, I’ve learned so many tricks and tools for how to handle projects. I loved seeing these abstract examples of inputs and artifacts of a perfect project. RAID logs, stakeholder directories and the classic triple constraint: Time, Cost and Scope. Keep your eyes on the schedule, on the budget and on fulfilling the contract. Simple as that, right? Except even the Project Management Institute acknowledges many projects fail to do that. The Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) I studied with did not talk about AV at all.
One day at the grocery store, my daughter and I saw a dragon fruit. It looked so cool: pink, oblong-shaped and sort of soft and spiky (all at the same time). We were sold — but we didn’t leave the grocery store with a dragon fruit that day. However, after admiring the dragon fruit for a little while, we put it down and continued along. We didn’t buy the dragon fruit — think about that for a second. Though we wanted to buy it, we stood around and looked at it, only to put it down and continued toward the bananas. That’s precisely the problem most of our customers have with just about every kind of AV system we sell them. Our customers buy AV relatively infrequently; we’re the dragon fruit of their weekly trip to the supermarket.
