Lee Distad

Lee Distad is a rAVe columnist and freelance writer covering topics from CE to global business and finance in both print and online. Reach him at lee@ravepubs.com

Vent Covers and Ports

Spring has sprung where I live, and that signaled the start of Spring Cleaning, both indoors and out. It was after cleaning out the garage and attempting to wash away all the grit from winter that I discovered that the hose bib had frost damage, and leaked into the basement when the tap was turned […]

One of my stock catchphrases when I re-share something on social media that I find odd or surprising is “Well, it turns out that haven’t actually seen everything yet.” That’s how I felt, and in fact keep feeling, when I see frequent mention in my newsfeed of this artist or that either releasing new material […]

Spend any amount of time coaching salespeople and you’ll quickly see commonalities amongst them. These include not only their strengths, but also, and maybe especially, their weaknesses. The most common trait salespeople share is fear of rejection. That’s not unusual. Everybody likes being accepted, few people seek rejection. And it’s a common, easy mistake to […]

It’s a truism that the first casualty of every battle is the plan. One of the realities of building things is that sometimes the plan gets changed. While ideally every eventuality gets considered and decided upon during the design and planning stages, we don’t live in an ideal world we live in this one. Consequently, […]

One of the topics I address regularly in meetings with my dealers is the pace of change, and that there are very few things you can count on to deliver top line and bottom line results long term. In these discussions I point out that the product categories I made a living on in the […]

I can’t think of two separate specialists on the jobsite whose work is more closely linked than the AV pros and the electricians. They’re so closely linked because even for small installations AV pros need to communicate with the electrician to specify locations and load capacity for the outlets that service their equipment. And with […]

Imagine my surprise when I received an email out the blue telling me that Ultraviolet, the movie library service will be ending its operations at the end of July 2019. Honestly, I’d mostly forgotten about Ultraviolet. So, curious after reading the email, I went to the website to learn more. Of course, first I had […]

If you’ve been in sales for a long time, you’ll have read a lot of books and articles on selling. And if you keep track of such things, you’ll notice that the majority of the time, the content focuses on cold calling: How to do it, and how to make it work. Conversely, there’s less […]

One of the most crucial pieces of advice I’ve ever received was, “Don’t decide for the client how much is too much. It’s not your job to say ‘no’ on their behalf.” Put another way, don’t be afraid of overselling the job; be afraid of underselling the job. This is a separate issue entirely from […]

One buzzword/acronym that gets thrown around a lot is CRM, short for customer relationship management. It can be a large, unwieldy concept and what CRM looks like for a business can be a lot like the parable of the five blind people, each trying to describe an elephant, by only touching one part of it. […]

The relationships between the various trades on a jobsite form a complex web of interdependencies. The two that are arguably the closest are the electrician and the AV pro. That makes sense, since on even small AV jobs the AV pro needs to specify locations and load capacities for the electrical outlets required for the […]

As I write this, Black Friday week has come and gone. The balloon has gone up, so to speak, on the holiday selling season. Regardless of which channel you work in and which side of the business you’re on, this time of year impacts you and you need to prepare accordingly. These days, working on […]

One of the joys of the AV business is that as networked-capability increases the performance potential of integrated AV, it also increases the complexity, which means increasing the potential for service issues. “Keep it simple,” is a great mantra to live by, but it only goes so far. However, network-connectivity cuts both ways and while […]

The connected era we live in is pretty amazing. A huge proportion of my job can be done by phone, text, and email. But there’s still replacement for meeting customers in-person. Even video conferencing isn’t quite the same. If you’re a sales rep there are a lot of good reasons to travel your territory and […]

So it turns out that I can still be surprised. That I’m not as jaded and world weary as I thought. That I have not yet seen everything. Long story short, we switched our home internet and TV from Shaw to Telus Optik. That necessitated an installer to come over with a new modem […]

I recently learned that at one of my dealers in small-town rural Alberta one of the two principals retired, selling his half in the business to his partner. Since most of my dealings were with the now-retired principal, and I didn’t know the other all that well, it seemed like a good idea to drive […]

Since I know that I have a reputation for aphorisms, let’s start off with this one: How you do one thing is how you do everything. Best practices are a drum that I beat on a regular basis. But that’s only because they’re important. When discussing anything, it’s often helpful to frame it differently, to […]

As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Gaming now occupies a place in end-users entertainment options that is as mainstream as a cable box. It’s entirely typical now for a media room or theater room install to incorporate at least one gaming console as a source and quite […]

One of the items that popped up in my feed this week was the news that Google no longer requires job candidates to possess a four-year degree. Further discussion among friends and acquaintances in the tech sector pointed out that this isn’t an earth shaking development. It’s been the case for decades that tech companies, […]

It’s not a particularly glamorous topic to write about, let alone read, but anyone whose work falls within the bounds of the construction industry needs to have a grasp of liens and holdbacks, since they affect all parties, including suppliers, subcontractors, general contractors and owners. The definition of a holdback is related to its context, […]

Some people fear change. Some people embrace change. And I suspect that for many of us it’s a mix of both, depending on the circumstances. Despite somehow having earned a reputation as some sort of “tech guy” I can be kind of stodgy. I’m definitely not an Early Adopter. I like to see how things […]

Previously, I’d gone into depth about the basics of managing your relationships with your clients which, when you drill down, is about how you manage your communication with them. Early on, while talking about initial interviews and needs assessment, I’d alluded to the using the initial needs assessment as a filter, not just to identify […]

So, funny story. Or at least I think it’s funny. Also, this coincides eerily with the editorial that ran last week, “Going To Get Myself Connected.” The router in my house has been acting up, needing near daily rebooting. It occurred to me today that not only have I not updated the router’s firmware lately, […]

It doesn’t feel like that long ago that network connectivity in AV hardware was an idea more noted in the breach than in the observance. But times have changed. What started with lighting control and other automation hardware eventually migrated into mainstream AV products. Honestly, once you’ve got those features, there’s no going back. Luxuries […]

Articles and blog posts about selling talk a lot about cold calls, but seldom deal with warm calls. While I think cold calling has an undeservedly bad reputation, and can actually be fun once you find your mojo on it, I’m willing to concede that warm calls are most salespeople’s favorite. Unlike cold calls, where […]

Owners, general managers and inventory managers of AV companies routinely need to consider the pros and cons of buying products either from the manufacturer or a distributor. In addition to those options, there are also buying groups: an organizing of dealers who negotiate terms with their suppliers collectively. The primary rationale for buying groups is […]

View parts 1 and 2 of this series here and here. There’s the old saying that sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. In order to stretch the analogy to its limit, I wanted to digress from my topic of addressing the pros and cons of hiring and using subcontractors to […]

Previously, I began an exploration of the relationship between AV pros and subcontractors, and examined ways in which the relationship can work. Now it’s time to consider the converse: when it doesn’t. We all know that not everything pans out. Silicon Valley old-timer James Altucher famously said, “90 percent of everything doesn’t work out.” One […]

When you deal with the public you get to meet all kinds of people, for better or for worse. Most people you deal with are average, and as a result not necessarily memorable. Others are more memorable, and not always in a good way. I had a new client who wanted a retrofit project: a […]

It’s not lost on veteran AV pros that even as they need to make the best use of their client’s budget, in order to do that they need to make the best use of their own. That means allocating your firm’s funds, resources and expertise in a way that maximizes everything from effectiveness to profitability. […]

There’s an advertising catchphrase that’s probably dates back to the dawn of advertising: “We service what we sell!” You’ll see it appended as a tagline everywhere from car dealerships to general merchandise retailers. Last week my kitchen fridge died. It was only seven years old. I say “kitchen fridge” to differentiate it from the downstairs […]

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Hang around long enough in this business and you’ll see a lot of changes, and a lot of technologies come and go. Mostly, you’ll see them go. Nothing lasts forever, but some technologies die off faster than others. The one common thread in all the jobs I’ve held […]

Lee Distad

Vent Covers and Ports

Cassettes Making a Comeback?

Why You Need To Avoid Underselling

The Joy of Change Orders

Are You Profiting From Your Labor?

Electricians and AV Need Each Other

Did Anyone Notice that Ultraviolet Is Closing?

Warm Calls Are The Best Calls

Go Big Or Go Home

Making CRM Work For You

When High Voltage Meets Low Voltage Are There Sparks?

How Do You Prepare for the Holiday Season?

Selling Maintenance Services

Wellness Checks

HDMI Surprise

You Can’t Take Your Customer’s Knowledge For Granted

Three Simple Things

Gaming for Theater Rooms, Plus Ça Change

Credentials, What Are They Good For?

Holdbacks

Voice Control Is The Future, Even If You Think It’s Dumb

Filtering Out Bad Clients

Every Solution Has Two Problems, At Least

Going to Get Myself Connected

Don’t Just Field Warm Calls, Create Them

Partnering With A Buying Group

Subcontracting, Part 2.5

Subcontracting, Part 2

Random Encounters

Subcontracting: Part 1

Should You Service What You Didn’t Sell?

Obsolescence And Things I Feel Guilty About