04.11.2007 — Data storage of music and video has taken over both the mass-market and custom channels, from handhelds like the iPod to home entertainment devices, from media PCs to Kaleidescape systems.

With media centers gaining traction in the marketplace—at the same time that many DVD players are pricing themselves out of existence—whether your company’s target client is entry level, mid-range or high-end, there is a media center solution that is right for both you and them.

So, you’ve committed yourself to present media centers as a great solution to your home integration clients. You’ve partnered with a vendor you like, and you’re going to bring this concept to your clients. What steps should you take to both make sales and be profitable?

Choose the Most Effective Demo

Delivering effective demonstrations is key to making the sale. All of your salespeople should spend time familiarizing themselves with the user interface so that navigating the system is second nature.

Once you’ve installed a media center in your showroom, all of your staff, sales, designers, programmers and office support should spend time using it. This achieves two goals: it reinforces the value of the system you’re promoting to your team and it allows your programmers to find any bugs in the interface before your clients can.

High-quality demonstration material is important, and most media centers make it easy to program favorite scenes for easy access. I prefer short clips that have a lot of depth in the surround soundtrack, with action in the scene, but preferably PG-rated so they can be shown to anyone. As great as the D-Day scene is at the beginning of “Saving Private Ryan,” it’s not for everybody.

Be willing to think outside the box and recognize that not every demonstration needs to take place in your own showroom. “One absolutely killer way to sell more media centers is to loan them out to your clients over the weekend,” says Mark Blackwood, principal of Blackwood & Co, a high-end integrator in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“We keep a Kaleidescape demo kit packed in a Pelican case. On Friday we set it up in the client’s media room, and show them how to navigate the movie library. When we come back on Monday to pick it up, more often than not, the client wants to keep it, and asks about integrating one into their system.”

Create Value and Profit

Now that you’ve made the sale, how do you ensure that the finished project creates value for the client and is profitable?

One pitfall that sabotages your profitability is failing to budget enough labor hours for programming—especially with brand new product. If this is your first project installing it, you will almost always go into overtime once you have to start troubleshooting it.

At Systems Inc, when we got deeper into integration, we learned this the hard way. While we had a very good idea of how long it would take to install speaker cans and run wire, we seriously low-balled the hours we budgeted for programming. We now ensure that we budget time not only for programming, but for troubleshooting and revisions. It would be nice to be able to expect the unexpected, but failing that, we budget extra time for dealing with it.

When it comes to adding value and creating something truly special for your client, custom “skins” for user interfaces, and custom opening scenes for Kaleidescape systems are a great choice.

“Creating a customized opening, with credits that roll and identify the theater as belonging to our client, are one of the most visible things that set our installations apart as unique and above the crowd,” says Shawn Holsapple of Progressive Electronic Design in Calgary, Alberta. “Of course, they’re paying extra for that, but when it comes right down to it, it’s something they want, so they agree to it.”

Customizing user interfaces, whether on the big projection screen or on the system’s touch panels—even if it’s as simple as mimicking the home’s color scheme—helps your client feel special, and adds dollars to the final bill.

If you are specifying and installing media servers, don’t forget to offer to load your clients’ music and movies into the system as a service. Both Holsapple and Blackwood agree that if your client’s collection is large—over a thousand discs or so—you are doing them a supreme favor offering this service.

Loading large collections by hand is tedious and time consuming: I’ve done it and don’t recommend it to anyone, so shop for either a generic solution for PC-type media centers, such as the Acronova DupliQ for ripping CDs and DVDs or, if you’re a Kaleidescape dealer, consider investing in their proprietary Bulk Loader. Of course, make sure you charge for this. I’ve asked other firms what their market rate is, and the median seems to be about three dollars a disc.

Now that you’ve got some suggestions and ideas on making media centers work for you, go have fun and make some money!

Lee Distad is a CEDIA Certified Professional Designer for Systems Inc, a high-end audio/video and automation firm in Edmonton, Alberta. For 19 years, Systems Inc has provided consolidated design, installation, and project management services for new home construction and renovation. Systems Inc’s new Web site is under construction at www.systemsinc.ca and Lee’s business and industry blog can be read at www.businessopinions.blogspot.com