Almost everybody knows the frustration of shopping for home electronics. There are dozens of options with hundreds of features and thousands of combinations.
Add the hundreds of real-life scenarios and situations where and how you will use these systems, and let’s not forget everything that you don’t know or have not experienced yet.
Confused? Frustrated? Vapor-lock set in yet? It should. It’s perfectly normal for any rational person.
I’ve made a career of analyzing thousands of system features and making complex decisions like these, and no–it’s not any easier or less frustrating for me!
I listened to a great radio show from RadioLab.org about “Choice” and how our brains work. It may not make the problem go away but can at least soothe your spirit the next time you’re faced with the daunting prospect of making complex choices.
There are two tendencies I’ve noticed that give me a quick assessment of how “good” a solution is:
1. Products or services that require long, binding contracts, tend to be bad deals.
2. Companies that hide information, do not make it readily available, or have dedicated sales teams, tend to be over-priced. This does not necessarily mean they have “bad” products.
When buying complex systems that are not easily compared, I tend to rely heavily on personal referrals. These are not the statements listed on a website, but real conversations with real clients.
The best references are those that tell me what was good and what was bad. At least this way I can weigh the total experience based on reality and not advertising smoke screens.
Because social networking has exceeded traditional advertising power, referrals are the best sales strategy for non-commodity products.
My DistinctAV business is based on educating clients and accurately matching solutions to their needs. Yes we sell hardware but the real “product” is the final solution and all the design, engineering, and customization that went into putting it all together.
The best advice I can give for buying complex systems is to create a complete and detailed User Requirement Specification (URS) and Functional Requirement Specification (FRS). These documents clearly describe Why and What you want and exactly How it will work.
You can then weigh those requirements against each other in order of importance and choose the system or vendor that will deliver those results (knowing they can based on their referrals).
Oh, and the only long-term contract we have is Our Guaranty.
