🥞 Breakfast Bites: Tips for Working with Remote Employees, Growth from Client Loss

Greetings, welcome to today’s Breakfast Bites — Catch up on the best articles and tools that can help to increase profits, navigate the ever-changing tech world, and elevate your success!

Hungry? Here’s what’s on the Menu today:

• Establishing Expectations: Creating a Framework for Remote Work Success

• 💰Ready to Sell a New Type of Immersive Experience? Introducing Ventana Wall Systems

• From Setback to Growth: How to Learn and Evolve After Losing a Customer

• Enjoy another great Vegas Sphere 🌍 photo from the @SphereOfTheDay Twitter account

6 Tips to Working With Remote Employees

As an Integrator, building and sustaining a strong company in a partially remote workforce is challenging. Post-COVID, there’s no doubt someone on your team working from home at least part of the time, if not full-time.

You could demand everyone come back to work and never work from home. But, that inherently has its own set of problems. Instead, consider these tips to maintain control and protect your company culture with a partially remote workforce:

1. Start with Your Vision: Begin by envisioning the type of workplace you want. Define your company's values, behaviors, and overarching vision. For instance, if you're passionate about cleanliness and order, set the expectation that team members make their beds (if on camera) or maintain tidy Zoom backdrops.

2. Focus on Behaviors: Organizational culture is shaped by specific behaviors. Just as creating a culture of cleanliness involves specific actions, establish remote work expectations, such as punctuality and active participation. Joining meetings early or again, having a tidy Zoom background can set the tone.

3. Define Values and Behaviors: Clearly define the behaviors that reflect your vision, mission, and values. Make these team rules accessible and reinforce them regularly. For example, publish your team rules on your company's website to guide potential hires.

4. Leadership Sets the Tone: The owner and managers play a crucial role in shaping the culture. Model the desired behaviors and values, such as accountability, respect, and openness. Your actions will influence the rest of the team.

5. Nurture and Reinforce the Culture: Consistency is key. Regularly praise, recognize, and hold team members accountable for adhering to the culture. Keep the culture document visible and actionable in daily operations, like sending physical copies to employees and discussing it in team meetings.

6. Maintain Flexibility: Be open to adapting your culture as your organization grows to accommodate a larger team. Certain behaviors may need adjustment.

By following these steps, you can create and maintain a thriving organizational culture, even with a partially remote workforce.

Ventana - A New Video Wall Opportunity for You!

Early on, we here at Breakfast Bites decided against publishing a newsletter with bland product updates. Yet, we do feel compelled to introduce exciting products that could be a game-changing opportunity for your business, increasing margin to your bottom line. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you will… a revolutionary product for your most discerning clients: the Ventana MicroLED wall system!

Imagine creating a living space where the walls themselves come to life, seamlessly blending technology and artistry to redefine luxury. With Ventana, this vision becomes a reality, and here's why it's an exceptional opportunity for your business:

1. Unprecedented Visual Excellence: Ventana's architectural tiles, only 15 millimeters thin, offer a glossy, liquid-black surface adorned with LEDs at an almost invisible 0.8mm pixel-pitch. These tiles provide stunning, lifelike images at 72 bits per pixel, delivering an unmatched visual experience.

2. Complete Customization: Ventana allows designers and homeowners to transform any space into a canvas of endless possibilities. Whether it's a tasteful 4K display in the living room or a breathtaking digital art installation in the bedroom, the potential for customization knows no bounds.

3. Savant Integration: Partnering with providers such as Savant Systems to provide seamless control and management of Ventana MicroLED walls, your clients can effortlessly command their digital canvas, adjusting the mood, content, and ambiance with the touch of a button or voice command.

4. Future-Proof Luxury: With Ventana, you're not just selling a product; you're offering a lifestyle upgrade. This isn't merely a television; it's a transformative piece of art that will continue to amaze and delight homeowners for years to come.

5. Elevated Design: Ventana is a game-changer for interior designers and architects, allowing them to blend digital experiences with the physical space seamlessly. It's not just about selling a product; it's about shaping the future of luxury living.

With Ventana MicroLED walls, you're selling an experience. It's about creating a home where technology, design, and art come together in perfect harmony.

If you're interested in exploring this opportunity further, visit https://ventanadesign.com/about/ to learn more.

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What to do When a Client Moves On…

Losing a key client as an Integrator can be a highly stressful and challenging experience, especially in the custom AV industry, when a good client could bring in 6 figures per year or more.

Here is a 6-step strategy to deal with this inevitable situation:

• Embrace the Emotional Aspect: Losing a good client can be devastating because your work is often an extension of who you are. It's okay to feel emotional about it, as it's natural to be attached to your work and the relationships you've built.

• Write Down the Facts: To gain clarity and help you move forward, list the objective facts of the client relationship. Include details about your communication, feedback, deadlines, deliverables, and expectations from both sides. This exercise helps you separate emotions from facts and gives you a clear perspective on the situation.

• Face-to-Face Conversations: When any client engagement ends, whether good or bad, it's important to have a face-to-face conversation. This allows you to gather feedback that can help improve your services and provides an opportunity for the client to explain their decision. You can use techniques like repeating intangible feedback as a question to encourage constructive criticism and less personal feedback. This may even provide an opportunity to win them back!

• Implement a Notice Period: Ensure that your contracts require clients to provide a minimum of 30 days' notice before ending an engagement. This buffer allows you to wrap up ongoing work, prepare for the transition, and find new projects, while also ensuring that clients won't suddenly stop paying you.

• Learn from the Facts: Analyzing the objective facts of the partnership may reveal areas that were less than ideal. Use this insight to be more vigilant in future engagements and consider making adjustments to improve your approach.

• Be Kind to Yourself: If you know you did your best with the information you had, remember to be kind to yourself and understand that better clients are on the horizon. Not all client relationships are meant to last, and losing one good client does not define your entire professional journey.

Dealing with the loss of a good client as an AV integrator involves separating emotions from facts, engaging in constructive conversations, implementing notice periods in contracts, learning from the experience, and maintaining a positive outlook for future opportunities.

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More to Snack On…

• The Power of Failure: How Learning 🎓from Missteps Can Lead to Innovation

• 🌱Growing Stronger: Why Your Company Needs a Strategic CFO

• The Importance of Open Communication: Addressing Advancement Limitations

That’s all for today. Stay tuned for the next breakfast coming your way soon!

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