Measuring! What if they just don’t want to do it themselves?

This is a bit of a ramble, kinda tongue in cheek in places and occasionally you may smile. Please come along & if you will take the walk with me I promise a few contrarian observations, that you might just enjoy & find useful.

I grow increasingly cautious of how some technology seems to be more about SELLING needs then SERVING needs. This parable is a cautionary tale of how those .com guys sometimes bring products that wreck someone else’s business by their "near miss" or their mistaking Complex for Competent when the client wanted simple. Just because your APP does everything doesn’t mean I need everything. Let the parable begin.

So, I came into the office this morning in my DeLorean and then took the Segway up from the parking deck and checking my heart rate with my Nike “Fuel Band” and having my Google Lively Avatar do the scanning of my emails on my sexy “Google Glasses”!

So here I sit just chilling, drinking my refreshing “New Coke”, while I change my Laser disc out for the newest Beta Max upgrade, as I listen to my favorite music on my ZUNE.  I Ponder the certain obsolescence that Pen, Paper, Newsprint, the Amazon FIRE and the Facebook Phone will face when they go up against my industry leading Blackberry. I hear that even the president carries one.

With tongue sufficiently ensconced in cheek, let me kinda cut to the chase and opine as I often do. Sometimes the best product doesn't win; Beta Max was better than VHS and don’t get me started on anything from McDonalds! Often the winner is NOT the best option, and these days companies often lead many others to the slaughter with innovation that no one needs; think MS VISTA or that stupid Paper Clip guy! And many are the copy cats that will copy a leader’s error and be just so many more lemmings to the precipice, before the leaders position is found to be faulty and TANK too… Barnes & Noble’s NOOK?

Let me state the case this way. Many products are great but they are great at doing something we didn't really need. My Pastor used to call it “Majoring in the Minors”. Old Coke was great for a hundred years and I won’t bore you with the rest of that story.

If I want to go for a slow walk in the woods, I don't need a $15,000 Segway it was and is a product looking for a market, not the other way around. Is there a market for those ostriches on wheels? YES, but it’s majoring in the minors and no one ever looked cool on a Segeway with that helmet!

Could we invent a FishSlayer 900 automatic Fishing pole with Lithium Ion battery powered AutoSet with full recoil damper, a solar back up, with a camera and social media apps built in so we can network with our friends to interlope on their best fishing spot and tell us where the phase of the moon was and what the subsurface water temps are? Could we go viral with it and show off online…heck yea! Would it be cool, oh yea! Could we market the heck out of it with celebrity endorsements and get some VC firm to take us public and make us all .com billionaires? Well, maybe!

But, “In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find” (Sorry I stole that from a Zager & Evans song from 1969!) I will bet the world that you will be able to take a picture with your new “Apple iPhone 963” of a kid sitting by a stream with a stick and a bobber on a line catching fish? I imagine so. Sometimes the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze and easy, simple and effective wins. I fish because I like to set the hook & try to outsmart Moby Dick, not because I want some electronic proxy to catch fish for me.

Please understand I'm no Luddite. I don't want to tear down the machines; I love technology, and like every pilot I know, we all love gadgets, BIG watches, obscure facts, details, weather, stupid trivia and almost universally SPEED!

The printing press didn't replace the pencil.  Books didn't replace great story telling, they augmented it. The TV didn't replace the movies, and recording didn't replace live music.  About the only major communication technology that has been obsoleted is the telegraph, and it lives on as the original basis for the fax machine. (Obscure Pilot Facts: AP Wire Photo, look it up! See, I told ya!) Sometimes a pencil & a legal pad just matches the pace of my thinking better.

At this point let me engage in full disclosure, I’m in the Home and Commercial Property Measuring, Data Gathering and Aggregating Business. We have spent years and many, many $$$ creating a better mouse trap, but we founded this on a few basic guiding principles.

1. Don’t “Major in the Minors”!
2. That which we CHOOSE NOT TO DO is as important to the success of our clients and ourselves as what WE CHOOSE TO DO!
3. Don’t create a complicated answer to a simple problem
4. Don’t be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution.
5. Do good work, and treat people well.
6. Elegant is Simple and Simply Elegant is the hardest of all
7. But if I hear another person tell me that the next best thing for measuring homes and businesses will be a Phone App, I think I will lose my MIND! Let me jot off a quick list of what the next whiz bang measuring devices have as Pros & Cons    
8. Phone Apps are fast.
9. Well kinda, but Phone Apps are things that about 99% of the world will seldom use and therefore, will struggle to use for much more than a novelty item!
10. Phone Apps will get better.
11. Likely true!
12. IF you use a Phone App, you still lack the data that professionals need to make the Measurement useful.
13. If I’m painting, I need to know a lot more about the wall than how many square feet, and the same with Flooring or Cabinets. It’s the OTHER observational stuff included that makes the measurements useful and meaningful.
14. Phone Apps are not very precise or accurate and certainly only as precise as the user and casual users get confused with measuring. Absolutely true!
15. Phone Apps generally consider 3 or 4 inches in 12 feet to be accurate enough.  
16. If you think 3 inches isn’t critical to a Contractor… the difference between 11 feet 11 inches and 12 feet 2 inches is another whole sheet of drywall!  Enjoy that when you must go back to the Home Center for another box of tile, or more lumber or drywall to finish the job!
17. Many Phone Apps will accurately calculate area so you can order materials.
18. Highly unlikely! See the previous Point!
19. Many Phone Apps will let you draw a wall or floor and insert your flooring or paint color.
20. Well I have driven in Atlanta traffic so there goes my delusions of a perfect world. But In a perfect world those work well in the hands of a pro, but seldom on the fly by an amateur.
21. With the right app, Any consumer can draw a floor plan of their whole house!
22. FACT: THEY DONT WANT TO! Give 10 monkeys a Phone App and you will get about the same accuracy as most human users.
23. FACT: Beyond a room or two, most non-architects get confused when measuring, drawing or calculating with the Phone Apps. Rooms get turned, dimensions get confused, square rooms start to look like the pentagon from the air, and GOD forbid you add stairs doors or windows!
24. Most of us are Math Challenged
25. Want to prove it: ask the next 5 people you talk to     

• How many sq feet in a sq yard?
• What are the dimensions of a 2’x6’ piece of Pressure treated lumber?
• How may cubic feet in a yard of concrete
• How many pints in a gallon?
• How many Sq feet in a role of Wallpaper?
• Which is more 1 yard, 1 meter or 100 Centimeters
• How many yards of concrete in a 6” deep 20’X 20’ driveway?

1. We have worked with several major companies that have tried for years to get the consumer to measure their own rooms, projects or house.
2. FACT:  Over 97% of consumers don't get past the 2nd room before they GIVE UP! Lowes and Home Depot have both tried to get the Homeowner to create their own Drawings. IT NEVER WORKS FOR THE MASSES AND WILL NOT WORK! Technology gets tedious pretty fast. They just think someone else is better at it! THE WISDOM OF THE MASSES!!!
3. Asking a customer to measure more than one room is kinda like the day the doctor offered to let me cut the umbilical cord, I asked “Isn't that what I’m paying you for?”
4. There isn’t anything on your car that you couldn't fix, with the right tools, the right time and the right coach, but launching a Phone App for DIY Car Repairs is always going to be a cool idea and a losing proposition with the public.
5. THEY JUST DONT WANT TO DO IT!
6. NEVER MAKE YOUR CLIENT DO MATH! She doesn't want to try to measure! She is sure HE is incompetent to do it, He is kinda sure she is right & glad to be relieved of proving she IS right. They both are sure that this is the realm of a PRO! 
7. Retailing 101! DO THAT WHICH ENDEARS YOU TO YOUR CLIENT! 
8. Retailing 101! if you have their data you can serve them better and faster & create loyalty!
9. Offer to let your consumers Measure their whole house with their PHONE!               Answer! I would rather volunteer for a Root Canal with a barbed wire enema chaser!
10. This might come off as a bit of a sales pitch, because I am trying to preach the gospel of great customer service! get the message out. Our company is called TheMeasurePro.com (TMP).  We believe that measuring one or two rooms for one product/ Project can be done pretty well with a tape measure, pencil and grid paper or pacing it off, and you don't need a phone app. But you also don't have the data and you haven't endeared yourself to your customer.
11. The Prophet says, “The Home Measure Phone Apps are doomed for mediocrity, occasional use and will always be relegated to that seldom used, cool gadget, free download screen of Mr. & Mrs. Consumers phone.”
12.  I have long been known to friends as ‘The Rev”, on this one I will cop to “The Prophet”.
13. If you are a pro, there may be a Phone App that helps, but they are still pretty limited in their utility and absolutely admittedly vague on the accuracy. AND you still lack the data that Pro's need to complete ESTIMATES!
14. Add up all the time and wasted (Gasoline) resources Home Depot, Lowes, CCC, Lumber Liquidators, Realtors, Insurance underwriters and a dozen other estimators spent going BACK to places they have already been. I will bet we could cure cancer or do something really worthwhile and maybe serve the client better too!.

 At TMP we have a Tablet & Laser Disto Software, that we hook the most useful tool God ever created, A TRAINED HUMAN that comes to YOU!  We come to any home or business, just like pro’s do today. We laser measure EVERY floor, wall, window, door, ceiling, appliance, HVAC system, and gather the detailed data needed to complete almost any repair and remodel ESTIMATES. When we are done, we have a 2D “as-built” Blueprint Drawing and a 3D Rendering of any home or commercial building that we measure. WE gather all the data and measurements once and never have to go back again! All our dimensions are Laser measurement accurate to the thickness of a DIME in 130’!

If that wasn't cool enough we have a proprietary Data Gathering component to our software that allows our proprietary TMP TRAINED HUMAN to gather over 1,500 data points that give us the construction details professionals would need to do estimates and more! We document every door and detail whether its wood, hollow core, fiberglass, left hand or right, dimensions, etc. and put it on a searchable database. Our TMP Whole House Measure & SafetyChek comes to you on a PDF report that anyone, homeowner to pro can view with no specialized software.

By the way, one of the coolest features we offer is SPEED! When we are done in the home, our software audits the measurements and data collection, and when completed, we SYNC to the cloud and within 3 minutes the completed drawings, data file and report are already in your email inbox which most of you access on your phone!

We even have a photo gallery for you!  We gather all the Appliance serial numbers and data, in case you need parts or service. We have been careful to address the privacy issues and security, and still the cost is about the same as the Home Centers are charging now for a 2D kitchen cabinet drawing! So, it’s a great value!

The consumer gets a copy of the TMP Whole House or Whole Space & we throw in a 40 point SafetyChek Report for their personal use. We give your customer TIME! Once they get a TMP Measure & Data survey they may never have to wait hours at home for some questionable character to show up to measure for an estimate at their home or business again! The smart retailer saves the customer time and has all the data they will need for future projects without waiting.

If you would like to know more about TheMeasurePro and our Residential or Commercial Measure & Data Gathering technology and services, please see the website, our brochure or use that stylus on your new PDA and contact me. [email protected] 

Website: www.TheMeasurePro.com

Brochure: https://themeasurepro.com/wp-content/uploads/Tri-Fold.pdf

Or we could always come to you & talk like real people & show you what we do & answer your questions the old-fashioned way.

If I made a point or made ya think, PLEASE comment and pass this along

The Rev!