Better ConversationDigital homes can be a lot more exciting--and much easier to sell--when you talk about them differently.

While at the International Builders' Show in Orlando last month, I called home at least twice a day. In the evenings, it was always right before my wife made her nightly tour of our house, turning off lights, securing doors, and checking appliances. It got me thinking about what Peter Cook of Automation Design and Entertainment told DIGITAL HOME contributor Larry Stevens for this issue's story on strategies that builders and installers can use to effectively sell technology.

You see, my wife is no techie, and when I tell her about the automation systems I see at tradeshows such as IBS, her eyes glaze over. But when I reboot myself, I dial down the techie talk and start our conversation with, "You know how every night you run around the house turning things off?" Suddenly, we're both excited about checking the status of our home from a touchpad on her nightstand.

It's the same strategy Cook employs when he starts mapping out what buyers might want in their new homes. He doesn't start the conversation with a list of system options. He turns to the wife or husband and asks, "Does your spouse travel a lot?" If the answer is, "You bet," then there's a possible security or lighting control system in the family's future.

In a design center, a salesperson might ask the customers whether they like to cook, not whether they'd like double-stacked ovens and a chef's sink. It's the same idea with electronics.

This is certainly a lifestyle discussion, and readers repeatedly say it's the right way to frame technology. But it's differentbecause it begins as a lifestyle discussion with no technology context at all. Cook isn't parading clients in front of a system so they can experience it, at least not right away.

Like a philosopher or a logician (or let's admit it, a good lawyer), Cook asks questions that lead buyers--and himself-- to a reasoned, almost inevitable conclusion: For Buyer X, the home should be able to do Y, which is made possible by System Z. Sold.

Don't Stop Thinking

This kind of thinking permeates a lot of digital home solutions. Take broadband, for instance. As builders and developers are finding out, it's not enough to bring fat pipes up to new homes. In many new fiber-optic-based communities, providers are chipping in with services that go beyond what might be considered their call of duty.

At Lennar Corp., David Kaiserman thinks about more than just how to get communications services to his company's buyers. Kaiserman, president of Lennar Communications Ventures, ponders what buyers might actually do with broadband, for example. "Should I put speakers in the walls, or does the provider offer alternatives that run off a set-top box and give a similar result?" he asks.

To some, the answer always may be speakers in walls. But a question like Kaiserman's, following questions like Cook's, creates a useful way to discuss technology that can open the door to new opportunities for sales.