As a small business owner, you can only do so much. You’re on a tight budget, there are customers to service and employees to pay. How do you make the most of your time and money to get the results you want? The key is increasing your efficiency. Getting better, more efficient results may take…
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It seems everywhere you turn, another DIY alarm product or smart home offering is entering the market. At some point, you may be considering offering a similar service so that you can compete with that segment as well. One school of thought is if you can build a relationship with the entry-level DIY customer now,…
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Some business owners spend the end of the year planning, and some prefer to start the year off making plans. But no matter when you take a look at the upcoming 12 months (and we think you can benefit from doing it more than once a year) – it’s important to ask some strategic questions.
Over the last few months we’ve been discussing how to build value in your alarm business, whether or not you have plans to sell. Among other things, we talked about Contracts, Reporting Habits, Client Communication, Employee Training and Documentation. Here we’ll be talking about an overlooked area that can crumble a deal if you are…
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Documentation is a fact of life when running an alarm business. Customer agreements, central station contracts – they come with the territory and we wouldn’t consider running a business without them. There are, however, other types of documentation that don’t get as much attention but are just as critical to maintaining a growing, successful company.…
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While adding new customers and increasing recurring monthly revenue drive your top line income, it’s your employees – your internal staff and field technicians – that keep your alarm business alive. Many businesses, however, neglect employee training, seeing it as a nonessential expense. But ongoing training can be helpful to both employees and your company,…
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When a buyer is looking at your alarm business, most often their major goal is to gain market share or they see some financial synergy. Beyond the surface and first impressions, it’s the quality of reporting that tells the real story of the strength of a potential deal. The very nature of reporting, however, dictates…
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Who likes paperwork? Nobody we know, but when it comes to buying or selling your business, the value you get is closely tied to your sales/monitoring contracts. We are often surprised at how frequently we begin negotiations and due diligence with a company only to find out that the contracts which the owner was planning…
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Offering video will help differentiate your company from the dealer who is not keeping up with advancing technologies.
It’s that time of year again, the birds are chirping, grass is getting greener, the air is getting warmer, and the door knockers are out.
