Feeling Good About Home Again
With the recession waning, albeit stubbornly slow, opportunities in the home automation and entertainment market are reemerging. Installing security pros, with the right know-how, are uniquely positioned to fulfill customer desires for new or upgraded systems.
Sure, you can be a security purist and leave it to others to work on automated lighting, home theater and other home integration projects. But you can’t control who the homeowner calls.
Many times, the home theater guy could be your competition, not only installing the home theater, but looking at your security work, sharpshooting your decisions and installation, making recommendations, and selling solutions. If he does a good job, he can drive a wedge between you and your customer, and you’re out.
If you don’t like this scenario, build a protective moat around your business to ward off competitors by opening the conversation with your customers on other home integration projects. Let them know they don’t need to go to a stranger to install that home theater or that multiroom audio installation. Let them also know you’re the go-to guy for any kind of smart home project. And reinforce that idea through regular contact, newsletters, installation checkups, security inspections and testing, and phone calls when the opportunity arises.
Your goal: TOMA … top of mind awareness. The gist here is when another competitor comes sniffing around, pushing any kind of low-voltage integration solution, your client will give him the brush-off: “Oh, I’ve already got a guy.”
Moreover, the more systems you install, the more you can differentiate yourself from the low-cost providers. And you’ll leave the big box stores in the dust.
Make Yourself Referable
The data tells a powerful story: Nearly all homeowners with a home technology product seek out input from several sources prior to making a purchase. And the No. 1 source of information? Other homeowners who already own similar systems. In fact, according to CEA, more than three-quarters of home technology owners sought information from fellow owners prior to making their purchase. What does this mean? If you aren’t getting referrals from your existing customers, you are at a crippling disadvantage.
The solution? Make it easy for customers to refer you. The dynamics are different for high-visibility, quality-of-life projects such as a gee-whiz home theater installation. Your customer’s dinner guests may never notice your home security and monitoring system. But it’s hard for them to miss the state-of-the-art home cinema with the primal scream subwoofers and vibrating chairs. When you deliver the “wow,” your clients’ friends are going to ask them, “Who did this for you?” Make it easy for them to show them your name, number and Web site. Make it a no-brainer.
Case in point: some dealers go so far as to create a custom, leather-bound coffee-table book documenting the design in glossy, glorious, living color. These are designed to be a show-off piece to the customers’ friends and neighbors. And it helps generate referrals.
You don’t have to go that far, but it pays to keep some extra brochures and business cards stuffed in a business card holder taped discreetly to the inside of a drawer.
Ultimately, your high-visibility lifestyle improvement projects can help generate a flow of referrals that will also help drive your core security business as well. Imagine this conversation with a customer who just installed a brand new, expensive home theater.
You: “That’s a pretty nice theater system you have there, mister! It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
Customer: “What do you mean?”
You: “Did I mention we do home security?”
Cynthia Menna is Senior Manager of Business Development for Van Nuys, Calif.-based AVAD, distributor of home integration solutions. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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