Add New Clients by Answering These 5 Simple Questions Within Your Security Company
In order to find new customers for your security business, you need to implement a strategy. These five questions are a good place to start.
Companies need to take off their "bias goggles" to better understand what a company needs to do to bring in more customers.
3. Where are my strategic customers located in relation to my service/sales footprint?
Start by mapping your service area with strategic and tactical customer bases. If you want to find new customers, you may need to expand your geographical footprint or identify opportunities closer to you and build heavier market density.
If you serve a hospital, how many other medical facilities are within your current geographical reach? Where are the peripheral businesses that may serve the hospital ecosystem? Have you ever had a good customer ask you to do their security at a remote facility? This can be a real opportunity and challenge. Can you do it profitably? Can you service it in the future? Will it impact your business relationship?
OK, all very legitimate questions. Perhaps becoming part of a larger team, such as PSA or Security-Net, could help expand your geographical footprint while maintaining your customer service standards.
Read Next: 3 Reasons Why Product Knowledge (Not Price) Is Crucial When Bidding on Security System Projects
4. When should we do this?
I’m a very high “D” (in the Dominance behavior – “person places emphasis on accomplishing results” – relative to the Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness areas) on the DiSC personality profile and a Marine, so my answer is simple: yesterday was too late! Well, I suppose tomorrow will be fine.
Start this process now by pulling your team together to brainstorm these questions. Understand when the time is right to engage your customer, which is not during their busy time of the year, but certainly 90 days before their fiscal year begins.
Timing is everything when new prospects are aware of your company as a resource and they just happen to have had a bad week with their current provider.
5. Why go through the effort?
Hey, you were the one interested in finding new customers! Actually, I am always qualifying new clients and opportunities. I am always building my understanding of my customers’ businesses. I am always building new networks of clients with the help of my existing clients.
If you aren’t making this effort, you are likely in for a rude financial surprise in the future.
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About the Author
Paul Boucherle, SSI Contributor
Paul C. Boucherle, Certified Protection Professional (CPP) and Certified Sherpa Coach (CSC), is Security Sales & Integration’s “Business Fitness” columnist. A principal of Matterhorn Consulting, he has more than 30 years of diverse security and safety industry experience including UL central station operations, risk-vulnerability assessments, strategic security program design and management of industry convergence challenges. Boucherle has successfully guided top-tier companies in achieving enhanced ROI resulting from improved sales and operational management techniques. He is a charismatic speaker and educator on a wide range of critical topics relating to the security industry of today and an accomplished corporate strategist and marketer whose vision and expertise in business performance have driven notable enterprise growth in the security industry sector.
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