Exec Interview: Johns Brothers Makes Clients Feel Like Family

Company leadership discusses brand reinvention and embracing the chaos of change, growing RMR streams, targeting niche markets, and migrating customers through upgrades.

Exec Interview: Johns Brothers Makes Clients Feel Like Family

Continuing with the RMR aspect, what are your top generators right now aside from alarm monitoring?

Twine: Video is No. 1 for additional RMR, followed by automation and access control. We offer remote connectivity through Alarm.com’s mobile app and a customer portal. Those come in service packs, so it allows for video clips storage, but it also provides, if the customer wants to pay for it, local storage as well through their streaming video recorder. The streaming video recorder has a service fee attached to it monthly and so they can access that from the mobile app. We found that providing customers a single app approach has been highly successful, even in commercial, just because of the simplicity of the operation. If a customer uses an app to drive the entire system from their phone, it’s a game-changer that they’re willing to pay for.

How are you getting word out to existing customers about all you can offer?

Twine: That is about our brand reinvention. We’ve circled the wagons on our marketing and really did a facelift on our website. We started getting heavily involved with social media through Facebook, YouTube. We’re getting ready to do more in the realm of video, creating video advertisements and such. Then with our existing customers, we have been getting the word out with them. A lot of that has been done through email campaigns and our bill inserts. Part of the whole brand reinvention is being first to start talking about sore subjects like the 3G sunset.

We went through the 2G sunset already. A lot of our customers are aware of the technology shift that takes place and we use those points to revisit with them and present upgrades and additional services. We’ve been pretty successful with taking these technology shifts and using it to our advantage to make them selling situations where we can add additional services and products to the existing accounts.

Johns Brothers Security’s staff is a mix of industry veterans and tech-savvy newcomers. Shown are (left to right) Woody Parsons, Jeff Schell, Aaron Stacy, Preston Firnstahl and Scott Twine.

Among the unique niches Johns Brothers has developed is working with property managers. Can you elaborate?

Twine: We’ve been in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, which is a vacation rental destination, since the late 1980s. There are a lot of second homes there that are in rental programs. Recently, we have been working with PointCentral, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alarm.com. We’re the first company in the nation to have a combined software solution that offers all that is Alarm.com and all that is PointCentral.

PointCentral is an enterprise lock and automation solution built for the vacation rental industry. The software integrates directly with booking software and integrates with property management software, so that they get efficiencies in the bookings and automatic distribution of lock codes to the vacation renters. They are able to track the turn-day activities when someone checks out, someone comes and cleans the property, then they inspect the property and the next weekly renter shows up. The homes on the Outer Banks are rented out on a weekly basis while they’re in season.

This software solution helps manage workflow. But on the ownership side of the property, because these are owned by individuals, we are able to now plug in and offer a year-round security solution that includes intrusion and video. Previously, we went head-to-head against PointCentral whose sales channel was direct to market as opposed to Alarm.com’s, which is through their dealer channel. We’re helping Alarm.com develop that program now so we go to market with a full solution that has all stakeholders’ interests in mind. We see this as a long-term play for us as well as multifamily, which is another solution we’re working on.

That’s for apartment complexes, which is different from vacation rentals. We have a project in Lynchburg, Va., we’re starting later this month at Liberty University. A gentleman is building a project there with 70 apartments. We’re providing them with automation only. It won’t include security; it is going to be locks and energy management with the Alarm.com smart thermostat that sits at the enterprise level, so that they can manage everything.

It’s totally keyless so there’s a lock that is shared on the front door everyone has access to and each person will be assigned access to their bedroom, all done through a mobile app and they also have joint access to the thermostat. We believe these areas are all greenfield opportunities, which is awesome. We’re not coming on top of anybody else. We’re first to market with this sort of solution here.

We have a track record of providing local service after the sale, and that’s really important to property management companies, and they already know who we are and what we’re about. Now that we have this solution available to us, it’s a natural fit for them and a large investment on their part, so the shelf life grows much longer. We’re feeling like we should be able to get some real traction with this after next season.

Has the company lost much business to DIY vendors? Is offering DIY something you might ever branch out into?

Twine: A lot of these DIY companies are successful, but the people we do business with certainly do not want to do this for themselves. It’s almost dangerous for people who don’t understand cybersecurity and Internet security to try to bite these things off. All you have to do is look at the news and see how a DIY was not installed properly because they didn’t change a password or whatever. Using a professional is always the best play and the end results prove that, because we’re doing better than we ever have by putting that message out.

We did some looking into offering DIY about four years ago, and there certainly is a place for it in the market. We just feel like it’s not right for us, based on the core structure of our business. The cost to acquire a customer is about the same. It’s inverted really. You just have to have the support on the back end, and the hours that are required to provide support are not too different from a central station. It’s just a different way of doing business.

We decided to keep true to our roots and that was to provide the professional installation and monitoring services and service after the sale, and focusing on those customers. We don’t have to be everything to everybody. Initially, when our sales team was running up against DIY it was a difficult thing for us to try to answer. We had to ask ourselves, “Should we change our price structure or should we do no-term commitments and all these things?” What we came back to was that we shouldn’t be in competition with DIY at all.

If it comes up in an appointment, then we’re clearly talking to the wrong prospect. They’re not our customer. That was the simplest way for me to communicate that to our sales team. Once they understood that, they were able to get past it by explaining to them the difference between what we offer and what DIY is, and how that’s an unfair comparison price wise. We bring more value to the table and the customers that believe that buys from us. It’s as simple as that.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the company in the slideshow!

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About the Author

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Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].

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One response to “Exec Interview: Johns Brothers Makes Clients Feel Like Family”

  1. Trae Carney says:

    Nice article Scott.

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