As a security dealer, you know how important it is to keep customers happy with your services. But at a time when costs seem to be going up for just about everything, how can you keep yours from doing the same? Here are some ideas to help you maximize your efficiency, think creatively, and save money so you don’t have to bear the burden of price increases–or become forced to pass them to your customers.
#1. Rethink Your Workflow
To cut costs while maintaining great service, look to your own business processes. Many of the inefficiencies that slow you down from day to day can go unnoticed while times are good, but when you need to tighten operations, this is the first place you should scrutinize.
Whether you’re managing billing and payment processing, scheduling jobs, looking up customer data, or tracking technician time, you likely spend a lot of time on the administrative side of your business. And a lot of it could be saved with leaner processes.
#2. Do More with Less
The right software can help automate most of your daily business practices, which gives you and your staff more time to focus on other needs, like sales, contracts, and networking.
Look for something that can:
- Monitor inventory
- Set up automatic invoices and recurring billing online
- Manage, schedule, and dispatch field service technicians
- Provide snapshots of your business expenses and financial health
In addition, optimizing your processes with the right software reduces your operational costs, as well as your expenses, which helps keep your rates down.
#3. Keep Your Prices Flexible
When times are lean, customers appreciate tiered service packages and pricing options that cater to different budgets and preferences. Consider your full menu of options and look at how you can break them out into basic and premium features.
Could you offer a basic package with all the essential security features, but allow customers to pick and choose optional upgrades for an additional cost? This would allow you to keep prices manageable while also creating opportunities to upsell and capture greater revenue from customers who are willing to pay more for higher-tier options. It also builds goodwill with clients who might be working with a tight budget but still need your services.
This is also a great time to rethink how you actually bill for what you do. For example, is there an opportunity to take what has traditionally been a one-time purchase and convert it into a monthly subscription plan? This is known as generating monthly recurring revenue, and it’s an easy way to increase your bottom line with minimal effort.
#4. Work Together to Minimize Costs
In this industry, relationships and partnerships will get you far, and businesses that can find ways to work together will be the ones that thrive. This is the right time to focus on building partnerships, negotiating with your suppliers, creating community, and outsourcing non-core functions. Some ideas:
Marketing & Referral Programs
Explore joint marketing efforts or referral programs with businesses in related industries, from insurance companies to real estate agencies. This can expand your customer base while minimizing individual marketing costs. You could also join forces to foster community engagement by organizing neighborhood gatherings or informational security webinars, customer appreciation events, expert talks on safety, and other topics, and more.
Pricing Discounts
Negotiate better pricing or bulk discounts with your suppliers, building on the strength of your existing relationships to come up with creative solutions that will keep costs low and sales healthy for you both. If your vendors are not receptive, it may be time to build new relationships that yield more competitive rates or higher-quality products.
Outsource
Do what you do best–and let others do the rest. The right software will get you far, but what about the rest of your to-do list? Would it help to pay someone else to get some of it done better and faster than you can? As a security business owner, it can be hard to give up one of the many hats you often wear, but what you spend on professional outsourcing can more than pay for itself in the amount of time you get back.
From accounting to payroll, outsourcing can free you up to focus on core business functions. You might even hire someone to uncover additional cost-saving solutions for your business, whether it’s scoping out more affordable office space, figuring out how to optimize energy usage, or helping you identify inefficiencies you may not have spotted yourself.
More Time for You
One of the most compelling benefits of a solution that saves significant time is that those hours can be reallocated to profit-generating activities. That’s hours you can devote to activities like:
Relationship building
Consider the local businesses that have customers you can help. Granite countertops, kitchen remodeling, hardwood floors, carpet cleaners etc. Generate marketing materials you each can leave behind or promote to your base. Maybe even create a local group that cross promotes each other’s services.
Up-sell/Cross-sell/Generate referrals
Your software can help create better and more frequent communication with your clients. Your team will have the time to make calls: create a script and devise processes for them. Can you incentivize them to create new customers? Think about your service offerings. Do you have current customers that would benefit from and be more safe using these services? If the answer is yes, then you need to tell them.
Increase AutoPay participation
Your software could help identify and influence the non-autopay clients and even let them sign up on their own.
Marketing
There are dozens of advertising mediums available in the security and alarm industry. You would now have the time to investigate them.
Education
Everyone benefits from education. Keeping up with technologies and trends will help keep you ahead of your competition.
Training
Let your staff learn how to be more efficient and productive, which gives you more time to do what you need to do.
What is the Solution?
Invest in a business management software that practically runs itself, like Managely.
With Managely, you can:
- Streamline systems, trading Excel spreadsheets and multiple software platforms for a single, unified solution.
- Make billing easy and automatic, with automatic invoicing, recurring billing, payment reminders and more.
- Offer customers more ways to pay, from automated credit card payments to ACH transfers.
- Generate, deliver, and follow up on proposals, with a streamlined workflow that automatically converts proposals to work orders, and work orders to payments.
- Add work orders directly to a schedule, track technician appointments in the field, and provide your techs instant access to customer service history, and the ability to automatically generate invoices once the job’s complete.
The Bottom Line
There is no doubt that using Managely can revolutionize the way your security business operates. Its efficient platform and its ability to automate most of your daily tasks make it an obvious choice for anyone looking to save time, money, and resources.
Software like Managely gives you an edge because its powerful reporting and analytics tools provide insights into how your business is really performing, from sales conversions rates to customer satisfaction. Ask for a Managely demo today and experience firsthand how this innovative technology can help your business.