I am a sole proprietor in Telluride Colorado. There are three main alarm companies locally situated here in Telluride Colorado. Two of my competitors have merged recently , the smaller of the two sold to the larger, and I see this as an opportunity to take over some accounts who won't be happy with this merger.
Any suggestions on how to market ( ad content) to those that might make a change now that this is happenning? I am the smaller of the three companies and would like to grow my account base by 40 accounts this year . I was thinking something along the lines of " Free alarm panel upgrade for new clients" or "Alarm services costing you to much? Make the change today and the first six months is on us."
These people are wealthy. So it's not so much about costs. Any ideas?
RHC: Sorry lad, but I don't think that dog will hunt !!
First off, how do you really know that these folks will be unhappy with the merger. In my experience, people are only unhappy when they get poor service from their existing company, or the rates have continued to rise irritating the hell out of them. You can throw a lot of money at a non-existant "market" and you will likely get little or no response. Most people don't know who does the actually monitoring, or simply don't care unless it fails to work properly. Your best bet is to keep you money in your pocket and simply be prepared to quickly handle anyone who does call.
Loads of companies are taken in by the self serving marketing gurus who claim advertising is the route to success (maybe it is, but usually only for them). Those large alarm companies who market excessively have to do so to either sell their phoney "free systems" or to replace their horrible attrition losses. Small guys don't have to spend a penny if they run their business correctly !
Ad men are like lawyers; they "win" regardless of who loses....
My suggestion is to keep your money in your pocket and keep doing what you do best
RHC: I tried that early on in my business with marginal success. Expect a !% response rate at best and it will usually be someone from the "something for nothing crowd" who calls back.
The only thing that worked for me is now too common-place to work any more.
Back in the 70's I got the idea to go to the library and check the Cole's Directory which lists people by zip code, telephone number town etc, etc. (There wasn't any Internet as there is today.) I picked Zip codes in high end areas and cold called them on the telephone. I spent a considerable number of evenings calling people but ultimately was landing appointments with about 2 or 3 people out of 10. I was offering a free small fire extinguisher or simple door alarm as a giveaway. That turned out to be a pretty good source after awhile. After I learned what to say and how to tell if I was going to have a chance at an appointment or not. After about 3 or 4 hundred calls and a number of sales calls, you begin to get the "feel" of who's good and who's not.
Nowdays, that's all old stuff and the Federal Do Not Call law put an end to that. Other things I've tried have never produced enough to make it worth the expense. Yellow pages, local newspapers, mailers,
Another thing that "would" still work today, however, is walk-in cold calling on small retail businesses. That was always a successful method for getting work for me. Ya gotta keep track of who you talk, their location and when and really do a lot of follow up but if you're diligent about it, you can pick up a lot of new business.
However nowdays, the younger people are too lazy, have no personality nor the balls to do cold calling. They'd rather stay home and take care of the house and baby while the wife works and gets free medical benefits. Besides, if they were out working, how would they ever get a chance to try out the scented crystal bubble bath powder when the baby takes a nap?
RHC: Uh...what about all those door knockers for the phoney "free alarm systems" and all those other utility contracts near scams? These people are usually young students trying to sell whatever they can, and they are both young and hungry. So I'm not sure that what you say about the young folk is always true. And cold calling has always been the hardest way to sell something for the person involved. Yah gotta have a very thick skin to take all the "no" responses to get that rare "yes" response.
But I do share your sentiment about many of the younger workers today. It seems they don't have that "nose to the grindstone" work ethic that we do. And you don't find many that will put the job ahead of other personal life issues.
And sometimes (not always, but sometimes) I think they may have something there. It seems they work to live not live to work.
You can't take it with you....there are no pockets in a death shroud......:)) (a little gallows humour...:))
Oh yeah! I forgot about them. But I've had a couple of the Varint (or whatever their new alias is now) come to my door and they seemed more like high school kids trying to sell chances to get money for the Cheerleaders club. If that's typical, then the people who would buy a security system from them ...... deserve what they get.
Could be we're looking at it from the perspective of our past where it was necessary to work for a living because no one, including the government was going to take care of us .... .if we didn't. Now, there's a free handout to anyone who doesn't want to work to maintain themselves. That old saying "you have to produce more than you consume" isn't true anymore. I'm not sure if I'm missing it or not but one thing I seem to notice missing in younger people, is the pride in accomplishment. If you don't have that then you don't have any reason to extend yourself , no motivation to do more than what is only basicly essential for your existance .... if even that.
Hmmmm. I'll have to talk to my undertaker about how much more that would cost.
But, if I'm lucky, I'll have spent my kids inheritance.
Do you have more money or more time? I don't know about you, but when it comes to alarm work I don't need the practice, I need the money. I wouldn't offer free monitoring, I'd offer something different. How about a free alarm system check up. If another company has merged or gone out of business, that could be enough to make a customer start thinking about their alarm. If you offer a free system check up, it might be the connection the customer wants to make to feel good about their system once again and will call you.
Well anyway, I don't think so. I'm guessing that now that the "saga" is not ongoing, as it used to, that people don't check in as often ... which reduces the activity which reduces how often people check in. HOWEVER, I post via Google and it shows how many people check the group each day. It's hardly ever below 200 and most times it's around
3 to 5 hundred. So somebody is still interested. I don't think that there would be that many random checks. But ..... maybe I underestimate.
Some time ago I suggested that if someone could ask a question and start a thread, now and then, it would stir up some posts, but after I asked a couple, got some threads going ....... and then no one else did ....... I figured .... what the hell. It's just part of my routine to check in, just takes a few minutes and sometimes it interesting and sometimes a few days goes by with nothing. I figure it should slowly die. I don't know if Steve Ryckman's "private" group is doing anything and I haven't checked his open group for a few months but last time I checked that group, there were only a couple of posts by Steve, me and I think Nick. I keep thinking that I should look around at some of the trade magazine websites to see if their are any groups worth getting involved in. I just forget to do it. The magazines always say that they have lots of activity in their groups but I haven't checked them out. If I come across one, I'll let it be known here and maybe we can "invade" it. >;-
OR ..... does anyone know of one that's got an meat to it? I always thought that this was going to be a great place for lots and lots of people to come to for sharing information. At the beginning we had people from manufacturers, technicians and owners from companies from all over, and from related fields, but they just got tired of the BS that went on here and left. I've thought about going back in the archives and trying to gather the E-mails of some of the good old people and try to contact them but I'm sure that even if they're still around, many of them wouldn't want to have much to do with me ...... either. I'd think that a lot of them never caught on to the fact that I was just being purposely disruptive but wouldn't have been if there hadn't have been a catylist. Even afterwards, I thought that gradually new people would find this group but with Facebook and other social network sites, I'd guess they'd rather go there. Newsgroups are "out of style" now.
I wonder if we could rename it .... alt. security. rocking. chair. and alarms.
Go to work for either of the two other companies then quit and complain online how they are screwing customers, this usually attracts new customers.
Create several fake online users which will frequent certain security newsgroups and spend a lot of time praising you in hopes many of these wealthy people who may be online will notice. If caught in this deception blame friends, relatives and family using your computer.
Create a website mentioning meaningless ways to reduce false alarms and use it as a front to attract potentially unlicensed service companies to do unauthorized work on other companies accounts. Use fake happy customers to post praise on said website. These customers should have common names such as Gladys and George.
Grab the domain of a security organization and direct incoming web traffic to site outlined in step 2. Everyone knows wealthy people like going to websites.
Come back in 5 or 6 years when you still haven't added those 40 extra accounts and ask yourself why you are a failure if you can't figure this kind of stuff out on your own.
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