Your Client Is Reading Articles Like This. Are You Ready for the Conversation?
The procurement conversation around guard contract renewals is changing — and security service providers who aren’t paying attention are going to feel it.
Mark Folmer, CPP, PSP, MSyI, recently published a widely-shared piece on LinkedIn titled “Don’t Renew That Guard Contract Without Asking These First.” Folmer sits on the Global Board of Directors of ASIS International. He’s not a fringe voice. And what he’s telling enterprise security buyers is worth every security service provider reading carefully.
His central argument: stop buying hours, start buying outcomes. Before organizations renew a guard contract or issue an RFP, they should step back and ask whether their security program is actually managing risk — or just filling posts.
He’s right. And if you’re a security company heading into a renewal conversation this year, your client may already be asking exactly the kinds of questions he’s raising.
Here’s what that means for you.
The Buyer Has Moved On. Has Your Pitch?
Folmer quotes James Benum’s Trackforce presentation “Industry Disruption in the Age of AI” to make a point that should land squarely for security service providers: “The buyer is moving from buying guard coverage to buying risk operations.”
That’s a significant shift in what enterprise clients expect from their security partners. Coverage used to be the deliverable. Show up, fill the post, invoice the hours. Today’s buyers want to know what you detected, what you prevented, how fast you responded, and what the data says about your program’s performance over time.
The providers who walk into renewal conversations with a staffing plan and a price sheet are walking into a different meeting than they think.
The Questions Your Client Will Ask
Folmer lays out a pre-renewal checklist for enterprise buyers that reads, for security service providers, like an audit of your own capabilities. Here are the questions you should expect — and what you need to be able to answer:
“What data does our security program generate, and can we actually use it?”
Most security programs generate more data than they use. Incident reports, patrol logs, response times, alarm activity, guard location data, staffing gaps — it’s all there. But if it’s siloed, inconsistently captured, or impossible to surface in a client-ready format, it’s not working for you at renewal time. It’s working against you.
“Which posts are creating measurable value?”
This one stings if you haven’t been tracking it. Clients are starting to ask which guard posts are producing meaningful security outcomes and which are habit. If you can’t answer that with data, someone else eventually will.
“What KPIs will you measure beyond hours worked?”
“Hours delivered” as a primary performance metric is, as Folmer puts it, something the industry needs to move past — and quickly. Clients want incident response rates, patrol completion, escalation times, false alarm volumes, and reporting quality. These are outcomes, and outcomes require a platform to track them.
“How will you support continuous improvement over the contract term?”
This is the question that separates providers with a real technology stack from those who are simply offering labor. Continuous improvement requires structured data, consistent reporting, and the ability to identify trends over time.
What the Labor Market Is Making Harder to Hide
The case for operational accountability has always been there. But the current security labor environment is making it impossible to ignore.
Jill Davie of TEAM Software by WorkWave shared 2026 labor trend data that Folmer cites in his piece: the security industry hired at 2.1x the national average last year, voluntary separations ran at 1.75x the national average, and the industry lost 18% of its activated workforce by day 30. The average security pay rate reached $20.08 by December 2025.
Those aren’t abstract statistics. They show up in post coverage gaps, overtime costs, supervision strain, and the very real risk that a client’s security program is less consistent than anyone wants to admit. If your back-office operations — scheduling, payroll, billing, client reporting — aren’t running cleanly, labor market pressure amplifies every inefficiency.
Security companies managing that complexity in spreadsheets and disconnected tools are running a harder race than they need to be.
The Data Problem Is Also a Credibility Problem
Folmer frames the use of operational data as the difference between anecdotal security management and evidence-based security planning. He’s talking about it from the enterprise buyer’s perspective, but the same frame applies to the service provider.
If you’re walking into a renewal conversation and your answer to “what does our incident data tell us?” is anything other than a clear, confident summary with numbers attached, you have a credibility problem. Not because you’re doing bad work — but because you can’t prove you’re doing good work.
Trackforce customer, Lear Corporation reduced reporting time by 40% and reached 98% patrol compliance within two weeks of implementation. At Lifespace Communities, month-end reports that previously took 10 to 15 hours per week are now produced in seconds. Those aren’t just efficiency gains. They’re the kind of documented outcomes that make renewal conversations shorter and easier.
Technology Is a Tool. Proof Is the Point.
One note worth making: Folmer isn’t arguing that technology replaces guards. He’s arguing that technology should be deployed where it improves the security outcome — and that AI especially deserves scrutiny before adoption.
Jeff DiDomenico of Trackforce is quoted in a Security Journal Americas piece Folmer references: “If AI isn’t helping those processes run better, faster or more accurately, it’s not delivering real value.”
That’s a useful test. The goal isn’t to show clients you have AI. The goal is to show them it’s doing something. ReportPro AI on TrackTik, for example, structures incident documentation at the point of capture — reducing the reporting burden on security guards, improving consistency, and producing the kind of audit-ready records that enterprise clients increasingly require. That’s AI solving a real operational problem, not AI as a talking point.
What to Bring Into the Renewal Conversation
If your clients are starting to sound like Mark Folmer’s article, here’s what you want to be able to show up with:
Documented outcomes, not just activity. Patrol completion rates, incident response times, post compliance data, and client-facing reporting that goes beyond a headcount summary.
A clean back office. Billing accuracy, payroll reliability, and scheduling integrity matter more than they used to. Clients who are asking harder questions about outcomes are also paying closer attention to operational friction.
A client portal that works. Transparency is now a competitive differentiator. If clients can see their program’s performance in real time, they’re not waiting until renewal to ask hard questions — and they’re not as likely to ask them at all.
A story about continuous improvement. The best renewal conversations aren’t about what you delivered last year. They’re about what you learned from the data and what you’re going to do differently.
The RFP Isn’t Just About Price Anymore
Folmer closes his piece with a pointed observation: the RFP process should test whether the service provider is structured to manage its own security operations through technology, data, workflows, and meaningful performance metrics.
That’s a real shift in how enterprise buyers are evaluating providers. Price and staffing levels still matter. But providers who can demonstrate operational discipline — through the platform they run on, the data they produce, and the outcomes they can document — are walking into a different competitive position.
The conversation is changing. The providers who are ready for it will recognize it as an opportunity. The ones who aren’t will feel it as a threat.
Your platform is part of your pitch. Make sure it’s pulling its weight.
TrackTik is purpose-built for security operations —connecting frontline performance, back-office administration, and client-facing reporting in one platform. Learn more about how TrackTik helps security companies win and retain enterprise contracts.
