5 Strategies to Keep, Renew, and Grow Your Existing Contracts

Trackforce

November 3, 2017 · 10 min read

Strategies to keep, renew and grow security contracts

In the security industry, everyone dreads the end of a contract term. Common pitfalls and false beliefs can lead clients to choose not to renew, or to drop out of month-to-month agreements. All five of these contract retention strategies come down to one core concept: understanding your customers’ needs.

To learn how to do that well, we spoke with Danny Garcia, owner of JDS Security in San Diego. His advice, combined with the proof of performance you can capture in TrackTik, gives you a practical plan for keeping, renewing and growing every account.

Key takeaways

Renewals are won at onboarding.
Define what success means to each client before service starts, then track it from day one.
Measure what the client cares about.
Data tied to each client’s goals is what justifies renewals, rate increases and referrals.
Review regularly, on the client’s terms.
Consistent check-ins with reports sent in advance keep small issues from becoming reasons to leave.
Grow accounts by adding value.
Extra inspections during existing tours are an easy way to do more for the client without adding headcount.
Never tolerate poor performance.
TrackTik flags missed tours and service gaps as they happen, so you fix problems before the client finds them.

1. Define What Success Looks Like for Your Clients

All clients have their own specific needs. The managers of two similar properties might have very different priorities when it comes to security. It’s impossible to win big for your client if you aren’t sure what their goals are.

This process starts before you onboard a client. It’s important to speak with them and identify their individual goals. Then, gather measurable data about those goals so you can track your impact over time. When it comes time to renew a contract, you can go into that conversation armed with data that proves your effectiveness. A property walk with the client is one of the best places to start.

“When we bring someone new on…we want to establish a partnership versus just being a vendor. We sit down with them, set up the system, and tailor it to their needs. We do a walk through with the client on their properties as well, to make sure we have every key point that we need.”
Danny Garcia, JDS Security

Questions to Define Client Success

What made you look for a new security provider?
What does a great month of security look like for you?
Which areas or times of day concern you most?
Who else needs to see our reporting, and in what format?
How will you judge whether we’ve earned a renewal?

For more conversation starters, see these questions every security company should be asking its customers.

2. Have Systems in Place to Measure Your Impact

Once you know your customers’ goals, you need the right methods and tools for collecting data that proves your value.

Danny gave us the example of lockups. With guard management software, he can give clients numbers and reports that clearly show when lockups were performed. By tailoring the system to a client’s needs, he can even require guards to take a picture of every locked door to prove beyond doubt that they’ve secured the property. In TrackTik, the same approach works through checkpoint scans on the guard tour system, with a required photo at each door.

This doesn’t just apply to routine items like lockups. Creating detailed reports based on the specific pain points of property managers will make their job easier and give them something to pass along to executives, which helps ensure your contract gets renewed. Learn how to turn your reports into a contract-closing machine.

What to Measure for Each Client Goal

Client goal	Metric to track	Where TrackTik captures it
Doors secured every night	Lockup completion with photo proof	Checkpoint scans with required photos
Visible, consistent patrols	Tour completion rate	Guard tours with GPS and time stamps
Less trespassing or loitering	Incidents by type and location	Incident reports and trend dashboards
Fewer tenant complaints	Complaint volume and resolution time	Incident reports and follow-up tasks
Well-maintained property	Maintenance issues found and reported	Site tasks completed during tours

What gets measured gets improved. Measuring the impact of your officers with TrackTik business intelligence will help you renew contracts, increase rates and earn more referrals.

3. Schedule Regular Reviews

Set up a regular check-in with every client. Find out when they have availability, and make sure to call when you say you will. Depending on the customer, these check-ins can be as often as once per week or as infrequent as once per quarter.

Send summary reports, such as site activity and incident summaries from TrackTik, to the customer before your meeting. Ask whether they’re getting everything they need from you, in a format that works for them. Better yet, give them access to the Client Portal so they can see the work for themselves between meetings.

Remember, these reviews are on the client’s terms. Most of your points of contact aren’t just in charge of security. They have other responsibilities to attend to, which is why it’s so important to adapt your services to their needs.

A Simple Client Review Agenda

Results against goals. Show the metrics you agreed on at onboarding.
Incidents and trends. Walk through what happened and what changed as a result.
Changes at the site. Ask about new tenants, construction, events or staffing.
Feedback. Ask what you could do better and what they value most.
Next steps. Agree on actions and the date of your next review.

For a deeper look, here’s how to run quarterly business reviews that drive referrals.

4. Add Value Wherever Possible

The most reliable way to grow an existing contract is to look for additional value you can offer the customer. If your officers have extra time on site, or are performing simple tours that don’t require much attention, these are opportunities to accomplish more for your clients.

One example is common-area inspections, where officers are mostly making their presence known. When you know the client’s needs, it’s simple to build on these tours without adding much extra work for your personnel. Officers can check:

Exterior and parking lot lighting
Landscaping and sprinkler issues
Trip hazards, leaks and other maintenance problems
Fire extinguishers and emergency exits
Gates, fences and access points

Each finding logged as a TrackTik site task becomes documented proof of value. When those extra services grow into a larger scope, TrackTik contracts and invoicing keeps the new billing accurate from the first invoice.

5. Never Settle for Poor Officer Performance

This strategy sounds intuitive, but it bears repeating. Holding a high standard for your officers is one of the most important ways to consistently deliver great work to your customers.

“It does cost us money, but in the end, I’d rather spend the money and make sure my client is happy than give them a mediocre guard.”
Danny Garcia, JDS Security

Writing up every violation and dismissing guards who aren’t up to par might be unpleasant, but it’s the only way to retain, grow and renew your security contracts. Having the right processes in place, supported by TrackTik guard management, lets you address personnel issues as they happen instead of hearing about them from customers. It also helps to know why performance reviews and post inspections matter.

Your Contract Renewal Timeline

Renewals go best when they are the natural end of a year-long conversation, not a last-minute scramble. Use this timeline as a guide:

120 days out: Pull a full performance summary against the client’s original goals.
90 days out: Hold a renewal-focused review and ask directly about their plans.
60 days out: Present your renewal proposal, including any added services or rate changes.
30 days out: Confirm terms, finalize paperwork and set goals for the next term.

Common Reasons Security Contracts Don’t Renew

No visible proof of service. If the client can’t see the work, they assume it isn’t happening.
Billing problems. Errors erode trust quickly. Here’s why billing errors cost security companies clients.
Slipping officer performance. Small lapses add up when nobody catches them.
A new decision maker. Your champion leaves and the replacement doesn’t know your history.
A price-only conversation. Without data on results, the renewal becomes a negotiation about rates.

People, Products and Process

“It comes down to people, products, and process. That’s how you tailor a service that [clients] want and need.”
Danny Garcia, JDS Security

Want to see how TrackTik helps security companies prove their value and win more renewals? Book a TrackTik demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Define what success means to each client at onboarding, measure your performance against those goals, review results regularly, add value where you can and never tolerate poor officer performance. When renewal arrives, you can point to a year of data instead of relying on the relationship alone.

Start about 120 days before the contract ends. Pull a performance summary, hold a renewal-focused review around the 90-day mark, present your proposal at 60 days and finalize terms at 30 days. In reality, the preparation starts on day one, with every report and review you deliver.

Bring results tied to the goals the client set at onboarding: tour completion rates, lockup verification, incident trends by type and location, response times and any added services you delivered. TrackTik business intelligence puts that data into dashboards and reports that clients and their executives can understand quickly.

Look for extra value your officers can deliver during existing tours, such as lighting, maintenance and safety equipment checks. Document each finding, share the results with the client and propose a formal scope expansion once the value is clear. TrackTik contracts and invoicing keeps billing accurate as the scope grows.

The most common reasons are a lack of visible proof that the work is being done, billing errors, slipping officer performance, a new decision maker who doesn’t know your history and renewal conversations that focus only on price. Most of these can be prevented with consistent reporting and guard management that catches issues early.

TrackTik captures proof of service as your team works. Checkpoint-verified guard tours, time-stamped incident reports and site tasks feed dashboards and reports you can share through the Client Portal. By renewal time, the client has already seen a year of evidence. Book a TrackTik demo to see it in action.