Surefire Ways to Gain the Upper Hand in the Sales Process

Trackforce

May 18, 2015 · 9 min read

Featured image for Surefire Ways to Gain the Upper Hand in the Sales Process

The security industry is incredibly competitive. But this isn’t news to you. You face fierce competition every day. So how do you really separate your security company from everyone else? What really makes you different? In this podcast we discuss 3 easy techniques that will help you change the sales conversation and close more deals.

Before we jump into the 3 easy techniques, we have to remember that at the heart of everything we share today is one simple concept. You have to know your customers & prospects.

“You’ll never win a contract or retain a customer without understanding their needs and delivering the desired outcome.”

The number one way to be different in the sales process is to show a genuine interest in meeting the prospect’s needs.

The three techniques listed below can be used to show your genuine interest. Put these in place and you’ll stand out like the partner your prospect has been searching for.

Key takeaways

Know your prospect before you pitch.
You will never win or keep a contract without understanding the client’s needs and the outcome they want.
Save the client time on maintenance.
Coordinating directly with the maintenance team turns your officers’ observations into fixes, not more email.
Make your reports easy to act on.
Prioritized reports let busy managers spot what matters in seconds.
Stay accountable after the contract starts.
Quarterly account reviews prove performance has not slipped since the honeymoon period.
Bring the proof to the pitch.
TrackTik reports, dashboards and client portal access show prospects exactly what they will get from you.

1) Offer to Coordinate With the Maintenance Team

Maintenance is the biggest ongoing cost for both commercial property managers, residential property managers, and facility management teams alike.

Most security providers will offer to report the basic “lights out” issues in their Daily Activity Reports. But that doesn’t actually save anyone any time.

Three techniques for gaining the upper hand in the security sales process

When you bury that important information in the Daily Activity Report you make the property manager responsible for relaying that information to the maintenance team.

Why not just coordinate with the maintenance team yourself? Try finding out what processes are in place for submitting work orders to the maintenance team and offer to take part in that process. We talk more about this concept in our article on shifting from a vendor to a partner.

This small step will help prove that you are interested in saving your prospect time and effort. With TrackTik, incident reports can be escalated to third parties automatically, and automated workflows handle the notification and follow-up, so a broken light or a leaking pipe reaches the right maintenance contact without anyone forwarding an email.

2) Offer Prioritized Reports

Your prospects and customers are incredibly busy. Then again, who isn’t?

One major way you can save your prospect time is to offer prioritized reports that are tailored specifically for their operation.

Imagine how much time you can save them if they are able to skim through your Daily Activity Reports and easily identify the issues that are most important to them. Check out the example below of a Daily Activity Report generated using Silvertrac.

All of the issues are prioritized to fit the needs and interests of the customer.

Green items show that the routine requirements of the site were completed on time.
Yellow items are cautionary issues that may require the attention of the manager.
Red items are the critical, high priority, issues that matter most to the prospect.

Of course, you don’t need software to prioritize reports. You can simply have the officers highlight the most important entries on a written DAR. However, configurable report templates and scheduled reports in TrackTik make it far easier to deliver the same priority view to every client, every day.

However you decide to go about it, prioritizing your DARs will help set you apart in the sales process.

3) Offer Quarterly Account Reviews

Most property managers have a poor perception of the security industry. In fact, it’s so bad that I have had a property manager tell me that she replaces her security vendor every 90 days just to ensure that they are always doing a good job.

Unfortunately, many security companies put their best foot forward when the account is new, but end up letting performance slip over time.

You can set your company apart in the sales process if you have a clear plan in place for fighting this negative stigma that your competitors have given the industry.

Consider setting up a detailed account review process that your operation manager can use to assess the status of the account. This will also help build stronger relationships with your clients and ultimately create lifelong customers.

How to run a quarterly account review

Pull the numbers. Patrols completed, incidents, response times and open issues for the quarter. TrackTik business intelligence dashboards make this a few minutes of work.
Lead with wins. Show problems your team caught and solved before they became the client’s problem.
Be honest about misses. Explain what went wrong and what you changed.
Ask about their goals. Upcoming changes at the property, budget pressures and new concerns.
Agree on next steps. Two or three specific actions for the next quarter, with owners and dates.

Done well, these reviews also open the door to referrals, as we explain in conducting quarterly business reviews that drive referrals.

Turn the Three Techniques Into Your Sales Pitch

Each technique gives you something concrete to promise in a proposal and something concrete to show. Here is how they translate into the pitch:

Technique	What to promise the prospect	What to show as proof
Coordinate with maintenance	Maintenance issues reach the right person without the manager relaying them	A sample report with an issue routed straight to maintenance
Prioritized reports	Daily reports that show critical items first	A sample daily activity report with clear priorities
Quarterly account reviews	A scheduled review of performance and goals every quarter	A sample review agenda and dashboard, plus client portal access between reviews

Questions to ask before you pitch

Knowing your prospect starts with the right questions. Use these during discovery, ideally alongside a property walk:

What made you start looking at new security providers?
What does a good month look like for you, and what does a bad one look like?
Who else needs to see our reports, such as owners, boards or maintenance?
How do you want to receive critical incidents, and how quickly?
What did your last provider do that you never want to see again?

The answers become the backbone of a proposal that is about the client, not about you. See why your security proposals aren’t about you and why prospects don’t like salespeople for more on getting this right.

We hope you got a lot out of this episode. Want to show prospects the reports and dashboards behind these techniques? Book a TrackTik demo.

View Next Episode: 010: The #1 Way to Make Sure Your Business is Still Around in 10 Years

Frequently Asked Questions

Show genuine interest in the prospect’s needs and prove you can deliver the outcome they want. Practical ways to do that include coordinating with the maintenance team, offering prioritized reports and committing to regular account reviews. Bringing real examples of your reports and dashboards turns those promises into proof.

A strong pitch addresses the prospect’s specific problems, explains how your officers will handle them, shows sample reports and describes how you will keep the client informed. TrackTik incident reporting lets you show prospects exactly what their reports will look like before they sign.

Officers see broken lights, leaks, damaged gates and other hazards on every patrol. Instead of burying them in a daily report, route them to the maintenance team through the client’s work order process. TrackTik can escalate issues to third parties automatically, so maintenance hears about problems quickly.

A prioritized daily activity report puts the most important items first, so a busy manager can see critical issues in seconds instead of reading every entry. Routine completed tasks, cautionary issues and critical incidents are clearly separated. Configurable templates and scheduled reports in TrackTik make this consistent across every site.

A quarterly account review is a scheduled meeting where a security provider reviews performance with the client: patrols completed, incidents, response times, issues resolved and goals for the next quarter. It shows that service has not slipped since the contract started. TrackTik business intelligence dashboards supply the data.

Property managers usually switch when service quality slips, communication breaks down or they cannot see what their security provider is actually doing. Consistent reporting, proactive communication and regular reviews address all three. Our article on why property managers change security providers covers this in more detail.

TrackTik gives you proof to show at every stage: GPS-verified guard tours, professional incident reports, prioritized and scheduled client reports, business intelligence dashboards for account reviews and client portal access between meetings. Book a TrackTik demo to see it.