Security Sales & Integration January 2022 - 33

Pictured from top
middle, moving
clockwise: Joey
Rao-Russell
(Kimberlite), Jordan
Jackson (Security
Central), Marvin
Smith (Orlando
Emergency Signal),
Patrick Monroe (TC
Systems) and SSI's
Scott Goldfine.
down. The monitoring and support services
and recurring revenue is a great thing, especially
in those situations. We retained all our people
and used the time to do additional training
with our technicians to try to make the best of
it. The second half of 2020 was super busy, and
that year ended up being about even with 2019
from revenue and profitability standpoints.
Right now, in some ways it's harder than at
the height of the pandemic, fighting supply
chain issues, availability of parts, labor issues and
inflation. Also, the mindset and shift to hybrid
working of some people at home is going to be a
permanent thing going forward for lots of businesses.
Adapting to that new model in how we
do it well and maintain the culture we worked
so hard to build will be challenging. I always say,
business is always tough but it's getting tougher.
Marvin Smith: In the early days of the pandemic,
our client base was very selective as to
who was coming into their home. Fortunately,
they already had a trusting relationship with
us so we were able to work through many of
the emergency service calls. With products
like AlarmNet 360, the majority of our service
calls were remote, so that helped. At the same
time, we were able to really focus on increases
in training with our team because it could be
done virtually. One of the biggest things we've
always talked about was becoming more papersecuritysales.com
less.
Suddenly, when everyone's working from
home, you find ways to become more paperless
and so that actually helped us in that way.
Right now, we're strong again in sales. The
market has changed slightly. We're not doing
a lot of new home construction. Our focus
has been homes that have existing systems that
were not being utilized, or new homeowners
that have moved into a home that has a system
from a prior owner where we're going in and
either taking over or activating.
Joey Rao-Russell: When it first happened,
California was very, very shut down. We're still
shut down. We're still in COVID compared to
a lot of places. Revenue wise, we had a really
rough second quarter; third quarter got better
and fourth quarter I couldn't finish all the work
if I wanted to. We're a super-regional company,
so we have over $1 million in recurring revenue
and that helped get us through. We pulled
together and it showed a great thing about our
team. To be honest, it was stressful, it was horrible,
customers were stressful, but our team
pulled together and supported each other. A
really hard part was it felt like you were constantly
in flux. You'd have a plan, and then by
Monday it changed. We're the people customers
rely on and all of a sudden we were wearing
tap-dancing shoes every day.
However, in some respects it made us stronRight
now, in
some ways it's
harder than at the
height of the
pandemic, fighting
supply chain
issues, availability
of parts, labor
issues and
inflation.
- Jordan Jackson,
Security Central
JANUARY 2022 Security Sales & Integration 33
http://www.securitysales.com
Security Sales & Integration January 2022

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