For property managers, no news is good news. When everything’s going right, they don’t hear about it.
This attitude can be a problem for security companies — the better you are at keeping the property incident-free, the less the client will think they need you.
How can you avoid this? You might sit down with your client around contract renewal time to walk them through some of the work you’ve been doing during the year.
These annual reviews could help you retain the contract, but when it comes to driving new business through referrals, you should consider conducting these kinds of meetings more frequently. Once per quarter is a great mark to aim for.
Quarterly reviews bridge the gap between day-to-day activities and high-level annual reviews. Effective quarterly business reviews offer clients a look into the real value your company provides for them.
Let’s take a look at some strategies for conducting valuable quarterly business reviews.
The secret to effective quarterly reviews is to come prepared with easy-to-understand data. It’s one thing to say you’ve been doing a good job and preventing incidents, but it’s a lot more impactful if you can prove it.
Silvertrac users have the option to easily export security summary reports that contain everything you need to prove your value to a client. Even if you’re not using Silvertrac, you should consider compiling this data before your meeting.
A good summary report should include the following:
When you take a step back from the daily activity report and review data over a long period of time, it can help you identify trends that could prove the value of your services.
Routine prevention helps reduce the kinds of incidents that show up in daily activity reports. Without more information, your client might tend to believe that incidents are going down on their own, and that your services aren’t as necessary as they were before.
Thankfully, by looking at the data on your summary report, you can demonstrate that an increase in routine preventative tasks is really what’s causing the decrease in reported incidents.
Having access to long-term incident data can do more than just prove your value. This data can be used to suggest ways property managers might improve the overall safety of their properties (and your officers).
For example, if incidents are localized in one area, and you can show that your guard tours aren’t solving the problem, you have more freedom to suggest changes.
Say incidents keep happening in one bathroom or stairwell. You can use the data to support your suggestion that new locks or a better camera system should be installed.
One more way summary reports and quarterly reviews can add value for your client: they can provide documented history that will come in handy in certain situations.
When you have data from several years worth of incidents on hand, that’s a valuable asset your client may need down the road.
For example, if the client needs to evict a problem tenant, they can come to you for a record of incidents that person has been involved in. Or, if an HOA wants to issue fines to address their most problematic homeowners, you’ll be able to provide documentation of their infractions. Security teams monitoring CC&R infractions for an HOA can track things like garages left open, trash cans left out, commercial vehicles on the property, and landscaping issues.
Switching from annual to quarterly reports will quadruple the number of opportunities you have to prove the value you’re creating for the client.
Your client might not be aware of how good things are going until you show them. And when things are going well, that’s a great time to ask for a referral.
Quarterly reviews are the best opportunity to ask for referrals. When you impress your client with all the great work your officers have been doing, you should feel free to ask about people in their network who might benefit from your quality service.
Proving you’re fulfilling your duties on a day-to-day basis might not be enough to get your client to open their rolodex — but offering valuable insight that prevents future incidents could help put you over the top.
Smart businesspeople can use quarterly business reviews to help drive referrals. By conducting quarterly reviews, you create a space to give clients big picture insights and prove the value of your services. These quarterly business reviews should include:
When you can demonstrate that you go above and beyond for a client, you have a great opportunity to ask for a referral.
Learn how to create no-hassle summary reports. Contact us!