reggie

Hi all, Are you an ambitious alarm engineer or subby based in Essex or Suffolk? If you also have commercial acumen and want to earn serious money, get in contact today (no time wasters, this is a serious opportunity for the right person). Thanks,

Helpful. Thanks

Afternoon all, Where do you find good subbys? I'm particularly interested in North Essex / Suffolk area. Thanks

Haha, some very good points. Especially the last!

I hear you, and that makes perfect sense if everything was equal, but surely it's much harder to get commercial work Vs domestic?

Surely the "hassle" has been reduced from installation (if opting for wireless panels)? Also, with built-in or add-on IP modules a lot of the teething problems can be resolved remotely from a laptop?

Hi All, What's the best CCTV system for domestic installs. By "best" I guess I am asking, what's the best value, simplest to install, simplest for customer to use etc. Thanks, Reggie

I don't have one really, I just think it's a shame that domestics are still by far the lions share of the market, not in individual value but in volume, which equates to value in the long term if the volume is there. I just think it's a massive shame (it sounds like) smaller firms are conceding to the industry heavyweights simply because they have deeper pockets to bank roll installs at a loss then make £1000's out of customers in the long term? There must be a way to sell/market your local business and service and stand out over and above the waft of s**t which comes with the heavyweights. You know I mean... just google "ADT reviews"! Don't customers do this? Can most customer really be solely sold on installation price alone? / RANT OVER / But that was "my angle" James

Haha, I understand your point, but there's still good business there if you go in low (even at a loss) if you can secure a £20/month maintenance + monitoring contract for a few years.

Why do you think the market is fuked? Dominated by the likes of ADT?

Not as an installer, but as running a decent sized company,

Considering coming back into the industry. Putting business plan together and need to plug numbers into 3 year projected forecast.

No, I haven't left employment. I am self employed doing something unrelated to security (but I used to be an alarm installer many years ago). Yes, I could open the flood gates to plenty of intruder installation work.

Correctamundo!

I hear this a lot. I guess with the "one product paint by no's" approach would allow you to bring apprentices through quicker though? I felt that may have turned people off answering tbh. Also, I'm only really interested in intruder installs, not access, cctv or fire job.

Is that through choice of not wanting to expand, i.e. happy with your current workload vs overheads, or not enough work in your service area, i.e. too much competition?

Thanks Mr Happy. Good informative response. May I ask, how many install engineers (intruder) do you employ?

Hi All, How much do you spend on marketing/advertising per month (or year)? Do you allocate a certain amount per year or spend as required? What do you spend it on? Online Marketing - PPC (Google Adwords etc), Directory Listings (Yell.com etc), SEO Offline Marketing - Flyers, Magazine Ads, Events, Business Networks etc Which medium do you see the best returns? Thanks

Fair point Peter. So for the sake of this thread, let's focus on domestic jobs only, assuming wireless installs, taking just one day. ,

Hi All, I'm new here but have been reading the TSI forums for a few months now. It seems like most the members here are decent people and the responses seem genuinely useful, so I thought I'd register So, I basically trying to understand how many new installs you guys are doing a month and what percentage take up maintenance contract. Obviously this is going to vary massively depending on the size of the company and number. of engineers etc. So perhaps it'd be more useful to list like this: Installs | install engineers | % maintenance e.g. 30 | 2 | 50% Look forward to seeing the response. Thanks, Reggie