In an industry that increasingly values recurring revenue opportunities, customer relationship management (CRM) is more important than ever. Every security dealer and integrator knows that customers are the core of success, and repeat clients make every step of the process easier. Thus, it’s imperative to always put clients first and try to keep clients loyal.

A CRM platform, system, or tool, such as widely known Salesforce, makes it easy for businesses to put customers first. These platforms are designed to gather data in one place, streamline multiple business processes, and support employees — especially salespeople — with day-to-day tasks.

 Though extremely beneficial, the world of CRMs can be overwhelming. Every day, it seems new platforms are emerging and existing ones are evolving, with new technological capabilities available for companies of all sizes. Tracy Larson, president, WeSuite, White Plains, N.Y., which offers a CRM purpose-built for the security industry, compares using CRM platforms to going to the gym. “You learn a new exercise. The first time, it doesn’t feel that good, and you feel a little weird, but you’ve got to form the habit because the payoff is just so high,” she says. “If you are not doing this, you will be left behind. There’s no question your business is not going to be able to grow easily or well, and you’re going to have people that leave your team. … Get it done now. Don’t wait.”

If you are not doing this, you will be left behind. There’s no question your business is not going to be able to grow easily or well, and you’re going to have people that leave your team. … Get it done now. Don’t wait.

What is a CRM & Why Use One?

The core of a CRM is having all customer details, from contact information to their stage in the customer lifecycle, in one easily accessible place. A platform can also help save time within the customer lifecycle by providing the ability to automate repetitive tasks and therefore increase efficiency. “We can send automated emails; we can alert sales reps via tasks when, for example, it’s been a month since [the sales rep] contacted this customer,” says Eric Boyette, senior vice president of operations – operational excellence, Alarmax, a Pittsburgh, Penn.-based distributor. “Instead of them having to look into the data and check every customer, [the CRM platform] will tell them: ‘Hey, it’s been two weeks since you talked to them, it might be a good idea to follow up.’”

This contributes greatly to customer retention, ensuring sales representatives don’t miss an opportunity to follow up with prospects. It also contributes to team cohesion, which is important for Alarmax as the company engages in its search for a CRM, Boyette says. “We have 26 branches at Alarmax, and some of the customers and customer locations will overlap. With an effective CRM, I’ll be able to know who else in the company, or at another branch, has contacted a given customer,” he says. “The collaboration between our 26 branches will be very important, as well as the collaboration between marketing and sales so that everybody’s aware what marketing campaigns are running and how that is going to affect clients.”

CRMs also make forecasting possible. Patrick Chown, founder, Safe and Sound Security, Walnut Creek, Calif., says he and his team have become great at forecasting thanks to the company’s CRM tools and integrated technology stack. “We’ve 10X’ed the business in the last four years. … I’m not going to give all of the credit to the CRM, but I think I’m giving a lot of the credit to our data and the way we organize it,” he says. “We hired 10 techs in the last four months, and we did that in preparation for what we could see coming … so we could get ahead of it. It makes you kind of clairvoyant, when you have good data.”

The Sales Case

Although CRMs have the potential to benefit every person in a company based upon the company’s usage of it, Eric Boyette of Alarmax emphasizes the importance of using a CRM to support sales teams. “Our approach and process to sales and the day in the life of a salesman is very fragmented,” he says. “Everybody has their own routine and tools they’ve self-developed. We’re looking to do a major upgrade to provide our sales and marketing team with the tools they need to really succeed. We’ve outgrown the days of each person having their own spreadsheet or handling things by emails or their own notepad.”

Tracy Larson of WeSuite echoes this sentiment, “Salespeople today expect to have the tools that they need. If you’re looking to attract good salespeople, give them good tools; help make the job a little bit easier. In doing so, you’re automatically going to improve your business.”

Importantly, a centralized platform protects a company from losing track of information or spending too much time onboarding new salespeople. “Even if you’re training a salesperson and you don’t have [a CRM platform], they’re not going to learn as well,” Larson says. “They won’t understand what they’ve got or what they don’t have. And then it’s very hard to help mentor and coach someone who doesn’t have information in front of them or to be the coach and not have the information. Also, if you have a change — let’s say that somebody leaves the company — you have no idea what they’re working on, or, worse, they can take it with them. That centralized platform makes a huge difference, regardless of the size of the company.”

Larson emphasizes the benefits of having the sales cycle loaded into a CRM that’s accessible to the rest of the team, as it enhances team cohesion. “A lot of times, there’s an organizational gap; there’s the whole business that looks at sales, and then the rest of the team. Sometimes, that gap is difficult to bridge, and it’s primarily because people don’t understand a lot of what’s happened in sales,” she says. “A CRM [platform] and the management of sales data and customer relationships — their needs, what they have, changes of leadership, when a system needs an upgrade — is just so much easier when you’ve got a holistic picture of what is there and what you can do.”

It makes you kind of clairvoyant, when you have good data.

Getting Started With CRMs

The very first step that companies considering a CRM can and should take is to properly explore the options available, Boyette says. “You can quickly get overwhelmed by all the choices out there … even by the choices offered by one company,” Boyette says. “It’s important to identify your specific business needs and the pain points — what is causing your team headaches, time delays, missed opportunities — and then seek a solution that first attacks those as your first priority.”

Understandably, getting started can be very intimidating. Chown admits, “I vastly underestimated how much time it was going to take and how much thought was going to be put into [platform adoption], as well as what I was going to have to do to implement Salesforce. It became all-encompassing for around 18 months.”

But, as Larson firmly believes, getting started is both the hardest and the most important step, and companies that don’t take that step will be left behind. “Whatever rash you have today, it will only get bigger,” she says. “If you’re growing or if you’re changing and you haven’t addressed some issues, and you haven’t taken care of establishing that consistency and process, you’re going to be the owner that’s always involved in everything. You’re going to be the team that can’t be organized because it doesn’t have a process and workflow and the support of understanding and managing data.”

Adopting a CRM platform doesn’t require jumping straight into the deep end, though. “If you’re going from not really organizing your data at all to using a really sophisticated tool, there’s an interim step: use spreadsheets,” Chown says. “Just keep everything tracked on Excel or Google Sheets, or something simple. And then it’s a lot easier to transition into a high-level tool.”

CRM providers also offer resources and support for companies that are just starting out. “The biggest thing the client has to do is commit,” Larson says. “If you’re an owner or an executive, everybody’s looking at you. So, if you’re on board, be on board. Don’t flinch. And if you need to flinch, you call us; you can talk to us separately. But your team is relying on you saying, ‘this is the bus we’re on; get on the bus.’”

It Takes Good Leadership

Alarmax’s new leadership team, including Scott Shelander, the company’s president as of January 2025, brought a fresh perspective to the company, which kickstarted Alarmax’s search for a CRM. “Part of our strategy as a new leadership team is to upgrade our technology stack,” says Eric Boyette of Alarmax. “What are some things that will help us to achieve our goals of growth and continued profitability? That is some of the strategy that Scott brought in and is asking me to implement, based on experience from previous companies that we’ve worked for.”

Patrick Chown of Safe and Sound Security reflects a similar experience, having taken the lead on the importance and implementation of CRM tools. “First, it was a lot of me pounding the drum because I’d been through a few of these database changes, and I understood how important it was,” he says. “I was a crazy person about making sure everybody was attributing the right lead source to the right customer so that we didn’t say, ‘oh, that came from Google,’ or ‘no, that came from a trade show,’ or ‘this came from a self-gen,’ or whatever it was. Everybody knew that there was a really high standard that was set for the quality of the data.”

Tracy Larson of WeSuite also points to executives and managers to take the lead on implementing CRMs and ensuring the team is fully onboard. She concludes, “The sooner you make the investment, the sooner you’re going to see results. … It’s a commitment, but it’s a commitment to making your business better.”

It’s important to identify your specific business needs and the pain points — what is causing your team headaches, time delays, missed opportunities — and then seek a solution that first attacks those as your first priority.

The Culture Shift

In both Alarmax’s and Safe and Sound Security’s case, a CRM platform has or will shift the way the teams are thinking about day-to-day processes. Chown says he and his team don’t just use their primary platform, Salesforce, as a tool; they use it to run the entire business. “When it took on a life of its own is when we started to build it into the culture,” he says. “Instead of somebody saying, ‘Hey, we need to change our system or a way that we do business,’ they would start to say, ‘Hey, if we just do it in Salesforce, it’ll automate this part of it, and I don’t have to do that anymore.’ … It got to the point where people were kind of taking it upon themselves to say, ‘It seems like we do this this way in this other thing. Could it do that here, too?’”

Boyette says it’s important to establish an expectation of using the tool, or it could easily become a wasted investment. “Having the technology in place is only one step. People have to actually use it,” he says. “The more problems it solves for every member of your team, the more likely they are to use it effectively.”

Larson agrees, “Whether you’re very small and you’re trying to grow, or you’re medium-sized, or you’re large, it doesn’t matter. Once you get a tool like this in place, it really is pivotal for the business.”