Digital Monitoring Products (DMP), Springfield, Mo., held its third annual Owners Forum in conjunction with ISC West on April 1 at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas.

SDM Senior Editor Heather Klotz-Young attended and reported a high-value event with meaningful presentations and a strong turnout of experienced industry dealers. When kicking off the meeting with introductions, the attendees gave their name, company, and years in the industry. Collectively, that experience totaled close to 1,500 years.

“There’s no security industry problem we couldn’t solve together!” said DMP Executive Director of Marketing, Mark Hillenburg, the event’s host. To start the event, he emphasized the company mission, to “provide customer-driven products through listening, anticipating needs, and responding quickly with innovative solutions that work.”

When DMP President Rick Britton gave a company update, he discussed CellComC and CellComCZ, new fully supervised alarm communicators operating over CDMA networks. DMP has positioned these communicators as “a RMR-generating machine that provides dealers with a solution to update existing customer’s panels or takeovers.”  The communicators extend the life and expand the capabilities of older panels by adding the power of advanced, digital cellular communication allowing for Virtual Keypad App control including viewing up to six cameras, according to DMP. With CellComCZ, dealers can add Z-Wave control.

DMP also launched the Virtual Keypad Browser™ so users can access commonly used security functions via their computer, tablet or smartphone, and updated the DMP Virtual Keypad App, which was refreshed with a new look so it matches the Graphics Touchscreen and browser both in features and looks. Users can take control on their smartphones or tablets similar to the browser-based control and perform basic functions, control Z-Wave® devices and remotely view video cameras.

Throughout the event a comedic mind-reader, Eric Dittelman, provided an element of lighthearted fun. Dittelman appeared on season 7 of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” in 2012 where he advanced to the semi-finals.

In one trick, Dittelman called up five volunteers and had one person take a dollar bill from a table. He correctly identified who had taken it, but did so after joking it would be faster if he had a DMP camera to go back and review the footage. 

During his session, Tom Reilly, author of “Value-Added Selling” shared key philosophies and techniques for value-added selling. His motto is simple: “Add value, not cost; sell value, not price!”

He described value-added selling as “contributing maximum value to and extracting maximum value from the relationship. It is selling to the customers’ needs and not against the competition.”

In another quality presentation, Bob Harris, principal of Attrition Busters, shared keys to success and creating “stickier” customers even when competing against today’s new, big competitors in the alarm industry. He said, “Educate your team to continuously deliver attractive and evolving value propositions. This enables them to create their own economy, take ownership of solving problems, and emotionally bond customer relationships that stick.”

Why do sticky customers matter? It costs up to 36 times to get back one dollar you lose in a RMR cancellations, Harris shared.

For his thought-provoking session, Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, shared concepts from his book, “Hiring for Attitude” that fly in the face of most hiring practices used today.

Murphy said that while companies have spent the last 100 years getting really good at hiring for skills, they have overlooked hiring for attitude. “We are good at figuring out skills etc., but we are weak about figuring out attitude, which is the biggest thing that will determine if a new employee will stay or leave.” 

Murphy had the statistics to back it up. He reported that 46 percent of new hires fail in 18 months. Only 19 percent will achieve unequivocal success. Of the new hires that fail, 89 percent will fail because of attitudinal skills.

Because skills are easily taught, and attitude is not, Murphy emphasized focusing on bringing new employees in with the right attitude first and foremost to find long-term employees.

 All of the presentations, networking, and technology updates offered at the DMP Forum provided a strong start to ISC West for the attendees. For more on DMP, visit www.dmp.com.