As part of an effort to further expand their footprint across the nation, Monitronics on Tuesday officially unveiled a new sub-dealer program, RISE, which will provide companies that are not quite ready to join their Authorized Dealer program with some of the same marketing and training benefits.
According to Travis Miller, director of national accounts for Monitronics, the company has been working to expand their reach in terms of recruiting and the RISE program will enable them to bring more dealers into the fold.
“We have a great footprint nationwide and we have a tremendous support system behind our dealers but the industry has shifted a lot recently to where there are a lot of up and coming sales teams and sales leaders that aren’t quite ready to take that next step to become a full-fledged authorized dealer in our program,” Miller says. “We’ve spent the last couple of years kind of beating our heads against a wall because we’ve had to turn some of these great candidates down or place them with some of our other dealers and lose that opportunity.”
Miller says the RISE program is tailored to meet the needs of sub-dealers by providing them the support they need to reach that next level of becoming an authorized dealer. For example, members of the RISE program will have access to the company’s support network, which includes comprehensive training, creative marketing resources, and funding through the company’s proprietary eContract platform. In addition, RISE members get the added benefits of back office support for customer care, scheduling and installation, along with financial planning and forecasting to further assist in their growth.
“They can come into the program, do what they’re good at which is sales – sales recruiting, building teams – and we can help take care of the back office operations and help them grow their business,” Miller explains. “For those that want to develop their company and take that next step, we will put them into our training programs and support systems to help better their companies and reach that next level over time.”
While there are a variety of different sub-dealers in the market, Miller says the RISE program is ideal for those companies who are doing great business but may not have the ability to scale their operations.
“If a dealer is doing a handful of accounts a month or a couple dozen accounts a month, it is somewhat easy to manage that business – inventory levels, payroll, call center solution, hours of operation – but as you scale that business it becomes more difficult,” he says. “A lot of people in the alarm space that are a part of the [authorized] dealer program, they are sales-minded people that don’t have that background in business or financials and so you see a lot of dealers come into the program and they have struggles initially. We’ve tried to combat a lot of that over the years by bringing in programs like MoniX and MoniU where we help them out of the gate to strengthen their business and try to coach and teach them on the things they need to think of as they enter into this partnership with our program. Still, we can’t be there with them day-in and day-out and run their business so through RISE and offering this added support we feel like we can set the stepping stones in front of them to help them develop.”
In addition, Miller says what will make the RISE program unique from similar sub-dealer programs offered by others in the industry is that they are not worried about losing these dealers somewhere down the line as their business matures.
“Those programs don’t want to home grow and teach these sub-dealers these next-level things because they want to keep them within their program forever and, eventually, if they were to teach them these things considering it their secret sauce or what makes them successful, they may lose them to a competitor and lose that potential volume,” he says. “Monitronics has incentives in this program to continue to better them and help them so that they rise to become that next-level authorized dealer. They are still within our family and they have the potential to make some more money as well as have a full-fledged company for themselves that they are managing A-to-Z.”
Miller says they expect to convert half of those who join the RISE program into authorized Monitronics dealers.
“We’re tailor making a program for these dealers in terms of training and support to where we can help them incrementally meet those goals,” Miller says. “We anticipate that we’ll see a 50 percent conversion of dealers that want to take that next step and graduate on but we do expect there will be some dealers that want to forever live in this program because they don’t have the goals or ambitions to become that full-fledged service alarm company and we don’t want to sit there and deter them away or alienate them from the program. The overall goal is to find the overall holes in their business, the goals they are trying to achieve and see where they need that extra help and we’ll target on that to help them reach that next level.”
For more information about the RISE program, visit MoniDealerProgram.com/RISE.
