The RMR Playbook for Alarm, Security, and Fire Businesses

In this episode of Entry & Exit, hosts Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble (Alarm Masters, Houston) break down how security, alarm, fire, and life safety companies can shift from a project-first mindset to an RMR-first operating model—without slowing sales, damaging culture, or killing momentum.

They explain why installs should be treated as the onboarding experience to recurring monthly revenue, not the finish line—and how to build discipline around selling monitoring, cloud solutions, inspections, and service agreements on every job.

From sales compensation and KPIs to vendor strategy and customer onboarding, this episode is a tactical guide to building a healthier, more valuable, and more resilient security business—even if you’re not planning to sell anytime soon.

If you run a security, alarm, fire, or life safety company, this episode lays out a clear blueprint for turning installs into long-term cash flow and enterprise value.

You’ll learn:

• Why RMR is the foundation of a healthy security business
• How to make recurring revenue the goal, not an afterthought
• Why installs should always lead to monitoring, service, or expansion
• The RMR metrics that actually matter (RMR per install dollar, revenue mix, lines per customer)
• How diversified RMR (cloud video, access control, managed services) reduces churn
• The operational discipline required to scale subscriptions without chaos
• Why buyers and owners value RMR so highly during downturns and exits

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Stephen Olmon: https://x.com/stephenolmon

Collin Trimble: https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy

More Entry & Exit: https://www.entryandexit.co/

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Transcript

 Welcome to Entry and Exit. My name is Steven Ulman. This is Colin Trimble, my business partner and co-host. We started Entry and Exit to provide practical and tactical advice to leaders in the life safety and security industry to try to help you grow your business. 

Today we are talking more about how to get RMR from your installs.

Um, we are obviously extremely passionate about RMR. Some of this will be some kind of tactical. Ways, some of it probably won't be a huge surprise to, to a listener if they're already in the security industry, but what we really want to do is start to think about how to shift the culture in your business around getting more RMR.

We, we talk to companies all the time that say, yeah, we do the install. You know, we do a fire install and we, you know, sometimes we get the monitoring or sometimes we get the inspection or yeah, we'll sell cameras, we try to sell cloud, but if they don't really like it, then you know, we'll go OnPrem and so.

We wanna talk about how to make R mar the central theme of what you are doing. Um, I think that ultimately the most important type of revenue, Steven, is the one that continues to come in the door each month or each quarter or each year. Agree, disagree? Yeah. 

Um, a hundred percent. And how many times have we sat with an owner who said, man, I, I wish that I would've focused on this more.

Over the last 15, 20 years. Yeah. And you know, a lot of times just in the last few years, it's become something that's, you know, more of a focus, they're more engaged on, they're, they're trying to put more focus and strategy around it, but oftentimes they feel like it was almost too little, too late. 

Yeah, I agree.

I, I think that, um, the best time to do it is to start today. Uh, there's obviously an enterprise value reason why RMR helps, it helps drive the value of your business. But even if you're not trying to sell your business, which we have, we're not trying to sell our business right now, but we, we really want to healthy business.

We want a stable business. I want a business where I wake up, uh, you know, every morning and I know that my business is generating money even when we're not even open. And, uh, I think that that's really important. Predictable cash flow is important. Mm-hmm. 

Yeah. It smooths it out. Right? So obviously we do service work, we do install work, but the recurring revenue smooths out, you know, the kind of the, the peaks and valleys of revenue and those potential, especially the, the valleys, those troughs, like those times of the year where, oh, we don't do as much install work around the holidays.

Yeah, 

if you've got a bunch of annual payments that typically get paid in Q4, that might kinda smooth things out. So there's a very practical, um, kind of cash management, uh, component to, um, the, the benefit of recurring revenue outside of enterprise value or anything like that. Right? It's just like you're, you know, cash in the bank.

Like you said, you wake up and, um, another, you know, deposit hit. It's a great feeling and many other industries are entirely focused on recurring revenue as kind of the value driver. Think like pest. Lots of home service like pest control and landscape software companies like lots and lots of industries are predicated on recurring revenue and that is like the entire model.

I've always really enjoyed this industry because. You can do chunkier, kind of install projects and you can get some kind of cash injection there. But I think a lot of businesses get too focused on that cash injection and kind of get addicted to the cash upfront. And don't always think about, you know, we talked about early on, like creating a hybrid model.

Yeah. And I think we've done that really well. 

Yeah, that, that kind of leads me into my next sort of train of thought, which is treating. Um, the project, like it's the finish line and not thinking about the project is sort of the onboarding experience to your RMR. Um, we, you know, and for example, our sales team has a quote of generate per sales guy, 12 to $15,000 of RMR by the end of the year, right?

So that's not annual. That'd be like, no matter how they pay on a monthly basis, it's 12 to 15,000. That right there, that amount of RMR effectively pays for the next sales person. Like, think about that, right? Like if you're a business owner and you could generate $12,000 of additional revenue per month in January of next year.

You'd probably be a lot more convinced to hire that next salesperson. Yep. And I think a lot of business owners think about RR, like, yeah, yeah, I know I need to sell it. Like it's, it's the value of my business, but I'm not really motivated to sell right now. Like, I'm just trying to get the deal over the finish line.

And I get that. I totally understand that. I think that changing your, your philosophy and your, your mindset around this sale is not worth. As much to me if it doesn't have high amount of RMR. And in fact, we're kind of in a place where there are some exclusions, but we don't even really sell it if it doesn't have recurring revenue.

Even a small amount, like if we do a, you know, quarter million dollar fire alarm job, I'm getting 90 bucks a month of fire alarm monitoring and you know, and cellular out of it. So. We're always trying to figure out a way to generate incremental revenue or, or a service contract. You know, Hey, you just got this brand new, like, let me give you an inspection and service contract.

So I think not treating the install is sort of like, okay, now we're done. Let's move on. And dude, I think there's a whole thing we could, I'm not gonna talk about this today, but there's a whole sales element here of like. A lot of people sell stuff to their customer. Like how many times do you know, have we heard, we go out and see a customer and they're like, yeah, we, we really need cameras and, and access control.

But we're like, we have to have a fire alarm right now. And it's like, well, you don't wanna do the video and access together. No, we've really had to get this thing done. So they install the fire alarm, they crush it, everybody's happy, the bill's paid. No one's following up with the customer unless the customer's following up with them.

So it's like, man, it's a, it's a connection point for you to always be interacting with that company. 'cause whenever they say. Yeah, I do need its time to do this access control and video thing. They're gonna know who their company is. So 

yeah, the, um, the, it's kind of like. A lot of things in life and in business of just the, the long term versus the short term.

Right. 

Yeah. 

And whether it is a lack of discipline from a sales perspective. 'cause you just don't want to be, you know, we, we talked about last episode being awkward. Yeah. And said, you know, it's awkward not hitting your quota. Well, you know, what's, what's awkward is not building a business that can be sustainable long term.

Yeah. Like if you're constantly just living project to project. When you had an opportunity, like I understand that some business models are just simply project work, you know? Right. Like you build decks for people's backyards. There's no real recurring model to that. I get it. Um, but in this case, this business model's like just sitting there waiting for you to take advantage of it.

And the way that modern technology cloud technology has shifted in this industry, it's. It's wasteful to not take advantage of those conversations, those leads, and make sure that you are capturing some recurring revenue along the way. Yeah, and I, you know, you know, I hate waste. So yeah, it's, you're wasting good opportunities, good shots on goal.

If you're just bang out the project, do the install, think of it like, that's it. Move on to the next one. Um, very, you know, super construction oriented. And not, not thinking about the long term. Um, 

it also depends on how your team, right. It's like, how's your team, um, compensated? And, and I think it's so funny, like I remember being at Bvo back in the day and I would try to go talk to the owners and say, you need to compensate your sales people.

Like, well we do, we give 'em a little spiff. If they, if they sell RR it's like, man, you can't give him a spiff. You gotta tie a quota to it. You gotta say your job. Is dependent on this recurring revenue, and here's why I give my salespeople the why. I tell them every single day, Hey, obviously it helps with cashflow for the business, but the real reason is you're paying for the next you.

You're paying for the next guy or gal that we hire. And that's how we scale this team. And more opportunity and more people creates more opportunity for you to move up and higher salaries and all the things. And so it is, if not. The same value to us. It is equally as important as a big chunky installation project is how much RR did we generate outta that deal?

Yeah, 

and it's, I think that that's the key concept here. Every owner, if you've been in the security or life safety industry has heard RR, it's important, I know I need it, blah, blah, blah. I think the thing is, is you've gotta make a decision or how serious are you gonna take this? Are you gonna make this the central goal and KPI for your business that you're gonna be reporting on in your leadership meetings?

Or is it kind of an afterthought? And that's really telling, right? Like that's gonna be, that's gonna be where your company goes, like, depending on where you measure is where the company is gonna go. 

Yeah. And this is not exactly how the business, you know how Alarm Masters was when we bought it? It, it wasn't functioning exactly like this.

There was RMR to be clear. Um, so it's not like there, that was not a focus at all, but it was not necessarily the heartbeat of the business when we bought it. We had to, we had to turn it in that direction. 

Yeah, and I think another thing that's really important is diversified. RMR creates a stickier customer.

So the more lines of recurring revenue you have with the customer, um. We have not lost a single cloud video, a cloud or video, uh, company, a, sorry, a cloud access control or video customer that we have signed up. We have not yet lost. Um. They are sticky, they're around, they're, and happy with the product. It is so central to their every single day life that it's like I, I, my business is now built around this access control system.

It's sort of like, uh, it it like you're, you know, this is kind of a stretch, but like an ERP or your email platform. It's like, Hey, I'm using this every single day. Like, yeah, could I go save a couple dollars? Maybe, but like, I don't wanna risk the disruption, like I'd rather just pay the premium or whatever.

Um, and so I think that it creates a really sticky customer that drives a lot of value. And the more lines, the more hooks, if you will, kind of crude way to say it, the more hooks you have into the customer, the stickier they become. So, 

yeah. 

Um, 

that's, that's a good segue into just general measurables and KPIs.

Yeah. So one is how many, uh, recurring services, like per customer, you know, exist, um, what percentage of installs. That we're doing our, you know, come along with RMR. Mm. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, that number again, we talked about when we bought the business three years ago, has probably over doubled just from Yeah.

You know, uh, what, what do you think that is today, shooting from the hip percentage of installs that have recurring revenue with it today? 

I mean probably 95%, like truly the only time we sell something. This is a real world answer to that, is I am, I got an existing customer that has a fire alarm system that we already monitor and they need to replace that fire alarm system for one reason or the other.

And so we're not getting an additional RMR. We already have their RMR, but we're not getting additional RMR outta that customer 'cause we're selling a fire system that already has additional RMR. Now we'll try to sell 'em a maintenance contract. Or we'll try to convert their inspections to monthly, uh, subscriptions.

Um, but yeah, at 95%, like if we're selling video access control berg, it's coming along with RR and we're gonna try to sell the inspection in the preventative maintenance in the form of recurring revenue as well. My whole team's comped on it, so my sales guys are sold out on trying to sell inspections as a subscription because they're comped on it.

If they don't, they don't get a single dime from it. They don't get anything from an inspection that happens a year later, uh, unless they lock it down underneath a subscription, uh, when they sell the deal. 

Yep. Yeah. Another, another metric that we look at, just very simple, is for a given month or quarter or year, what is the percentage of our revenue?

That came from a subscription. Yeah. We, we typically look at it as kind of subscription based revenue, service revenue and project revenue or install revenue. Yeah. Kind of those three buckets. That's, um, yeah. And, you know, the, the higher, the better is a general rule. Um, yeah. I think if, if it's so high, if you're, you know, 80, 90% of your revenue was subscription, that probably means you're doing very little install work.

Which for us is where a lot of RMR lead generation comes from. So, you know, there's, there's kind of a relationship there, but, um, you know, if you're 40, 50 plus percent subscription revenue, then you're crushing it. 

Yeah. You're crushing it. And it, and it's not just about the stability too. It's about those are now accounts that are likely going to spend another dollar with you.

And if you've heard us preach about it, your best source of, uh, leads is your existing customer base. Um, and it's so funny how often we talk to people and they're like, yeah, but eventually, like, you're gonna run out, right? Like, you're gonna run out of customers to sell to. It's like, yeah, we haven't yet.

You know, like, baby, I don't, you know, like eventually, yeah, we'll keep adding accounts too. So we do sell new logo and we're all about that, and I'm like, we, we should probably do an episode on like our new logo strategy and how we think about it. Um, but, but that RMR just creates an opportunity for you to drive more value to that customer and have a good relationship with them.

Um, another thing that we're looking at is, this is real, 'cause I just set quotas for our sales team last month, is, um, to, uh, what percentage for every install dollar, I guess this goes to percentage, but like for every install dollar that you're generating. How much are you generating in RMR dollars? Right, so if I'm selling a $10,000 job, I'm hopefully generating about $120 of recurring revenue from that particular job.

And that's a really good benchmark 'cause it a helps you inform. Um, quotas for one, for your sales team. So that's a practical thing. But the other thing that I think it improves is it helps you start to focus on how do I increase that number, uh, and how do I drive that number higher? Uh, and that's ultimately gonna help you sell.

And also listen, attrition is a natural part of our business. And if you are not selling new RMR price, increasing your way out of attrition is never gonna be the strategy that's gonna work. Correct. Right. So having quotas and KPIs around your RMR and then the different lines of RMR. So the other thing we look at is when you sell a deal, how many different lines of RMR are you selling?

So if you're selling a Berg system, are you selling. You know, monitoring for the Bur system. And also are you getting, um, video verification? Are you getting maintenance agreements? Are you getting in inspect, you know, whatever. So we're always looking at how many different lines of RMR are you selling? And we look at that on a per customer basis too.

So we're trying to see how many lines of RMR are we selling to a given customer? And those are customers that have higher propensity to buy more from us. Yep. That's right. 

Hmm. What else? 

Yeah, I think that, um, one thing that's really important is mapping out and sort of documenting your, I think one place where people get hung up.

I was thinking about this 'cause Johnny notes about this before our episode, thinking as a person that has never sold our, like our business aside from burglar, alarm, video access control, all of that was sold on-prem, didn't have any recurring revenue, there was no maintenance agreements, anything like that.

What I realized is one thing that may be preventing some folks from, or it was for us selling more RMR, is, um, your, it, it requires process change on the way that you onboard your customers. In the way that you bill them, in the way that you handle cases and the way that you adjust their billing. Like there's, there are things, there are steps that have to take when you onboard and offboard a customer, which by the way, super important.

If you're not, if you don't have an offboarding process, you're probably paying for customers. You're probably getting charged from a vendor for a customer that's not paying you. So having a really tight off-boarding process is really important. Shout out Brian, uh, for a great tight off-boarding process.

Um. The point is you need to have a process that is really tight for how you are going to onboard a new customer. Everything from sales, like here's the pricing and what we're willing to do from a margin perspective to, okay, now it's being onboarded. Does your project manager or your office manager or whoever is kind of like taking it from sales and rolling into operations.

They know what to do with those subscriptions. They know how to hand those off. When do they start charging them? When's the activation date? Like I think having that really tight is. Extremely important in communicating to the customer, Hey, we're gonna activate your subscriptions on this date at this time.

Here's how much it is gonna be post-sale. I think having those mechanics worked out ahead of time. He's really important. 'cause you know, sometimes I like to fly by the seat of my pants a little bit and I'm like, let's just figure it out. Like let's go sell it and we'll figure it out. We're here for the vibes and, uh, my project manager team doesn't love that.

Um, and so I think having some of that documented ahead of time is gonna help drive your team's willingness and desire to sell our mar type products. Right? Yep. What do you think Steven, about, um. I think there's some truth to selling. RMR is e uh, based products is easier when you have a few vendors that you're really familiar with and good at versus having mo everybody under the sun.

Like, don't you think that that matters if you're trying to sell every video product under the sun and only a few of 'em have RR versus you're gonna sell two. Don't you think that that, like, that's a distinction that matters. 

It touches a few different things in the business. So one, um, from, I mean, actually so many parts, but, um, from a sales perspective, like not all solutions are made the exact same.

So like you're just asking more of your salespeople if they're having to kind of like master many different manufacturers products and technologies and so mm-hmm. They may not convert as well. If they've got nine different things in their brain and they're trying to, you know, filter that down, if it's a little more simple and paired down and you've got your go-to solutions, yeah, they probably just through repetition and familiarity are gonna have more mastery in that sales process.

Um, two is, um, from an install perspective and not having, you know, uh, to have to go back out mistakes. Um, incorrect part selection, whatever it may be. Whatever, like operational issues when you've got a multitude of vendors, like that just adds complexity into the system. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, so it's easier to sell, it's easier to install, it's easier to manage on the backend from like a data perspective, warranty, like just relationship management with your vendors, like all of it.

Yeah. Um, and so if you're going to, let's say. You do 3 million top line a year and you have $10,000 of RMR currently. So you have a really low ratio of RMR to top line. Yeah. And you're like, you know what Colin and Steven said, I have to get serious about this and I'm gonna do it. 

Mm-hmm. 

Well, a bad decision is to try to be everything to everyone and you know, have umpteen vendors that you're trying to Yeah.

You know, install and manage. So if you're going to get serious about RMR, then yeah, I would. I would really maybe like what, two Two vendors? 

Yeah. 

Per, you know, um, yep. The only outlier to that is if you have a really large opportunity, if they've specked something, you know, maybe you try to like solve for that and be flexible.

Yeah. Outside of that, the ones Z twosies, the smaller jobs, like, man, I would just stick to your guns. 

Yeah. I agree. I also think that if you are so sold out on selling a cloud-based product, which is an RMR based product you like, we've had customers, just as an example, we've had customers that say. W this, this is actually a real example in the car recently it was with a sales guy and he said, yeah, I tried to sell this guy.

He wants new cameras. I sold him, you know, a cloud-based solution. And he, he didn't, he said no to the proposal 'cause he didn't want the subscription. He asked me to quote him something that, that didn't have a subscription. And I said, okay, what did you tell him? He's like, oh, I told him I figured it out.

Like, we'll work with him, we'll figure it out. And I said, okay, well let's get him on the phone. Let me try, lemme have a conversation. So we talked to the guy on the phone and I was like, the guy's, the customer's name was Dean. And I said, Dean, hey man, listen, my sales guy said that you, you know, had some heartburn over the subscriptions.

Like, why don't you talk to me about that? Like what's, you know, it sounds like the 150 bucks a month is. Kind of a deal killer for you? Like, does that have to do with your business operation? You know, same old thing, like, no, I just don't want subscriptions. I've got so many subscriptions, subscription fatigue.

I don't wanna pay a monthly bill, like I wanna pay this one and done. I was like, totally, I get it. Uh, I think everyone's got a little bit of subscription fatigue. Um, here's what I'll say. We're not gonna sell you something other that we don't feel like is good for you. And so we're not gonna sell you something that's not cloud-based.

And here's why. Everybody is moving to the cloud. All the solutions, all the innovation, all the r and d, everything they talk about. We go to these industry conferences. And everything is cloud. The whole thing is cloud. Everything is cloud themed and that's where their attention is. So like how awful would it look on me, Dean, if I sold you a system and then it's not supported anymore in nine months?

Your system's not supported by the manufacturer because they want to go to cloud. Like that makes me look bad. So I'm not willing to deliver that experience for you. So like we can work on trying to figure out. Reducing the scope or reducing your retention time or the quality of the video stored. But it would be a mistake for me to try to sell you something on-prem, and I'm so sold out about it that I'm really not gonna get you a quote for anything else, because if I wouldn't have saw it for my house and my business, I'm not gonna sell it for yours.

And then I was like, yeah, totally get it. All right. Cool. Yeah, let's just do it. It was just like, it was so, and of course the sales guy was like, no, I, you know, I told him all that. Like, I told him all that and I was like, I get it. You know, sometimes it makes, you know, it makes a difference when somebody comes over the top.

But the point is, is like, hey, if, if you believe in this thing and you're basically saying. I'm not desperate for a deal. I'm desperate for providing you the right solution, and I'm not willing to step on my foot like we always say around here, we're long-term greedy, you know, like I am willing to sacrifice in the short term because I want the long-term relationship.

And so I'm willing to say no to you on a decision right now that I think is bad for you because I think long term it's gonna put us in a bad position. So like we are, we're long term greedy, we want to make sure that people know that like. We will, we will do what is best for them. 'cause we're trying to build an enduring business that's around for decades, uh, not two years, you know?

And so I think, I mean, you've had some experience with that. You've seen that in some of the sales guys, right? It's like they get hit with that first objection and it's like, ah, I don't know, cloud let's, yeah, sure. 

Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. The, the discipline to not just do anything for a deal 

Yeah. 

Is, it's just hard.

Yeah. And I've been there and get the temptation of it. Um, and I'm also not surprised because, you know, one Colin is not for hire as a salesperson. Back off two Colin is ICE to an Eskimo. So I'm not surprised that you, uh, you know, you had a, a teaching opportunity for sales team. I did. Um, that's good. I sure did.

And I'm not surprised that you convinced him. Um, yeah. But I also know that you were being genuine. And it's what we believe about what we're selling, and it was the right thing to sell. 

Yeah. Well, and, and so here's another thing that's like a little, uh, we've done this before, Steven, right? It's like we've got a customer that we know is probably gonna be a little resistant to subscriptions.

And so what we will do is we will package it as a year two, or even three years in advance. So I'll take that a hundred dollars a month and put in $2,400 for two years that, that's the math, right? Did I get that right? You know, I struggle. I think so. Okay. We'll go with it. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Some, some listeners are gonna be like, yo, your math is wrong, dude.

Um, what we'll do is we'll package it and we don't hide it from the customer, but I don't like put it glaringly on the proposal. I just say, Hey, your subscription is prepaid in this proposal for two years in advance. Your subscription will auto-renew on a month to month basis upon renewal. And a lot of times they'll say, well, you know, how much is the monthly?

And it's like, okay, well it's 2,400 divided by two years, you know, it's a hundred bucks a month. And they'll say, okay. And a lot of times they're just, they move on. And also our contracts specifically state, like, so we, if the proposals one thing and then the contract follows and it'll say the monthly amount that's at renewal, I, for some reason, not having to think about it monthly.

Is so consumable for customers, and I would advise you to start annually. Don't start monthly unless it is a fire alarm or burglar alarm, which customers are just like inherently used to paying on a monthly basis. I would start every one of your deals, like if you're gonna start selling cloud video tomorrow, package it up for a year in advance.

You are gonna have a higher hit rate. Don't even say monthly. Don't say fee. People do this all the time. I have to train my sales guys like, yeah, you know, it's like a $10,000, uh, upfront and about a hundred dollars a month fee, cloud fee. I'm like, dude, it's not a fee, it's a subscription. Fee implies you're having to pay this one thing and you don't get any incremental value.

Subscription is, I'm Netflix. You're gonna get new content, you're gonna get season five of Stranger Things. You know, seven and a half years later, like, you're going to get, you're going get new content and you're gonna get new features. And that's why inherently cloud is supportive. So again, I'm clearly passionate about this and obviously that's my background, but I've just seen it play out and, and I'm sure many of our listeners have too, right?

Like how many times did we get phone calls? Total cost of ownership too, right? I mean. Right. Same. I had a, I had a guy, Steve and I had a guy, uh, this week who I was talking to another owner and he was like, dude, if you're so sold out on service business, why don't you sell 'em on-prem systems? 'cause they need more service.

Like you would just generate more service calls. And I'm like, yeah, it's a good question, but it feels like a little unethical. Like probably not the approach we're trying to take. Um, yeah, but it was kinda a funny point 'cause it is true. We are sold out on service. Uh, but I think, I mean, I think that that's, those are not mutually exclusive.

Like yes. We're not gonna, they're not gonna do firm work on service the right way. Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, let's talk some RR expansion levers. Um, what are some different things you can sell on RR? So we'll just kind of go through a hit list and then we will kind of wrap it up, but a hit list of things you can sell.

So obviously berg and fire alarm monitoring. Cellular to support those monitoring, interactive for burglar alarms. So that'd be like alarm.com or dmp, something like that. Um, and then there's video, but a lot of people think, oh yeah, the software and the storage. Yeah, so there's that. There's software and storage.

There's also analytics and a lot of people think analytics. Now that's enterprise, that's too expensive, man. A lot of our video vendors, their analytics are a couple bucks, a a couple bucks per camera for things that are like. Incredibly important. One of them is people and vehicle detection. And so what we do is a lot of times customers will pair this up with their burglar alarm, and so we'll put cameras like by the entrances, and then it isolates like people that look like they're, you know, doing something suspicious or whatever during certain hours, and they'll get an alert so they can then look at it, so they can then call.

The police before the monitor, the before the alarm system even goes off. So that's a couple bucks per camera. You don't even have to have it on each one. Or like another one that a lot of our customers love is, um, archiving the footage. So, you know, a lot of times it's stored for 30 days. So they could take a clip that's like five minutes long of a slip and fall and they can put it in a folder that's archived indefinitely.

So it's like, Hey, you get, uh, a hundred gigs of archive footage in here that just is there as long as you're a customer. And I think that that's a really powerful upsell for video. Um. Access control, cloud access control's a big one. There's different access control features, like, um, using, um, license plates, uh, as a credential I think is a really great like upsell.

Uh, another one that I really like is, um, they'll do like door prop notification, which I think is huge, especially in retail environments, is, hey, if you've got somebody that props open the back door and it'll send alerts and it'll also like prompt a phone call from the monitoring station, but a big one, which is a big initiative for us this year.

And we're trying a solution for this. Candidly, we don't do it today. If you're a listener and you are doing this today, like please leave us a comment, um, is managed access control. So we, we don't have, we have a few customers we that do this, but uh, we don't do it at scale and we want to, where basically we add and delete the cards for the customer.

So they email us and say, Hey, add Johnny. He's in the finance group. We send 'em up in the system, we send them a card. And Johnny's good to go. Hey, Johnny's. Johnny's outta the system. Okay. We removed Johnny from the system, so that's a great way to generate RMR. Extremely sticky. I think you kind of have to nail that.

Um, if you're gonna do it, but I think that's a really great one. Um, and then, and then the last one is just around inspections and, um, you know, preventative maintenance would just be, you know, go, if it's cameras, cleaning off the lenses, straightening them, doing firmware upgrades at the camera. Um, if, if you're taking it over, you're doing, you know, making sure that all the, uh, default passwords are set to something proprietary and the customer knows what those default passwords are, that the new passwords are.

So doing some things that are like. Going to increase the total cost of ownership. So I think those are all RMR expansion levers that you can sell that, uh, well, I know they are, that you can sell, that can drive more RMR and create more demand in your business. Um, yeah. Steven, you have anything to add to that?

Um, I mean we have, uh, this is different than what you're selling, but I mean, just from like a customer profile, ICP, you know, we have a bunch of multi-locations, so Yeah, anytime Do you also can look at. Identifying like new logo, but you know that they have six locations around town. You get one you across and you lean and expand.

I mean, that's a different version of that. Um, right. Which we've done successfully. 

Yeah, no doubt. Um, I think just to kind of close Steven, talk us, talk to us more about like your experience from doing multiple deals and evaluating hundreds of companies looking at hundreds of sims. Why you think RMR makes your business healthier, more valuable, more sellable if you are in the market to sell?

Talk to us about that. 

Yeah, so, uh, a lot of buyers generally just, uh, value recurring revenue higher than they, you know, it's like, I've heard the phrase like, not all EBITDA or not all profit is made equal. So you could look at a business that's doing $2 million a year in profit, um, and, and another one doing the same amount in profit one, over 50% of that revenue is recurring or reoccurring.

The other one is 5%, right? It just comes back to what we always talk about of where's your next dollar coming from. Yeah. And so the, the value, the certainty or uncertainty, um, you know, when there's been waves of macroeconomic. Stress, you know, like, uh, multifamily new construction slows down in certain markets and now like your big contracts are all stalled out and you thought you were gonna do $4.5 million this year, and now you're staring at a million bucks and you're like, I don't know where my other revenue's gonna come from.

So that's just all very practical, painful realities you have to deal with. And so. When you have recurring revenue that smooths that out and, um, mitigates risk, um, it's just more valuable and 

yeah. 

Um, it's, it's pretty, pretty simple, uh, but it takes a lot of hard work and focus to build a business that's like that.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think that there's things to think through before you roll this out, particularly around sales and operational. Uh, I think make a list. You know, we always like to give homework. I would say the homework would be make a list of the things in your business operation that have to change for you to support selling higher levels of RMR and what you have to do to make it a focus.

Uh, because I think that's ultimately gonna drive, drive a lot of the value for you. So, anything else? To close this out, Steven, go sell some RMR baby. Go sell some RMR, and while you're selling RMR and while you're listening, we would love it if you would rate this video and or podcast if you'd leave us a review.

If you'd subscribe, you tell people about it. That would be super helpful for us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We hope you have a fantastic week. I.