Why Security Is the Perfect Industry for High-Ticket Sales

Most trades sell one thing. Security sells four — and that changes everything.

In this episode of Entry & Exit, Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble break down why the security industry is uniquely built for high-ticket sales — and how operators turn small jobs into $50K–$100K+ projects.

They unpack the core advantage: multi-scope selling across fire alarm, intrusion, video, and access control — plus the “fifth scope” that expands deals even further. From real-world deal breakdowns to the compounding power of recurring revenue, this episode shows why security isn’t just another trade — it’s a sales engine.

Inside this episode:
 → The 4 core scopes that drive high-ticket security deals
 → Why security problems grow (and lead to bigger contracts)
 → How a $35/month account can turn into a $75K project
 → The role of urgency, regulation, and risk in closing deals
 → Why recurring revenue is the “eighth wonder of the world”

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Connect:

Stephen Olmon — http://x.com/stephenolmon

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

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Transcript

Selling Risk Not Parts

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're selling in plumbing, you're selling plumbing parts and pipes and stuff. If you're selling electrical, you're selling cabling and devices that you're wiring up those individual devices. If you're selling HVAC, you're selling condensers and the things that HVAC people sell. But we get the opportunity to really sell four core scopes. So that's fire alarm, burglar alarm, video, and access control.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

There's also often because of what it is and it's touching life safety, there's budget.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

The problem grows. It doesn't shrink. People are not saying, hmm, I want less cameras. I want less doors of access control. I want less coverage. Have you heard of the eighth wonder of the world?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

It's recurring revenue, baby. Welcome to entry and exit. My name is Steven Ullman, and my less attractive, better half is Colin Trimble. And we are talking about why security is the perfect industry for high-ticket sales.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

I love this one. This is a really good one. And I'll tell you this. I think that the reason why I like this so much is this was actually one of the things I wrote on a whiteboard to you in our love story, in the in our how I met my business partner. That's a throwback to how I met my mother, how I met your mother, just in case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

No, great reference. Yeah.

Four Core Security Scopes

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you very much. I think that the reason I like it is you're actually selling on risk. What you are selling is protection and risk of loss and peace of mind. And it is sort of a unique industry because, like, for example, if you're selling in plumbing, you're selling plumbing parts and pipes and stuff. If you're selling electrical, you're selling cabling and devices that you're wiring up those individual devices. If you're selling HVAC, you're selling condensers and blowers and you know the things that HVAC people sell. But we get the opportunity to really sell four core scopes. So that's fire alarm, burglar alarm, video, and access control. So there's whole industries dedicated to just one of those. All they do is sell video, or all they do is sell access control, i.e. locksmiths, or all they do is sell burglar alarm, which would be a classic alarm company or a fire alarm business. But if you are in a true, which most of us are, you can sell all four of those major scopes. And really, there's this kind of fifth scope, which is a catch-all for other stuff that's tangential to that. That would be things like uh public address systems. That would be things like low voltage cabling, automation, light, uh, audiovisual work, home automation. I mean, just a lot of different stuff that I think is really um attractive because so you're really selling more than just one scope. So I think that's a good starting place from a high-ticket perspective.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I will also say like you and I have both been in sales roles. Um and whenever you are having to try to sell something, and the problem is small, or your competitors are cheap, like that's not fun. So it's nice to be able to sell something that is expensive, like solving these problems often are fairly expensive. Um and there's there's also often because of what it is, and it's touching life safety, there's budget. Um and so it's uh I don't want to say like shooting fish in a barrel, like that I think is maybe a little naive to say, but I would way rather sell in this industry multi-scope for this sort of need. And by the way, often like we can talk fire even more specifically, like there is very intense regulatory issues that clients are facing and their businesses are being shut down because they got red tagged by the fire marshal, whatever it may be. Yeah, so there's lots of pain and it's expensive, and they have to fix these issues oftentimes, or even our customer, like their their customer expects them to have these things in place, right? Like obviously, if your kid is at some private school, you expect that that private school that you're paying$10,$20,000,$30,000 a year for to have great security in place. Right.

The Problem Only Grows

SPEAKER_00 4:19

So they've got to do something about it. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. I think another thing that's interesting is the problem grows. It doesn't shrink, right? So like people are not saying, hmm, I want less cameras, I want less doors of access control, I want less coverage. Less coverage. They yeah, they want all of it, right? And they want and and like there's if if they do get broken, like let's just say a company has access control, video, and and alarms, and they get broken into, then they're trying to say, okay, well, now I'm playing, now I want to like figure out how to solve for that problem. So now I've got a new area that I want to cover. I I didn't have cameras on the backside of my building. I didn't think they'd come through the roll-up doors, and they did. So now I need access control or a video or whatever. And like the problem continues to grow. And what makes it really great is it typically grows uh with the given customer. So if you do a good job, like if you're you know good at what you do, you're good at your craftsmanship, you will then grow from oh, one location to two locations to three locations or their corporate headquarters or whatever, and they generally value um good service and connection. So if you do, if you knock it out on the first one, that likelihood that they're gonna use you on another location is extremely high. And I think that's unique to our industry because I think in like, you know, HVAC or plumbing or whatever, you've really got to stay top of mind. It's like, okay, yeah, you solved this problem and it was like a good experience, but like it really comes a lot down to like price. It's super commoditized in other trades. And there's definitely some commodity element to the security and uh life safety world, but there's so many different features and solutions that a customer may say, well, this one's 20,000 and your solution's 30,000, but like dang, I'm gonna get all this extra coverage and all this extra feature set that like may actually drive a business problem for me as well. I can see when employees are coming and going or whatever.

Huge Market And TAM

SPEAKER_01 6:09

So yeah. Um, another thing that's true is that this is applicable to a wide variety of industries and sizes of organizations. Um, obviously that the price point and thinking about high-ticket, you know, some of the low end of the market, you know, may not be as applicable. I understand that. But the nice thing is if I'm putting my sales guy hat on and I want to go, you know, sell big deals and I love high-ticket sales, there's a huge tam. You know, it's it's not, I don't want to say everyone is your customer potentially, but it almost feels that way. I mean, basically every vertical and kind of the the middle, you you're not even after like the luxury end, like really kind of the middle of that market and up market is all yours to sell to.

Start Small Sell Up

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yeah. Uh theoretically, if you do commercial and residential, every home and every business is accessible to you. Right. And there may be some um certification or regulatory hurdles for if you want to go sell to a military base or a government entity, like, yeah, you're, you know, you may not have their compliance certificate or whatever, so you can't do that, or you may not be on, you know, hub certified or whatever. Like, there may be some things, but I would just say that that represents such a small amount of the market. And and I'll and man, I'll say this to the folks that are like, man, I'm really interested. I want to jump into this industry and do the high-ticket sales. The best way to get to high-ticket sales is to start with the stuff that's not high-ticket, the stuff that's not 50K. Go start with the stuff that's five and 10K, and then sell up to that customer. So sell, get the first dollar. We always tell somebody get to the first dollar. That's right. Get to the first dollar. And if you can get to the first dollar, you're gonna get more. And and the reality is you also get to grow with the customer, which is such a unique and fun thing. Like, I love hearing stories where we've gone in and done, you know, a very small intrusion system, a couple cameras, and maybe a door of access control. And that company grows, and now it's like, dang, we're opening three other locations, we want to use you guys. And it's like, dang, that's so fun. Like they're winning and we're winning. And like that is a unique thing about our industry.

Deal Example 75K Project

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah. So let's let's give people maybe a couple examples. Like, think of a couple of recent deals, some some of the you know, chunkier deals, and we don't have to say exactly who they were, but just kind of like the profile, the size deal, just to kind of whet the appetite.

Recurring Revenue Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah. I love that. Um, we recently had a medical facility. It was actually an investment group that owns real estate specifically in the medical industry. And they had bought a couple assets and they were looking to upgrade some of those assets. And we happened to like it was like suites that they had, and we monitored one of the suites. And so they saw our sticker, they called us, and we were the first one to answer their phone, right? And so what started was, hey, we want you to take over our burglar alarm monitoring. We said, Well, we we can, but this is just for this one suite. You guys have all these other suites, and they're like, Okay, well, how much is it gonna be to activate all those suites? It's like, well, that's a lot, and it's all gonna be separate, you know, panels, likely, unless you want to like redo the whole thing. And they're like, wow, okay, well, we also kind of want to add cameras and access control. And so the whole conversation just started to grow, right? It was like, you started out literally as a service call. We thought we were just going out there to reactivate a system. They got flipped over, the process worked flawlessly. It doesn't always work flawlessly, but I would say 80% of the time it does. It got handed off from service to a sales guy, sales guy was out there the next day. They were doing discovery with the customer to understand what they wanted. It started with the berg, then like, okay, maybe we should do a centralized berg system across the whole building. Okay, so we're getting a quote on that. And said, Well, can you integrate into video as well? And so we were doing a quote on video. And then it turns out that the server for their access control system was failing. So they wanted to go to cloud. So then it turned into that. So the whole thing grew and grew and grew and grew, and ended up to being a$75,000 deal that really truly started from one small medical office that we were doing, you know,$35 a month monitoring in a couple devices. It wasn't a huge office, and it started with that and grew into a$75,000 project. And I think that that's a kind of perfect use case for the high-ticket sales. It's awesome. Yeah, gets me fired up. Yeah, me too. More of those. More of those, please. Yeah. And I think one thing that's really important to talk about is uh this kind of hidden layer of value that comes with high tickets, Steven. Do you do you know what the hidden layer is of like the little the little cherry that ends up being the thing that maybe is the most important part of the whole deal? What's the little hidden cherry that comes along with that 50k deal?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

It's the eighth wonder of the world. Have have you heard of the eighth wonder of the world? It sure is. It's recurring revenue, baby.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

It's recurring revenue. AKA RMR, aka M R R. AKA A C V for our SaaS friends out there?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Don't get me arguing about software terms because ACV is not equivalent. Um it really does um just kind of enhance and sweeten the entire process and and deal and the way that we can uh frankly, the way we can pay salespeople and um and how we're able to kind of value those sorts of deals internally.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, and here's so here's the deal. On that 75k project, there was$950 of recurring revenue every month. God bless. Every month. And like it's a huge win for the customer, too. Like they're happy because it's providing them a service, they don't have to think about backup for the cloud stuff. I mean, it was just like it was win-win for both, but that's a gift that's gonna keep on giving to our business into perpetuity. Like it's not like, oh, we got this one project, we walk away, see you later. It also perfectly aligns us with the customer to make sure that we're gonna service them well and make sure that they're you know happy and that we're providing a good service. Because if they're not, then they'll cancel and we won't get that um recurrent revenue.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

There's there's another thing in sales, kind of this idea of order taking that we will kind of dunk on and make fun of. Like people that are just order takers, there is no consultative element to their sales ability or sales process. And the nice thing in this industry, and again, why I think it's perfect for high-ticket sales, is that it kind of requires us to be very consultative, um, to understand a lot about their business and their exact needs. Um, and so you get to build value. You talk about this a lot, building value within the sales cycle, within that sales process. And so that's another thing that aligns well to a high-ticket sale.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yep. Yeah, I think another couple of things, like the the four bullet points I would say are um, and it's expensive, it's an expensive problem. The deal size is big because there's a lot of scopes, there's urgency to fix the problem, and there's recurring revenue. And so if you've got those four things, you're really setting yourself up for a true enterprise high-ticket deal. And you're you're gonna be you're gonna kind of get it either way, right? Like even if it starts, even if the problem starts small, it's just a seed, like that thing is gonna continue to grow, and you'll get to that. So yeah, I think I think uh picking uh high-ticket sales in the security industry is built into the model, right? Like it's it's inherent in the industry because we're selling so many different services.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

There's not a lot of other industries that compare, actually. Selling jets, private jets, that'd be a cool one.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

It's kind of like our industry.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Uh is it? What's what's the recurring? I don't know about the recurring piece of that. Um, but uh yeah, I where you can get these big chunky projects plus really high quality recurring revenue with all of the regulation and safety and pain. I honestly think I am more convinced after the last 13 minutes of talking about this than I was before we started.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yeah, you're welcome. That's what we do here. And listen, if you like this type of content, what we would really like is for you to buy a really big ticket that leads you to subscribing to our channel. It's free. And also it's a free ticket. It's the it's the most value high ticket, free ticket you've ever purchased in your life.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

High volume, high volume comments, please. Yeah, high volume comments. Yeah. Yeah, high volume comments.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

But anyway, we appreciate you listening. Hope you're having a great week.