The DMP panel installs I did in 2019 are night and day from today's jobs

Five years back I was wiring up 8 zones max with a couple keypads and a phone line dialer. Now I'm running 32 zones with cellular, wifi, and a dozen sensors on most houses. The difference is the customers expect the app to work before I leave the driveway. I had one guy in Fort Worth time me on adding his third user to the panel, said his old guy took 20 minutes. Has anyone else noticed the sales side changed more than the hardware? Seems like the quotes I do now are twice the length and half the margin.

1 comments

1 Comment

williams.kim11d ago

Aw man, that timeline check in Fort Worth is brutal but honestly kind of funny. But heres the thing nobody brings up: the hardware IS the easy part now. The real shift is that we went from selling a security system to selling a promise of convenience. Back in 2019, if the keypad worked and the dialer called the right number, you were done. Now the app has to update the zone names perfectly, the cellular signal needs to hold, and the customer expects you to teach their grandma how to arm it from her phone while you're still on the ladder. What used to be a 45 minute install is now a 3 hour show and tell about their own house. The margin shrinkage makes sense because we're basically doing IT work now, and nobody pays IT rates for a doorbell install.

-2