Next month in Dallas, Alarm.com will host its first annual PowerUp Conference, a two-day training event where the company's dealers can come to take a variety of courses designed to improve their technical, operational and sales skills. Given how smart home and security technologies continue to evolve at such a rapid pace, the need for security dealers and their employees to stay up-to-date on the latest innovations and technical know-how is critical in today's business environment.
For years, alarm installers only needed to be proficient in deploying panels along with a few window and door contacts but those days are long gone. Today, dealers must be able integrate a host of security devices and other connected technologies to provide the whole home automation systems consumers are looking for. Those that can't risk losing business not only to traditional competitors in the dealer space but also upstarts in the do-it-yourself market, which only continues to grow.
Alarm.com has recognized this need for in-depth training which is why the company launched the Alarm.com Academy in 2012 and has continued to add a diverse curriculum of courses to it with each passing year. According to Katie Refano, director of training for Alarm.com, the company has seen significant growth in the number of dealers who have attended their various training offerings in the time since the academy was launched.
"We've continued to add on to the curriculum to meet the needs of our partners, so we started off with sales and marketing and really getting people to understand the tools we provide and now we've really built it out to be fully comprehensive around the customer experience," Refano explains. "At PowerUp, we're going to be debuting even more content on customer support and installation that we haven't had before, so we're continuing to grow the offering to make sure we put the right content out there for our partners."
At PowerUp, Refano says they have tried to create a "customizable experience" for dealers so they can learn about the topics that are most relevant to them and their businesses. "We have customer service classes, operations, sales and marketing, and different levels of technical training so people can really pick and choose what makes the most sense," she says. "We've had a lot of partners who've said, ‘I do sales and some technical,' and there is a lot of over overlap so we wanted to really help and tailor whatever is most important to them."
Among the specific training topics that will be covered at PowerUp include:
Installation: These sessions will teach technicians how to get every installation right the first time and in order to avoid future truck rolls by using Alarm.com's mobile tools. Techs will also earn continuing education units (CEUs) by taking part in these courses to help keep their qualifications up-to-date.
Operations: Managers who take part in these courses can learn how to get hands-on with system integrations, business intelligence reporting and account set-up tools.
Sales & Marketing: Dealer sales personnel will learn how to use the company's suite of resources to increase close rates, grow recurring monthly revenue (RMR), and maximize lifetime customer value.
Customer Support: These workshops on remote troubleshooting will be led by Alarm.com's C.O.R.E. support experts.
Because technology is always changing, Refano says that it's paramount that dealers know not only how to use and install the latest smart home and security gadgets but also be able to talk about their benefits with consumers. Alarm.com is also constantly getting feedback on how consumers are using their technology, which is knowledge that they can provide back to their dealer base through training.
"Think about the traditional security market and how everything today is about the smart home: making sure (dealers) have the right message and are able to convey that to their customers is really important," she adds. "We've done a lot of work updating our sales training and our technical levels, so we have beginner, advanced and all of these things now sort of meet that need."
Refano says that training requests from their dealers vary based on their individual needs but the one that is asked about most frequently is technical training, which they have sought to address by developing courses based on the experience levels of their partners.
"We're really trying to take a different approach to learning. Our partners are in the middle of the training, we have a lot of facilitators that come and it's really intimate… rather than just having an instructor at the front of the room in a very traditional style," she says. "Everything is learner-centered, we use a lot of real life scenarios and hands-on training so that we can really ensure they are retaining the knowledge and information we're giving them."
The PowerUp Conference is scheduled to take place Nov. 14-16 at the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre. For more information or to learn how you can register for the event, click here.