Ring Your Clients Before They Ring You

Most security clients hear from their provider in two situations. Something has gone wrong, or the invoice is due. That is a poor way to run a relationship, and it is how a lot of contracts get lost without anyone ever making a complaint.

I have said before that the contracts you keep are won in the first month. I still believe that. But the contract you keep in year two and year three is won somewhere else: in the ordinary weeks when nothing is happening, and you choose to get in touch anyway.

Silence is not the same as satisfaction

When a site is running well, the client hears nothing. That is the job. But from their side, nothing happening looks exactly the same as nobody caring. They do not see the patrols, the checks, the small things your officers sorted out at 3am without telling anyone.

Then a competitor rings the site manager. Cheaper, friendlier, promises a better service. The person taking that call has had no contact with you for four months. You are a line on a budget sheet. It is not a hard decision for them.

Plenty of owners get blindsided when a client leaves. Often the client was not unhappy. They were simply never reminded why they were happy.

What a proactive call actually is

I am not talking about a sales call, and I am not talking about a relationship lunch. It is a short, regular conversation with whoever at the client owns the contract, with a simple shape:

• What went well since we last spoke.
• Anything that did not, and what you did about it.
• What is changing on their side: new tenants, new opening hours, building work, a different risk profile.
• One thing you would like to do differently, and whether they agree.

Fifteen minutes. Monthly for a site that matters, quarterly for a quieter one. Put it in the diary the way you would put a shift in the rota, because if it is left to "when I get a minute", it will not happen.

Bring the bad news yourself

This is the part owners avoid, and it is the part that earns the most trust. If there was a missed patrol, a late arrival, or a gap in cover that you filled at the last minute, tell the client before they find it. Say what happened, what you changed, and move on.

A client who hears about a problem from you, with the fix attached, concludes that you are running a tight operation. A client who finds out from their own staff, a week later, concludes that you were hoping they would not notice. The problem is identical. The outcome is not.

You need something to say

A review call falls flat if all you can offer is "no issues, as far as I know". Clients want specifics. How many incidents were logged. Which ones mattered. Whether the same issue keeps recurring in the same corner of the car park. Whether patrols hit their checkpoints on time.

If that information lives in a pile of paper pads and a manager's memory, the call is a guess. If it is in one place, searchable by site and date, you can prepare in ten minutes and talk about what actually happened rather than how you feel it has gone. That is a large part of why we built TacDesk the way we did: so that the record of the work is there when you need to show it, not reconstructed at the last minute.

But the call does not depend on any software. Start with whatever you have. A client who sees you turn up with specifics, even rough ones, treats you differently from one who gets a generic "all fine here".

It is cheaper than the alternative

Cutting the price to save a contract at renewal is a familiar move. It works, once, and it teaches the client that your price is negotiable and your service is not what they are paying for. Next year they ask again.

A regular review does the opposite. By the time renewal comes round, the conversation is about a provider they have heard from twelve times, who has told them the truth, and who has already raised the things they would have raised themselves. The price conversation gets a lot shorter.

It also gives you early warning. A site manager who mentions they are being moved on, or that head office is "looking at all suppliers", is telling you something you can act on. Without the regular contact, you find out when the notice period starts.

The senior contact matters most

Check who you are actually speaking to. The site manager who rings you about a missed lock-up is not necessarily the person who signs off the renewal. Make sure someone above them hears from you too, at least a couple of times a year. If the only person who knows your name leaves, you start again from nothing.

None of this is complicated, and it costs very little next to what you spend winning new work. If you want to think about where the growth effort should go more broadly, I wrote about how to set a marketing budget as a security company. My view is that keeping what you have comes first, and the cheapest way to do that is to ring people before they ring you.

Make it a habit this month

Pick your three most valuable contracts. Book a fifteen minute call with each client contact in the next two weeks. Go in with the incidents, the good news, one thing you have fixed, and one question about what is coming up on their side. See what you learn.

If you would like to see how TacDesk keeps the record of your sites in one place, so you are never short of something to say, you can book a demo and I will show you.

Michael Bryce, founder of TacDesk