The distributor highlighted its recurring revenue services at the 2017 Total Tech Summit and discovered many integrators were more than ready to begin offering them.

At the 2017 Total Tech Summit, recurring revenue was a topic of conversation for many integrator guests, whether they simply were intrigued by the idea, ready to start implementing such services or already utilizing these revenue streams, Almo Pro A/V was there to show them how valuable them can be.

Almo offers a wide range of products and services applicable to integrators across many verticals. Through boardroom presentations and one-on-one meetings, company representatives set out to demonstrate to them the services concept and how adding them can improve margins on a job and is a great source of recurring revenue.

Rob Voorhees gives a presentation during a boardroom meeting at the 2017 Total Tech Summit.

“One of the things we really like about the Summit was the one-on-one, 15-minute meetings,” explains Almo Pro A/V sales director Fred Rogers. “It’s a great time for us just to get in front of the customer, talk about our services and really just understand their approach to business and what they’re focused on for 2018. We wanted to really focus on the recurring revenue model for them.”

“As soon as we started talking about recurring revenue and how the thought process works around it, a dealer of ours looked at us and said, ‘That’s great. Because I don’t like starting every month out at 0.’ And, that really stuck with me,” adds Almo Pro A/V business development manager Rob Voorhees.

“I actually used that in our other meetings. It was really the ‘aha moment’ for a lot of our other partners because they thought about it and realized they’re never starting the month at 0. They always have the jobs that they did last month that are paying out this month and they are rolling over every month. That one phrase really hit home with a lot of our partners.”

As Voorhees explains, any distributor can sell a cable and collect the profits. But, Almo tries to focus on the added value, such as content creation and support for Internet, TV and voice through its CONNECT services.

He says he wants his dealers to do more than just sell a projector to somebody to fill a job. He wants them to sell a complete solution, so they don’t have to look elsewhere.

“I think for some we spoke to, it was a brand-new and sometimes foreign concept,” says Voorhees. “But for others, when we said recurring revenue, their eyes immediately perked up and they thought, ‘tell me more. How do I get involved with this?'”

“Those dealers aren’t just saying, ‘here’s your monitor, here’s your digital signage setup that we’ve created for you,’” says Voorhees. “They’re saying, ‘here’s the setup we’ve created for you, but by the way, we’re connecting it, we have an installation booked tomorrow, we’ve created the content for you and here’s a performance plan to protect that investment.’ So, they’re providing all this value to their customers, and on the back end, our dealers are earning a really nice recurring monthly commission.”

“We talked to a lot of people inside the organizations who really are the decision-makers from the financial point, CEOs, the presidents and some of the VPs,” says Rogers. “With some of the companies, we’re finding that they want to have the recurring model. They want to find ways where they’re starting months off already with something in the bank. To our surprise, there are a lot of companies that don’t have that model right now. They’re not looking ahead at the next month, the next year where they want to be. They’re just going month-to-month based on their pipeline.”

Utilizing recurring revenue services will allow these companies to keep money coming in for as long as the customer keeps those services, which could be years. Many of the guests at the Total Tech Summit were wowed by the prospect.

Voorhees says he gained five new dealer partners from Almo’s connected services program just from meetings at the event, including one that led to a nice voice and internet deal with the American Dairy Association.

“If I personally hadn’t been at the Total Tech Summit to meet with these kind of partners, that type of deal never would have come to fruition,” he says. “It was a great couple of days’ worth of meetings out there, and I’m already reaping the rewards just from my conversations.”