Company acts on plan

NEPTUNE, N.J. - Committing to a plan to grow the business is all it took to increase yearly revenues to nearly $7 million last year from $2.5 million four years ago, according to John Ventrella, president of Systems Sales Corp. “We made the conscious decision to grow the company,” said Ventrella, who founded the business in 1981 and predicts revenue for this year will climb to $9.5 million. Expanding its service and sales department was included in the company’s growth strategy. The expansion allows it to support larger and more sophisticated sales, as well as hiring a service manager and operations manager. In recent years, headcount at Systems Sales Corp. has more than tripled. “We wanted to be a company that attracted good talent,” he said. With the right people, the company would have the credibility it needed for the new market segments it intended to approach. Systems Sales Corp., a designer and provider of maintenance to commercial communication and life safety systems, credits fire-related accounts for 65 percent of its business. The majority of the company’s work is new and retrofit contracts for public schools within New Jersey. Fueling his desire to grow was the lack of one, strong force leading the industry within the state. “We didn’t see any dominate fire providers,” he said. “We saw an opportunity to grow.” Around the same time the company decided to increase its workload, New Jersey passed a law that calls for an investment of $8.6 billion over 10 years for the construction and renovation at 31 special needs school districts within the state. “Schools have always been a big part of our business,” said Ventrella.