SS&Si negotiates savings for dealers

DELTONA, Fla.—SS&Si Dealer Network, a two-year-old independent group based here that assists small and mid-sized security companies in growing their businesses, recently added another benefit for dealers: a savings on signs and decals.

That's because SS&Si has formed a new partnership with Maxwell Alarm Screen Manufacturing, a custom sign and decal business based in Chatsworth, Calif.

“Signs and decals—it's one of the simplest ways for security companies to market themselves, but there is a significant cost factor,” Jake Voll, SS&Si vice president of sales and marketing, told Security Systems News. But with the new partnership, he said, “we're able to save them about 10 to 15 percent now on their signs and decals.”

SS&Si, or Security Sales & Solutions Inc., rebranded in 2009 when the business morphed into a dealer network. Previously the company was a sales consulting firm, Security Solutions & Services Inc., which Voll's father started in 1998.

“As we developed more and more contracts throughout the industry and more and more people started hearing about us, we felt the need to add more to our service offering,” Voll told SSN. “We offered sales support but we wanted to give our dealers something more and that's really where the SS&Si dealer network formed.”

SS&Si currently has about 200 dealers in the program, and Voll said, “a lot of them don't have the resources on their own to maybe market themselves and learn about the products as in depth as they would like to. We teach them about the products, suggest helpful marketing strategies, and assist them in a number of ways that can help them in growing their business.”

SS&Si also offers dealers product discounts. “Right now, we've made Honeywell our partner of choice,” Voll said.

He said that SS&Si also “teamed up with some large printing facilities to offer them [dealers] really substantial savings on business cards, brochures and you name it. But what we really were lacking was the ability to save them significantly on the signs and decals.”

In the future, Voll said, “we're looking to take on possibly some national accounts, and we're looking for additional partners with other vendors as well as monitoring facilities.”