A security proposal is only as good as what got written down while you were standing in the building. Two documents made on site turn a three-day writing job into an hour, and they’re the same two that stop an argument about scope six months later.
Integrators walk a site, take a lot of photographs, have a good conversation, and go back to the office. Then the proposal takes days, because the details that would have made it specific are no longer available, and what comes out is a system description with a number at the bottom.
Worse, that vagueness survives into the contract. Nobody writes down whether the side door by the loading dock was included, so nine months later two people remember the conversation differently and one of them is paying for it.
In short
- A door schedule and a coverage statement are the two documents worth building on site.
- Every camera gets a sentence saying what it’s for. A camera with no stated purpose gets cut on price.
- Write the constraints down while you can still see them. They’re the reason your number differs from a cheaper one.
The door schedule
Every opening in the building gets a row, including the ones nobody intends to control. That last part is what makes it useful.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Door number and location | Your own numbering, marked on a floor plan or a sketch |
| Existing hardware | Lock type, closer, strike, any existing reader or contact |
| Egress | Whether it’s on an exit route, because that decides what is permitted there |
| Proposed | Reader, contact only, camera, or nothing |
| Power and path | Where power comes from and how cable gets there |
| In or out of scope | Stated explicitly, including the doors you’re not touching |
The last column is the one that pays for itself. A proposal listing eight doors is ambiguous about the ninth. A door schedule listing all twelve, with four marked out of scope, can’t be misread by anybody.
It also makes the next phase easy to sell. Four doors marked out of scope this year is a written list of what the building might do next year, and you wrote it.
One sentence per camera
Camera counts are where proposals get cut, because a reviewer with no security background sees a quantity and a price and asks whether twelve could be nine.
They ask that because nothing on the page says what any individual camera is for. Give each one a purpose written in plain language and the question changes completely.
“Camera 4, northeast corner of the lot, covers the two accessible spaces and the path to the rear entrance. Camera 7, loading dock, positioned to read plates on vehicles at the gate, not the dock itself.”
Now removing a camera means removing a stated capability, which is a decision somebody has to own. That’s a completely different conversation from trimming a quantity on a spreadsheet.
Constraints, written on site
The things that make a job harder are visible for about an hour and then become invisible. Write them down at the building.
Block walls that need core drilling. A ceiling with no accessible path. A head-end room with no spare power. Conduit that has to go outside. A tenant space you can only work in after hours. Every one of those is a cost, and every one is also the reason your number is higher than the integrator who didn’t notice.
Put them in the proposal as a short list. A buyer comparing two numbers with no explanation picks the lower one. A buyer holding one number with five named site conditions attached has something to think about.
Get the survey booked
Abstrakt sets appointments with the property managers, facility managers, and directors of facilities planning commercial security work, so your team spends its week walking buildings instead of dialing. The survey, the number, and the job are yours.
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See how security company lead generation works
Network questions to ask while somebody is with you
Ask them during the survey, because getting the facilities person and the network person in the same room twice is hard.
Where is the nearest switch to each camera location, and does it have spare ports. Does it provide power over ethernet, and what budget. Who holds the credentials. Whether devices go on their own network segment, and who decides that. Whether recording stays on site or goes somewhere else.
Five answers, written down at the building, remove most of the reasons a signed project sits waiting. They also tell you whether your proposal needs to include switching, which is a large number to discover late.
What to leave before you go
The door schedule, as it stands. Handwritten is fine, photographed and emailed the same afternoon is better.
No integrator does this, and it changes the relationship immediately. The manager now holds a document about their own building that they didn’t have before you arrived, produced without being asked, before anybody has discussed money.
When the proposal follows a few days later, it’s not the first thing they have seen from you. It’s the second, and it matches the first.
Where security leads come from
Good survey notes make the proposal faster. They do not produce the survey in the first place, and that is the harder problem.
Security leads come almost entirely from facilities, operations and security people contacted before anything has gone wrong. A building dealing with an incident calls whoever it already knows, so arriving after the fact usually means arriving second.
There is very little inbound here. Buildings do not search for an integrator the way a homeowner searches for a locksmith, which means the companies with steady work are the ones making contact month after month while nothing is happening.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do security integrators get leads?
Almost entirely through direct contact with facilities, operations and security managers before an incident. Buildings rarely search for an integrator, so the work goes to whoever was already in touch.
Is cold calling worth it for a commercial security company?
It still works, because facilities and operations people are reachable by phone and rarely respond to email from companies they do not know. It takes consistent volume over months, which is where most integrators run out of time.
Should a security integrator hire a salesperson or outsource appointment setting?
The in-house comparison is not a salary against a retainer. It is salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software, ramp time and somebody to manage them. Outsourcing trades that for a fixed monthly cost and a faster start. Which is right depends on whether you can keep a salesperson busy and managed.
Keep going
- Security company lead generation
- Who signs for commercial security systems
- The four-minute prep before a security site survey call
- What to say when you cold call a facility manager
- Outsourced SDR services
About this article
Jeff Winters is Chief Executive Officer at Abstrakt. Reviewed by Neil Erker, Chief Marketing Officer. Abstrakt sets appointments for commercial security integrators and the wider trades, and the patterns here come from that calling.
Jeff Winters is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a U.S.-based B2B lead generation and appointment-setting company that books qualified sales meetings for clients across the commercial trades, IT and managed services, manufacturing, and B2B services. He has spent his career building and running outbound sales programs at scale, and he breaks down what actually works in sales and lead generation on Abstrakt's podcast, The Grow Show.
