With their deep feature sets and accompanying learning curves, once integrators choose an automation partner, they tend to stick with them. But what if that partner is not the best fit for that business? Or what if the dealer has enough scale to offer more than one automation system? We checked in with several home automation system providers to find out what it takes — and how much it costs — to become their dealer partner.
Control4
Answered by Brad Hintze, senior director of marketing, Control4
What do you look for in a residential integration company to partner with?
One of our guiding principles with residential integrators is, “Are they equipped to take care of their customers?” When a customer puts Control4 in their home, they may interact with the dealer, but they also know the system is Control4. That’s a very important relationship that we have with the customer, but it is delivered and supported by the dealer. We want to ensure that the dealer has built their business in a way that they can be successful with their customers. To do that, we look for a track record of customer success and experience in running a business and delivering on their various projects, and we look at business strength.
How much training is required to get started?
Our training program starts with a two to three hour online training, and then once completed they sign up for our four-day in-person training course that happens in one of our seven training facilities around the world. The training is free — the dealers just have to pay their way to get there. That four-day course gives most dealers the foundation to be successful, and then we have technical field managers that go onsite with them to help them be successful in their very first project, and as needed on an ongoing basis, as well.
What is the average financial investment a dealer must make to become a partner?
It depends on the market, but usually about a $10,000 order is the minimum starting spot in that investment. That cost is just in product that they can go and sell. The training, as I mentioned, is free, so the only other expense would be travel expenses related to the training.
How much assistance do they get in designing a showroom that demos your system?
Control4 has the Certified Showroom Program that has been a big success. It provides dealers with guidance and recommendations for how to create a successful showroom that includes recommendations on where to place products on the wall, the signage recommendations and the types of messaging, and how to articulate a really effective demo.
What is the average amount of time it takes a dealer to get up and running in your system?
If you want to be considered a real expert, it takes several months of working with the system and really deploying several projects, but most of our dealers are quite effective and efficient as soon as they go through that first week of training. The way our system is built, it’s pretty straightforward to be able to connect things, create the right programming and actions, and to get a system up and running – not to mention have it be a really good one.
If there are no barriers in the way, a dealer could be in and out of training in about a week and a half or two weeks, including certification, and start to be effective. The variables are really just travel — is there space in the training center, can I fit it into my schedule?
What kind of support does a dealer partner receive?
Every dealer is assigned a field sales representative, an inside sales representative, and an inside account representative to help manage account and credit issues, as well as ordering issues. All of our ordering is done online, so they can do it anytime on the dealer portal. There they can track orders, pay invoices, and even issue RMAs. It’s all super efficient, and designed around helping their business be successful.
We also invest several million dollars every year into marketing to end consumers. All the assets that we create to help support our marketing efforts, we also provide to our dealers so they get very high-quality videos, brochures, email content, social media content, photography, graphics and creative that they can use in their own marketing efforts. We also have written a marketing plan that gives them that “easy” button, so they can execute against that.
We also have tech support teams, and it’s a true “follow the Sun” approach — we’re global and we have a tech support team that’s on call almost 24 hours a day if you were to look at it from that global context. We also have online chats so they can avoid calling in and just do it asynchronously while they’re doing other things. We also have just invested in a dealer community that is using some of the best question-and-answer-type technologies out in the market today where dealers can ask a straightforward question and people can respond and upvote the best answer.
We also invest in a lot of resources to continue speaking to our dealers, like the video podcast we call “OS 3 Friday.” It’s a video podcast with various product managers and executives from the marketing team talking about our resources and keeping dealers up to date with all of the new information, whether it be technical or business or product related.
What kind of commitment do you require from the dealer?
We require a dealer to do a certain number of projects every year. It depends geographically, but the minimum is about five projects per year. That’s really just to keep their skills in tip-top shape. If you do only one a year, you’re not going to be that proficient, so we try to keep them engaged at about that level.
What kinds of ongoing or advanced training do you provide?
We have several methods of doing this. One of the best examples of that is PCNA, which is an entirely online, CEU-accredited by CEDIA, advanced networking course. It is branded for Pakedge, but it addresses all networking concepts, so it’s applicable to any brand’s networking product. That’s about 20 to 25 hours of classroom time followed by an online proctored exam.
We also do in-market events on a regular basis where we do very technical training — whether it be around centralized lighting or video distribution or the newest version of the OS. We have another cool concept that we call Smart Skills. We launched this about two years ago, and it consists of short (2-5 minute), bite-sized pieces of training via video on a very focused topic, for instance, “Using a Control4 light switch to turn on and off a gas-powered fireplace.” it is geared around how to do something very specific. And we have a library of almost 200 of those today and we continue to produce new ones all the time.
Do you offer in-field support for dealers on projects?
We have technical field managers around the world, and they have a narrow geographic distribution so that they can spend all of their time onsite with dealers whether that’s getting them up to speed or if they’ve run into an issue they don’t know how to solve. These technical field managers just parachute in. It’s a service that we provide to our dealers for free; we know that it’s really critical to the success of our dealers to have somebody that knows so much and that’s readily available to help them be successful.
Do you have a means for sending active leads to your dealers?
We have two primary ways of collecting leads today. We have our general website where we use a lot of online marketing techniques to capture those leads and nurture the leads along. We also have our dealer locator, where a consumer will put in their zip code, see the nearby dealers, and then they can submit a “Contact Us” form on that. We also produce something that we call a dealer microsite. These are individual web pages for our dealers that are highly customizable and put the dealer branding front and center — and lead with the dealer identity and then introduce the Control4 identity. The dealers can fill in the “About Us” page, post pictures of their team and projects they’ve done, and also outline the types of work that they do. When a consumer is searching in the local area, the microsites come up first.
We have a sophisticated process to capture leads, and nurture them. We have a team of telesales people that will call on the most promising leads that come through the website to do some pre-qualification first, and then we hand the qualified leads over to our dealers. We have a leads dashboard and a CRM-lite-type functionality built into the dealer portal, so a dealer can log in at any point and see those leads and manage them and provide feedback on it. We then follow up to see which ones actually closed.
We don’t verify every lead — we get approximately 100K leads per quarter, so we use the online marketing techniques to nurture them along and monitor their behavior. If they show a high level of engagement, we then reach out, but only about 40 percent get outreach from our team.
Crestron
Answered by John Yohanna, director of residential sales, West at Crestron Electronics
What do you look for in a residential integration company to partner with?
We are looking for quality over quantity, and we evaluate if a dealer is not only capable of producing a successful installation, but also how they treat their customers, because the integration company is an extension of us, and when the customer has the system installed, the products have our name on it. So it’s important for us to do a good job — engineering good products — but it’s also important to know that the integration partner is going to do a good job installing those products in order for the customer to be happy.
How much training is required to get started?
For our integrators to get started, Crestron requires them to take at least three classes — one system design class, one basic programming class, and one certification class for our DigitalMedia products. But that is only the beginning, our dealers are constantly being challenged to rise to the next level. Crestron goes above and beyond to ensure all of our integrators have infinite access to our award-winning training program. With online and in-class courses, our training program is a great way to gain essential knowledge that will benefit any system designer, installer, and/or programmer. With our annual Crestron Masters training event, we encourage our dealers from all over the world to continue their educational journey with us and not only take some time to learn about our latest technology, but also get an inside look at how the market is shifting and where it is heading in terms of AV and IoT solutions.
What is the average financial investment a dealer must make to become a partner?
The cost varies because, typically, what we like to do is ask the dealer to purchase a demo system, and different integration companies have different types of demonstration methodologies and spaces. Some of them have showrooms, some of them travel with like a little kit that has a remote and a light switch or a keypad that they would show their customers. Depending on what they have set up, we do require at minimum that they purchase something from each of our categories of product. Oftentimes dealers purchase more than that because they are building a system where they’re putting in multiples of products to build out a showroom or a show house, like in one of the owner’s homes that they’re using for demonstration.
How much assistance do they get in designing a showroom that demos your system?
As much as they need. We very much like to be involved in assisting the dealer — especially when they’re brand new. When a dealer first comes on with Crestron, we pay very close attention to them. If they have no idea what they want, we can give them a recommendation of what most dealers purchase as demo systems. If they have some opinion, we can help guide them.
If they have a system they want to design for a showroom or a show house, we can provide design assistance from our Sales Support Services department. That’s a service we provide ongoing — not just for the demo system, but for every one of their projects. We have engineers on staff that will help design the systems and then validate and certify those to be not only correct, but also completely functional based on the scope of work.
What is the average amount of time it takes a dealer to get up and running in your system?
On average it usually takes about two weeks between that first phone call to the welcome letter that says we’re shipping out your demo system now and you’re welcome to order product.
What kind of support does a dealer partner receive?
There’s all kinds of support, most of which comes through the regional sales manager. We have regional sales managers in every part of the country. If somebody becomes an authorized Crestron dealer, they have a one-to-one relationship with the regional sales manager, who is going to be in constant communication with them. We also have our Sales Support Services department that offers design assistance and access to our engineers to be able to validate and verify the dealer’s system designs.
They also receive our training, most of which is free of charge — even the in-person training. There’re a few classes that have a course fee because there’s a lot of consumables, like the DigitalMedia class, but the rest of the knowledge base classes are completely free of charge.
We go well beyond what a lot of manufacturers will do with our technical support. If they’re having a problem, they can call us on the phone. If we can’t resolve their issue over the phone, we have other ways to remotely log in to their systems, and if that doesn’t resolve the issue, we’ll actually send somebody on site. We have advanced technical support engineers located throughout the country. They can go on site and stand by the dealer and help them all the way through to project completion.
What kind of commitment do you require from the dealer?
Usually we have a conversation with a dealer to see where they are going to position Crestron in their business. Are we going to be one of their premium brands? We don’t require any kind of exclusivity, and it’s fine that they carry our competition, but we definitely don’t want to take a backseat to other brands. We’d like to be one of the brands that they’re most proud of, and that they position first when they talk to a customer.
What kinds of ongoing or advanced training do you provide?
Integrators can continue training both online and in-person. The dealer can travel to any one of our offices, including our main headquarters in Rockleigh, NJ. There’s no additional required training per se — it really depends on the situation of the dealer. However, if we find that a dealer is continuously needing to lean on tech support and getting themselves into the weeds and having issues with systems, and we see that they haven’t taken any additional training, we will encourage them to increase their skill level.
Do you offer in-field support for dealers on projects?
As mentioned earlier, yes. If we can’t fix something over the phone, we will send one of our engineers help solve the problem on site. We have several advanced technical support engineers that we can send on site, and they live throughout the territories, so they’re readily accessible.
Do you have a means for sending active leads to your dealers?
Yes — we get leads through our website and oftentimes through our 800 number. There’s a dealer locator on our website, and end users can call the dealer directly. If they reach out to us at headquarters, typically that lead will be routed to a regional sales manager who will refer several dealers, and then the end user can call those dealers, interview them, and select the one that they like the best.
ELAN
Answered by Andy Spalla, product manager, Nortek Security & Control
What do you look for in a residential integration company to partner with?
It starts with a strong customer focus and a desire to really personalize systems to meet customer lifestyles. This might sound obvious, but it is important. ELAN systems can by highly personalized, even giving different experiences for different members of the household. We look for partners who are willing to support the brand, whether their projects are in hundreds of thousands of dollars or hundreds of dollars. We have solutions for projects of all sizes.
How much training is required to get started?
Two and a half days of hands-on training in one of our training centers. For integrators switching automation systems, I should note that a frequent comment we get in training is how intuitive the ELAN system setup is compared to what they were doing before.
What is the average financial investment a dealer must make to become a partner?
Training cost is $750 plus travel costs to one of our two training sites in Dallas or San Diego. For this $750, the integrator gets $1400 worth of ELAN gear, including a controller and remote. The required first order is $3000 (this goes toward showroom/demo equipment).
How much assistance do they get in designing a showroom that demos your system?
ELAN has dedicated regional technical specialists and sales managers that will assist with proper design and installation of a showroom system. In addition, the regional technical specialist is available to assist with projects in each territory on an ongoing basis.
What is the average amount of time it takes a dealer to get up and running in your system?
Once trained and the showroom order is placed, a dealer is automatically eligible to purchase product.
What kind of support does a dealer partner receive?
Regional tech specialists are available to help with system design and to support installations. Regional sales managers are available for training and joint sales calls. ELAN phone tech support and customer service is also available with call centers in multiple time zones. Online training, documentation, and videos are also available.
What kind of commitment do you require from the dealer?
No specific commitment is required to maintain dealer status, but we do want them to share our commitment in delivering an exceptional customer experience.
What kinds of ongoing or advanced training do you provide?
ELAN offers annual regional events for training and support. Advanced training is offered on top of the certification classes. Regular training webinars are hosted, including when we launch new products.
Do you offer in-field support for dealers on projects?
Yes, regional tech specialists are available for on-site support.
Do you have a means for sending active leads to your dealers?
Yes, leads are generated through online campaigns, the ELAN website, and through our New Home Program, which connects ELAN dealers with builders to offer intelligent home solutions to home buyers. We work with the integrator and builder to develop standards and upgrade packages customized for the development, and then we create marketing materials — from brochures to digital campaigns — to help sell more systems to more satisfied homebuyers. It is important to note that, while we provide lots of support to both the integrator and the builder, we sell product only to the integrator, so they fully participate in the upside.
RTI
Answered by Vincent J. Bova, dealer experience manager, Remote Technologies Inc.
What do you look for in a residential integration company to partner with?
The ideal partner for us is a brand champion. That is an integration company who is committed to our dealer programs, education, and full breadth of products. In turn, it is important that we are committed to helping dealers with product selection, design, and educational programs.
How much training is required to get started?
In order to jump-start the learning curve of our powerful software, we developed an optional three-day training program at RTI headquarters in Shakopee, MN. Here, dealers can learn our programming software but also get to meet with several RTI employees. The overall learning curve depends on several factors, with time investment being the most critical.
What is the average financial investment a dealer must make to become a partner?
Our three-day training course at RTI headquarters costs roughly $995. The dealer is responsible for airfare and transportation to and from the airport, and any meals on non-training days. The rest of our training courses, including an online learning management system known as RTIXCEL, are free of charge.
How much assistance do they get in designing a showroom that demos your system?
In order to outfit showrooms and dealers’ and employees’ homes, as well as learning environments, RTI offers an aggressive accommodation program that allows dealers to purchase equipment at a steep discount. We also have a dealer experience team to help with any design necessary.
What is the average amount of time it takes a dealer to get up and running in your system?
RTI’s dealer application process is an expedited process. The software is incredibly powerful, and the learning curve is based on a dealer’s willingness and time invested in learning. Since our software is customizable, a dealer can really push the envelope in terms of creativity and vision on user interfaces.
What kind of support does a dealer partner receive?
RTI is committed to dealers who invest the time and effort in our training programs and initiatives. We are currently evaluating incentives that will help certified dealers have credentials on the dealer locator that highlight their status, a higher level of support, marketing assistance, and other ways that will enhance their partnership with RTI.
What kind of commitment do you require from the dealer?
Becoming an RTI is extremely simple and does not require any opening order or sales quotas. All that is required is a distribution account and application process. However, dealers that want to take full advantage of RTI programs and incentives should attend the monthly three-day headquarter trainings.
What kinds of ongoing or advanced training do you provide?
RTI’s training program, known as RTIXCEL, features a learning management system that is constantly updated with modules that pertain to software, hardware, and general installer knowledge. We also have regional trainings at various locations domestically and internationally that focus on advanced training, new and existing products, and sales and design.
Do you offer in-field support for dealers on projects?
RTI’s dealer experience team has made on-site visits to help in the event support is needed. However, most problems can be solved remotely through support assistance. If higher support is needed, RTI’s dealer experience team is available to help.
Do you have a means for sending active leads to your dealers?
RTI has a dealer locator that is undergoing a full renovation. In addition, RTI is dedicated to marketing to the consumer base as well and allowing them to find dealers using the dealer locator with areas of specialty and levels of certification. Certification is a two-way street; dealers who make a commitment to RTI will be rewarded in a variety of ways that will give them a true business advantage.
Savant
Answered by J. C. Murphy, executive vice president of sales, Savant
What do you look for in a residential integration company to partner with?
Savant is focused on providing a best-in-class experience to end users, and this starts with a conscious choice to do business with top integrators small and large in each market. When we evaluate a new integrator partner, we want to be sure we are adding a company that is looking to make Savant an integral part of their business across all of their projects. We are also looking to make sure that there is an appropriate synergy in the collective vision of our two companies.
How much training is required to get started?
At Savant, we offer training that flexes to the various learning types within our group of integrators. Based on this, Savant has developed a progressive and multidimensional approach to training. Our initial integrator training is an online curriculum that can be completed at the integrator’s office and at their own pace. From there, we offer a wide range of additional online training materials as well as in-field training opportunities that round out a comprehensive educational program.
What is the average financial investment a dealer must make to become a partner?
Because our initial integrator training is taken online and at the integrator’s own pace, we prefer to think of any product that is ordered at the time of sign up as demo/engineering product that can be programmed and installed alongside with the training course. We work closely with each integrator to tune this product set, not only to their needs for training, but also to line up their expectations for being able to demonstrate the Savant system to their clients. The financial commitment to get started as a Savant dealer begins at under $5000. Dealers new to Savant have the option of being fast-tracked through Savant’s distribution partner Wave/AVAD, where startup costs are below $1000 and include a comprehensive training program.
How much assistance do they get in designing a showroom that demos your system?
When our integrators let us know that they would like to offer a more elaborate Savant demonstration in their offices or experience centers, Savant leans in to make sure that this space is reflective of the integrator’s own unique aesthetic while also showing off the very best of what Savant has to offer. We provide site visits with members of the Savant Sales Engineering team to assist with anything from AV layout all the way up to lighting fixture suggestions and design assistance. Attractive discounted pricing is available from Savant for equipment used in showrooms.
What is the average amount of time it takes a dealer to get up and running in your system?
Savant’s suite of software tools is designed to streamline project workflow and to enable our new integrators to get up and running with Savant very quickly. Typically, we find that our new integrators attain maximum proficiency with the Savant product line once they have completed the training curriculum and deployed a few systems.
What kind of support does a dealer/partner receive?
Savant puts a lot of tried-and-tested resources into both the field and into our back-end support. Every member of our frontline sales team is trained to design, program, and troubleshoot our products. The field team is also well versed in the third-party products that help to round out the Savant smart ecosystem. This team is backed up by our support team at our headquarters in Hyannis, MA. The goal is to make sure that our integrators always have the support needed to tackle any project. Savant has an amazing online knowledge base as a support resource for integrators as well as a large customer support community as an additional resource to share best practices.
What kind of commitment do you require from the dealer?
When we evaluate new integrator partners we look for those that are willing to make Savant their go-to automation brand for projects small to large, and for those integrators that are interested in working with all the product categories Savant has to offer. At the end of the day, Savant is committed to our dealers and making sure they are able to deliver the ultimate smart home experience.
What kinds of ongoing or advanced training do you provide?
When it comes to home automation Savant understands that training does not stop when an integrator signs up. Our online training curriculum is constantly evolving to accommodate our new hardware and software solutions. We make use of “video shorts” to highlight programing features that are often overlooked by our integrators. We provide access to live technical webinars for each of our software releases (we also record them for posterity). Finally, we work to bring training into the field by leveraging the technical acumen of our frontline sales team.
Do you offer in-field support for dealers on projects?
Yes, as covered in the earlier support question.
Do you have a means for sending active leads to your dealers?
The Savant website features a “Find an Integrator” section where end users can either find and call a local integrator or make contact electronically through the Savant website. Our website shows our integrators by tier, and we also use our website to highlight our Savant Ambassador Integrators. Our Ambassadors are Savant’s best and brightest integrator partners who are trained at the highest levels, support all of Savant’s product categories, participate in our hardware and software beta program, and lead with Savant on every project large and small.
URC
Answered by Doug Cole, general manager and senior VP, URC
What do you look for in a residential integration company to partner with?
We really look for both residential and commercial dealers that are in the automation space. The keys are their commitment to training and staying current with the technology, and also having a consistent job flow within the automation space so that they’re reinforcing what they’ve learned and continually expanding on the jobs that they do.
How much training is required to get started?
Our goal is to make sure that they’re both knowledgeable and comfortable in using our Total Control systems, so we have a very comprehensive three-day certification training program that they can attend at one of our three training locations across the country. It’s very hands on and we also give them equipment to take home immediately after the training.
What is the average financial investment a dealer must make to become a partner?
It’s really just the training costs — $750. We pay their hotel and food, and they walk away with a demo system that’s worth around $1500. It nets out very well for them. Beyond that, there’s a commitment to business throughout the year, but that range would be based on the dealer.
How much assistance do they get in designing a showroom that demos your system?
Our standard demo program is 60 percent of retail. We will also be announcing a new demo showroom program at CEDIA Expo that involves a very modular system so that it can adapt to any showroom space, which gives a lot of flexibility and affordability to the dealer that wants to have a more interactive experience in their showroom for consumers to see and touch.
What is the average amount of time it takes a dealer to get up and running in your system?
Once they’ve completed the three-day certification training, they know enough to get going on it. They should be fully prepared to deploy a full control system at the conclusion of that certification training. We have field technical support — people that are there to assist — and we tend to like to participate in their initial job where there is a review program that we can do remotely or help them specify as well as deploy the system.
What kind of support does a dealer partner receive?
We have sales teams throughout the country that consist of an account manager as well as a field sales engineer. They’re there to help the dealer, whether it’s from a business standpoint or a technical or design standpoint. We also have a full staff of URC employees in Harrison, NY, including our technical support group — they’re a very tenured group that really pride themselves in a quick resolution to any issues a dealer may have in the field. They’re able to log into a dealer system while they’re on site and help resolve a programming issue or any other system issues.
What kind of commitment do you require from the dealer?
We see a dealer as a partner who is committed to being knowledgeable about our system, but it’s really a partnership to deploy and exceed consumers’ expectations by having superior systems in place that the consumer gets a lot of satisfaction out of and hopefully tells family and friends about it.
What kinds of ongoing or advanced training do you provide?
We have ongoing webinars, online advanced training, and in-person training. So it’s a curriculum that is continuous. Furthermore, we provide other types of training where we help dealers with more of the business side of things, such as helping them move into new markets and knowing how to better market themselves using the digital opportunities that they have in today’s marketplace. We also provide subject matter trainings in conjunction with our third-party integration partners.
Do you offer in-field support for dealers on projects?
Yes. We have a team of experienced sales managers and field application engineers nationwide who have expert knowledge of our Total Control system as well as how we integrate with other brands. Most have come from a custom installation background, so they have experience walking in the shoes of our dealers.
Do you have a means for sending active leads to your dealers?
We generate leads all the time from our website, universalremote.com. The name itself is like the Kleenex of our industry, so we get a lot of traffic to our website. We also proactively work with our dealers in partnership to help them market themselves to their customers in their regions. We believe very strongly about helping them build their brands as well as drawing them leads utilizing the strength of our brand.
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