Brink's Home Security expands commercial biz

IRVING, Texas--Brink's Home Security has quietly gone about readying its commercial capabilities over the past couple years, and today it has a fully trained and certified commercial technician base across its 65 branches.

“A lot is new with Brink's commercial business,” said Brent Uhl, vice president of Brink's commercial security. “We started aggressively focusing on commercial four or five years ago, but we like to approach things judiciously. It's slower, but it's effective. Over the past two years we've really radically ratcheted up our commercial competency.”

Indeed, Brink's commercial business has three sales channels: small business, national accounts and mid-market. The focus in the past two years has been the latter, which Uhl defined as “any business requiring commercial fire, card access or over 10,000 square feet.” He noted that Brink's is not “doing enterprise-level business yet; you're not going to see us doing a 50-story high-rise in Dallas.”

Uhl said Brink's believes the market is looking for an alternative provider of services to the mid-market sector, “one who can provide quality service on a national footprint.”

“In 2008, we trained and developed internally an in-house commercial technician base,” Uhl explained. Brink's chose some of the top technicians from each of its 65 branches and “designed an entirely new organization.” The effort was headed up by Rick Sheets, director of the commercial effort on the technical operations side. This select group of technicians has been trained and certified in various commercial applications and undergone NICET fire training. The goal is to have high technical competency in all of the branches.

Brink's has ramped up on the sales side as well. Jeff Myer, senior manager of commercial mid-market sales, has “done a nice job developing a mid-market sales organization,” Uhl said.

The commercial effort began in the product development, Uhl said, with the testing of “very high-quality products” and moved from there to the marketing, sales and technical operations teams. The customer care organization now has a dedicated commercial group in Dallas and Knoxville who are trained to answer questions about CCTV, access and fire.

“All levels have rallied to get their arms around this new segment,” he said.

Because Brink's is a public company, Uhl was hesitant to name any revenue goals for the commercial business. “Our residential business is very buttoned down right now,” Uhl said. “What you've seen us be as a residential company … I think you'll see us in a commercial sense down the road.”