DALLAS—In an attempt to mold better security industry citizens out of its new dealers, Monitronics has initiated a three-day MoniX training program, held at Monitronics’ headquarters here. The hope, according to Monitronics VP of marketing Mitch Clarke is to create a better, stronger, more responsible industry.

As part of its response to all the summer-sales model drama of 2009—during which Monitronics and ADT sued a number of individual summer-sales model door-to-door salespeople—Clarke said the company now requires all its new dealers to enroll in the program. “If you remember over the summer, we had the headlines about us suing sales reps. Out of that whole discussion, we realized that for us to be a premier dealer program, we didn’t need any part of that funny business,” Clarke said. “We had to say, ‘How do we make our program the premiere program? What can we do differently to help people make money and help them be successful?’ Right now it’s a requirement for all new Monitronics dealers.”

The program, which has had two runs so far—the first from Jul. 21-23 and the second from Sept. 22-24—and has grown in response to attendee feedback from two days to three days, focuses on “how to be a good citizen and how to run a good business.” The third MoniX session is due to take place in February. Other highlights of the course include figuring out what your creation cost for a new account is, what is good inventory management, and how to recruit a good salesperson.

Jason Douget, owner of Houston-based Irongate Security, attended the September MoniX session and feels the experience was well worth the time expended. “I took the training to maximize years of experience that Monitronics had and apply that to our business,” Douget said in an email interview. “[MoniX] gave us access to a variety of tools and information to help streamline our portfolio.”

“We had just finished our second training—we had 22 different companies represented with 35 people in the room--and when we read the critiques of the program, we read things that were fun to read: ‘I’ve been to many of these with other programs … nothing’s ever touched it,’” Clark said. “Our next one, I think we’ll have upwards of 40 dealers at least. Again, these are people who are paying to come to us so that they can come away better, smarter citizens … dealers who will be dealers for a while.”