ADT’s Dealer Program Changes with the Times
After nearly 20 years in various managerial sales and dealer development positions with a single company, Muawia “Maui” Bishr was ready to make a big change. He wanted to be his own boos and run his own security dealer operation. For someone with so much industry experience and a vast number of connections, the big question was with whom he should partner.
“I had been managing and doing (dealer development) for enough time that I decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” says Bishr, who worked all those years for an ADT competitor. “I wanted to see if the grass was greener on the other side and I was impressed. I saw the vision that Joe (Nuccio) had and the vision he built within the ADT dealer program. That’s how it all started.”
Bishr launched Magna Smart Home in January of this year, based in Keller, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas. He says the ADT dealer program helped build the foundation for his fledgling company’s success. “Every sales trainer that I have met has been out in the field for 15 or 20 years. It has been very helpful for me to get my business started right away with that support.”
In addition to Bishr’s company, partnering with ADT has proven to be the foundation for success for two of the fastest-growing security dealers in the nation: SafeStreets USA – the result of a successful merger of six ADT dealers – was ranked No. 2 in the 2017 SD&I Fast50; Safe Home Control of Orem, Utah – ADT’s third largest dealer – was ranked No. 6 in this year’s Fast50.
Changing of the Guard at ADT
For those unfamiliar, Joe Nuccio spent the better part of 13 years as the president and CEO of ASG Security, until it was acquired by Apollo Global Management and merged with Protection 1 in 2015. Later in 2016, Nuccio joined ADT as Senior Vice President of Business Development – months after Apollo acquired ADT, effectively merging all three major companies.
From there, the CEO of the combined company, Tim Whall, turned his focus to improving the company’s relationship with both its dealers and its end-customers. “We are really encouraged by the focus of the new management at ADT,” SafeStreets CEO Kevin Gaylord told SD&I in 2017. “Tim Whall has come in and his focus is on operational excellence and the customer experience.”
“In 2017, we did a lot with the speed of answer and moving our call center to live answers and people picking up the phone in one or two rings,” Whall said during ADT’s most recent earnings call in March (access the full transcript at http://seekingalpha.com). “Obviously, as we go forward we'll look to improve those levels of service.”
This May, Nuccio shifted his role to President of Dealer Partnerships, succeeding Jim Vogel as the leader of ADT’s Authorized Dealer organization. And much like Whall himself, Nuccio’s first job was to make sure the program was still doing its job of creating an effective partnership with the dealers.
A Closer Look at the Dealer Program
Nuccio’s first task was to really examine and enhance the company’s dealer program. “The job was a perfect fit with my background – I have the entrepreneurial spirit, and working with a bunch of entrepreneurs was really very appealing to me,” Nuccio says. “It was really good to be able to take a look at the program and say, ‘Ok, we have been around for 20 years, but what does that really mean?’ My first job was to really make sure we are refreshing the program, staying current and doing the right things (for dealers). We wanted a different kind of recruiting and we look for dealers at all levels – entry, experienced, large, small and medium – and with that comes a new training curriculum. Training is really important to us.”
Ken Rosen, a longtime sales director for both ADT and Protection 1, heads up ADT’s new training curriculum as senior director for recruiting and training. “As we looked at opportunities for our dealers to ramp up and grow quickly, we looked at our training platform and enhanced it,” Rosen says. “We’ve done that through being able to virtually train our dealers via a platform where we are actually in front of them all of the time.”
ADT dealer training includes the expected product training on Pulse and its other technologies; however, it also includes sales training, door-knocking education, recruiting and hiring help, and even leadership training for owners and managers. Rosen adds that the curriculum has changed to keep pace with the rapidly advancing technologies and services available in the residential security industry. “The key is understanding that our dealers are entrepreneurs and that we have to evolve our training to help meet their needs,” he says. “Joe is an entrepreneur and he has brought that culture to ADT in terms of our dealer program. As we develop our training we are focusing on the entrepreneurs themselves.”
Nuccio, Rosen and their teams are working hard to make sure the dealers experience at ADT does not take a cookie-cutter approach. “There is a general structure, but every plan is specific to each dealer,” Nuccio says. “For example, a dealer might be really good at sales recruiting, but they aren’t as good at installation, or vice versa. We have to customize the program – the importance of Ken and his team is to really sit down and get into a high level of detail for each and every dealer, because we don’t want just one dealer to succeed, we want all of them to succeed.
“We need to be the program that makes dealers flourish and makes sure we are giving them the tools and resources to really excel,” Nuccio adds. “Take Safestreets as an example – they are tremendous operators. They know and understand how to run a business, to work within their construct and not get ahead of themselves. Dealers who want to really grow like that, we are going to sit down with them and have them explain their plan, and we want to help with it.”
Idea Exchange
A key component of the dealer program enhancements come from the dealers themselves. Upon his acceptance as an authorized dealer, Bishr earned a seat on the ADT “Dealer Council” – which is a group of dealers who meet to discuss the latest technologies and services and how they may be incorporated into the ADT offering.
“One of the things to me that is most important to me is being in the dealers’ shoes,” Nuccio says. “That’s why it is so important to have a dealer council – to really sit down and exchange ideas, and discuss what will or won’t work for the whole group.”
Nuccio adds that the group often talks about hot-button issues such as monitoring on demand and DIY; however, the most important thing, he says, is following through on that feedback. “It is easy to talk about things, but you have to follow through with it,” he says. “For us, the dealer is a partner, but they are also a customer – we treat them the same and give them that customer service.”
To learn more about partnering with ADT, visit https://join.adtdealer.com/sdi.
Paul Rothman is Editor in Chief of Security Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine. Access the current issue, full archives and subscribe for free at www.secdealer.com.