How to Grow a Commercially Focused Locksmith Business
As a veteran of the locksmithing industry, Glenn Younger, owner, Grah Safe and Lock, has led his company as it has evolved into what today is a mostly commercially focused business model. Many customers and partners continue to turn to Grah when they need work done, from simple fixes to upgrades and bigger projects, and that is why Younger puts an emphasis on building those relationships, which in turn has built his reputation as a trusted locksmith and security company in the San Diego area.
As Younger points out, unlike on the residential side, commercial customers are not one-and-done customers, as they have more doors, more hardware, more problems and, most importantly, recurring needs.
“For us, we like doing B2B because it's more repetitive,” he says. “If you do a residential customer, a house, a condo, for example, that's sort of a once in a lifetime at that house, as you're probably not going to need to do anything ever again there. Whereas with a commercial property, it's going to have more use. Even though it has higher durability hardware, it's going to be used more and it's going to have an ongoing need.”
He continues, “So, it really is about that distinction between business to consumer and business to business. For us, 20 years ago we really focused on what business to consumer business we had, and we said we're no longer going to be doing automotive work, for example; we just quit doing it. And it turned out that 5% of our business went away, but it was replaced immediately by commercial work. B2B, it takes the same amount of energy and effort to get that customer, but it's the gift that keeps on giving – they're going to continue to use you over and over.”
Today, commercial work accounts for approximately 80% to 90% of the company’s business, especially when multifamily housing and education are included (more on how Younger categorizes his commercial work next).
Categorizing Commercial
Getting more granular, Younger says an important step for his company was understanding exactly who their commercial customers are and categorizing them by how much work they are generating, which gives the company a much clearer picture of where their business actually comes from and where it should invest its time and training.
Younger sorts all Grah’s customers into 18 different categories, with most of those considered commercial work based on his experience with them having or typically needing commercial hardware, including: government agencies, commercial property management, residential property management and multifamily housing, hospitality and recreation, national service providers, retail, nonprofits, education, manufacturing, defense contractors, financial institutions, transportation, utilities, and churches.
The company ultimately found that a handful of those categories account for the bulk of its activity, including hospitality and recreation, residential property management and multifamily (see more on page 32), and utilities, which have emerged as particularly important segments.
“We really looked at our business to find our most important categories and then from there looked at who are biggest customers are in each one of those categories,” Younger explains. “And what we found was that they tended to be repetitive customers. Recreation and hospitality, which is partly because we are in San Diego – so hotels, motels, Airbnb’s, casinos – we throw in there anything that's sort of tourism-related that all falls in that hospitality and recreation. Because we're in San Diego, that's our biggest category.”
He continues, “And then that is followed by residential property management, partly because the projects we're doing on multifamily housing are so large, that becomes our second biggest category. And then utilities – we have one big utility in San Diego, and we do all their work, so that's a large customer for us.”
As Younger points out, categorizing the verticals and customers within each vertical directly informs what the company should be doing, what their locksmiths should be trained in, and which markets deserve additional attention.
Be Great at What You Do the Most Of
Because Younger and his team at Grah are so granular in their approach, they can create a clear plan for training new employees, which starts with focusing on the types of commercial hardware, systems and challenges the company uses when servicing their top customers.
“Once you know that, then you can build your training around it,” says Younger. “When we start somebody brand new, by the end of their first year, they need to know all the stuff that they're going to work on in those top categories. And so, we picked the two or three areas that we felt like we really wanted based on who we are doing a lot of business with.”
The more that locksmiths work in a particular market, the more expertise they develop, which in turn makes the company more valuable to customers in that vertical. Younger uses schools as a good example, as his team has become highly knowledgeable about security hardware and installing indicator locks used in school environments, including applications associated with active-shooter preparedness.
“We've done three or four community colleges, a couple of universities and a bunch of private colleges, as well as private schools like K through 12 and high schools,” he points out. “We’ve gotten really good at working in these environments so that if somebody says, ‘Oh, but we have some buildings that have Yale, can you do that on Yale locks?’ And we can say, ‘Yes, of course, we've done that before,’ which is a scenario that happens often.”
The downside, Younger admits, is that this expertise can make his employees attractive to the very customers they serve. “We've lost three guys just this year to local universities and so that's frustrating,” he says.
Growing the Account, Not Just the Job
For Younger, the biggest growth opportunity isn't necessarily finding more customers, it is finding more ways to serve the core customers the company already has, a philosophy that led the company to take a “10 by 10” approach, which includes looking at the company's top 10 customers and its top 10 services or product categories, and then identify any gaps or areas in need.
“We take our top 10 services that we offer, and then we take our top 10 customers and say, do you use us to rekey locks? Yes, you do. To make keys? Yes, you do. To fix a door when it doesn't latch? Yes, you do. To work on exit devices. Yes,” he explains. “Our goal is to get at least five out of our 10 top services from each customer.”
He applies the same concept to products, noting, “So we took those six or seven categories and do the same 10 by 10. We take our top 10 categories and our top 10 customers and say, how many of these products did they buy?”
This process reveals significant untapped revenue within existing accounts.
“There's more gold to be mined there than anywhere else,” Younger asserts. “It's easier just to go to a customer that we've been dealing with … and if there's something that we're not doing, we can ask about it. We could grow a ton if all we did was made sure that we got every bit out of each one of those different categories and out of the customers that we've got in those categories.”
As Younger points out, building these relationships all circles back to the fact that Grah does so much commercial work because these customers have continuous needs.
“We have a reason to talk to them every month, and many times they're calling us, we're not calling them,” he says. “For most of core customers, which is about 150, we're doing something for them every month. So, you take advantage of the fact that commercial hardware is repetitive, and commercial customers are repetitive and they typically have more than one need.”
Younger gives the example of a utility customer that needed Grah to handle their doors. A job that another provider might have treated as an expensive major door replacement project became a relatively inexpensive repair for his team. “The facilities department's calling us and we're making them look great and saving them a ton of money, so they want to keep calling us because every time we send our guys out, they make them look like rock stars.”
Hiring for Potential Rather Than Experience
While Younger struggles with losing good employees to existing customers (see school example earlier), when hiring he doesn’t look for existing locksmiths, but rather people who have potential and are willing to learn.
“We've been hiring this way and so far, we've been able to hire a new person every six months to a year,” he explains. “And each one of them is better than the person that left.”
Grah’s recent hires have included people with backgrounds in hospital networking, residential electronic security and Apple technical support.
“If you hire somebody who's really smart, they'll train themselves,” he points out, which is an approach that has allowed the company to bring in people who already understand electronics, networking, troubleshooting or customer service and then teach them the locksmithing side.
“That also means we are sometimes paying someone who is new like we would pay a new locksmith, even though they may not be one, but we can see they have expertise in another area, like the three most recent hires I mentioned,” he explains. “But you know what? They’ve learned it in world record speed, and they are already almost as good as many of our locksmiths.”
One of his new employees came from Vivint with experience working with wireless systems. “He's installed locks and even though it's residential wireless, it's still wireless. So, we had to teach him how to rekey locks and he had been here just a few days, and he could cut keys and rekey locks and master key.”
Another new employee came from Apple's Genius Bar. “He started out working in retail, eventually worked in the Genius Bar, and then he ran the Genius Bar in the store he was at, becoming the Genius Bar district manager but had reached a ceiling,” says Younger. “We were able to bring him in and train him to be one of our top employees now, so it is not always about finding people with security experience.”
This hiring strategy has allowed Younger to find people with valuable skills who may not otherwise enter the locksmith industry. “When we find people with this type of potential, it's up to me to train them quick enough to be worthwhile for us,” he notes. “I know that people struggle with trying to hire somebody who is trained, and I get that, but if you hire somebody who's really smart, they'll train themselves.”
Ultimately, Younger’s approach to building Grah’s commercial business relies on knowing his customers, building those relationships with existing customers, and creating a team that is adept at responding to the needs of the company’s top customers.
About the Author
Paul Ragusa
Senior Editor
Paul Ragusa is senior editor for Locksmith Ledger. He has worked as an editor in the security industry for nearly 10 years. He can be reached at [email protected].