I’m still recovering from CEDIA. Great week, but a full one (IYKYK). I don’t know about you all, but I felt CEDIA this year was totally different from the show floors of the past. It wasn’t only the fact that there were (a lot) fewer attendees. I think it was the feeling in the air that our industry is undergoing a real shift. Some integrators were negative about the future of the channel, but the majority felt that this was a time for adaptation, for growth.
I’m with the majority. Successful integrators will be the ones who adapt and innovate, who understand their clients’ pain points before their clients can even name them, who show the value they can bring even to the most ardent DIY-er homeowner.
And like every year, the best part was the conversations, getting to sit down with integrators about what’s going on in their businesses.
Henry Clifford
Founder & CEO, Livewire
I talked with Henry Clifford (founder and CEO of Livewire), who runs Cyber Protect in his own home. He told me about the time he had to briefly disconnect his network to get it onboarded, family home and all, which is a nervy thing to do in a house full of people who notice the second the Wi-Fi blinks (now, that’s one brave man). His verdict? It never knocked out his signal and all looks great so far.
Wade Legette
President, LeggeteTech
I caught up with Wade Legette, president of LeggeteTech, about adding cybersecurity to his lineup, and no matter where the conversation started, it kept coming back to RMR and how much recurring revenue a security offering can build.
Carlos Silva & José Jiménez
BlueSky Audio Video · HOMETEKMEDIA
And I had a genuinely good back-and-forth with Carlos Silva of BlueSky Audio Video and José Jiménez of HOMETEKMEDIA about the education gap around cybersecurity, and a simple truth that’s hard to argue with: integrators can’t sell what they don’t understand yet.
Those three conversations turned out to be a pretty good map of the whole show. When I step back and look at what integrators from all over were asking about, it comes down to three trends, and all of them run straight toward recurring revenue. Here’s what stood out, and what each one means for your business.
Trend 1:
Cybersecurity Is Now a Core Integrator Offering
Cybersecurity was everywhere at CEDIA this year. It was one of the most heavily programmed topics on the education schedule, and a lot of those sessions weren’t about how to configure a firewall. They were about how to talk to your clients about cyber hygiene and network security.
That focus tells you where the market is. Your clients are already hearing about ransomware and breaches, and more of them are asking you what you’re doing to protect them. The problem, and this is exactly what Carlos and José and I kept talking about, is that it’s hard to sell something you haven’t had the chance to fully learn. Cybersecurity is its own discipline, and most integrators came up through AV rather than network security.
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to become a security expert to start offering it. With SpecOp, you build Cyber Protect into every network proposal as a default line item, and we handle the engineering and monitoring behind it. Our Integrator’s Liability Waiver Cheat Sheet shows you how to structure it so a client has to sign if they want to opt out, which moves liability off your plate and onto a documented decision. It protects you and your client, and it adds recurring revenue to a proposal you were already writing.
And if your team wants to get comfortable with the material first, we’ll set up a training for your sales and technical people at no cost. Closing that education gap is the whole idea.
How SpecOp Closes the Cybersecurity Gap