By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does one quote number for CCTV, cabling, access control and monitoring hide the real margin?
A single blended price covering camera supply, cabling, access control hardware, intercom and the first year of monitoring can look profitable overall while one line is actually losing money and being carried by another. The security technician who quotes like a builder, one number for the whole job, has no way of seeing which part of the work is paying its own way and which part is quietly subsidising a weaker line.
Most security technicians build their quote the way they were taught, add up camera count, cabling metres, an access control panel, an intercom unit and a monitoring connection fee, then round it to a number that feels right against the competition. The job can win, get installed, and still be thin, because the cabling run or the materials line has been propped up by a stronger margin on labour or on the monitoring setup. Without the quote broken into lines, the gross profit margin the owner should be protecting every month is hidden inside one figure, and nobody in the business can see which part of the job is actually doing the work.
Why does pricing an install off how fast the owner runs cable undercharge the job?
Pricing an install off how fast the owner personally runs cable or wires up an access control panel undercharges the business once an average technician, or a new hire, does the same job. Labour time and material allowance need to be set for a realistic install, not the owner's best day on site.
An experienced security technician who has run thousands of metres of cabling and fitted dozens of access control panels can genuinely move faster than the price allows for. The quote template gets built around that speed, and for years it works, because the owner is the one doing the job. The moment a subbie, an apprentice or a newer technician picks up the same install, the labour hours blow past what was quoted, the margin disappears into the gap, and the owner often cannot see it happened because the whole job was priced as one number, not as camera supply, cabling, access control and monitoring set up as separate lines each carrying their own real cost.
What should a security technician price separately on every job?
Each line, camera supply, cabling run, access control panel, intercom unit and the monitoring connection, needs its own price built from real labour and material cost plus margin, and reviewed as supplier and licensing costs move, instead of one rate covering the whole job.
You know your own trade well enough to list the lines on a typical commercial or strata job without thinking twice. The question worth asking is whether each of those lines is priced to stand on its own, or whether it only looks fine because it sits inside a bigger number. Monitoring and service contracts are the clearest example, because that recurring revenue is often quoted as a flat add on rather than priced for what it actually costs once remote access checks, support calls and maintenance visits are counted against it over the life of the contract.
How do AI agents help a security technician see which line is actually profitable?
An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would, with your prices, wording and rules. For pricing, an agent can gather supplier invoices and quote history so you see, line by line, where the real cost sits and where a price has crept up since you last reviewed your materials list, without you having to do that admin yourself.
Picture a security technician whose camera and cabling supplier sends every invoice through as an emailed PDF. There is no easy way to see what he is actually paying for materials from one month to the next, or to notice when a camera model or a cabling reel quietly goes up in price. An AI agent built around his own supplier accounts can gather every invoice, build up his materials pricing automatically, and produce a discrepancy report, now set to run every month on its own, so the price he is quoting off is the price he is actually paying, not the one he remembers from the last big job. That is a data first way of pricing, starting from what the business is actually spending, not from memory of what a job used to cost.
How does itemising a quote help win commercial and strata work?
Itemising a quote so a commercial or strata client can see exactly what they are paying for, camera count, cabling metres, access control points and the monitoring connection, builds trust and makes it harder for a less transparent competitor to win the job on a vague lump sum.
Strata committees and commercial building managers are usually comparing more than one quote, often from more than one security technician, and a single number with no breakdown gives them nothing to compare except the bottom line. An itemised quote lets the client see the value in each part of the security system, and it gives the technician a clean way to price an upgrade later, extra cameras, more access control points, a new intercom, without having to reprice the whole job from scratch. It also protects the recurring revenue sitting in the service contract, because the client can see monitoring was never a throw in, it was always its own line with its own value.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts by looking at the owner's own quotes and job costings through the Trade Business Intelligence, line by line, rather than at a feeling about whether pricing is fair. For a security technician that means seeing which lines, cabling, camera supply, access control, monitoring, are actually carrying their own weight, and where the install time being quoted still reflects the owner's own hands on the tools rather than a realistic average. Greg Allan, who built and ran his own trade business, teaches pricing from that starting point, to “allow for a really average person to get it done”. The how of building it into your own pricing is worked through inside the Academy, with other members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who is open minded and willing to share what they find.
