By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does winning commercial and strata work feel like luck instead of a plan?
Most security technicians only land commercial and strata work when a referral turns up or a facilities manager happens to call, so the business treats bigger accounts as something that happens to it rather than something it goes after. Without a system to find, quote and follow up this work, a security systems business stays tied to one-off alarm callouts and residential jobs, and the recurring revenue sitting inside a strata or commercial contract never builds.
A trade business that waits on referrals for commercial work has no real pipeline, so the quoting calendar is full one month and empty the next. Strata managers and facilities teams running commercial sites often keep a shortlist of security technicians they call first for CCTV, access control and intercom work, and getting onto that shortlist takes a deliberate, tracked approach to outreach, not a hope that the next job walks in the door.
Why can a strata or commercial quote look like a win and still be the wrong job to chase?
A commercial or strata quote for a security systems business rarely sits on one price line. It blends the install margin on cameras, access control, intercoms and cabling with the ongoing margin on the monitoring and service contract that follows, and it is that blended outcome across the whole quote, not any single line, that decides whether the account is actually worth winning.
Many security technicians price the install competitively to win the tender, assuming the monitoring and maintenance contract that follows will make up the difference over time. Without checking the blended margin across both, a technician can win the strata contract and end up maintaining dozens of access points, intercoms and cameras for years on work that barely covers the callouts. The symptom looks like being flat out and still not getting ahead; what sits underneath is a quote built on feel rather than on what the whole relationship actually returns.
What number actually shows whether a commercial account is worth winning?
The number that tells a security technician the truth about a commercial or strata account is the blended gross profit margin across the whole quote, install and ongoing monitoring and service contract together, checked at the moment you're pricing the job rather than discovered months later in the books. That number, taken from your own job and finance data rather than memory, shows whether a cheap install price is quietly funding years of underpriced maintenance.
This is where a data first view of the business changes the decision. Instead of pricing a strata tender off what a similar job cost last year, or off what feels competitive, you can see what every current install and monitoring contract is actually returning, camera by camera, access point by access point, and price the next one on what the numbers say rather than on a guess.
How can a security technician find commercial and strata customers before they wait on a referral?
You don't have to wait for a strata manager to ring or a referral to land. You can put the security systems business in front of commercial customers who are already searching for the problem you solve, access control for a fit-out, CCTV for a strata complex, intercom upgrades for a block of units, before they ever call around for quotes.
Picture a security technician whose jobs were mostly residential alarm callouts and the odd intercom repair, wanting more commercial work on the books instead of relying on whatever came through the door. Rather than waiting on referrals, the business set up search advertising aimed squarely at commercial customers, so the ads reached businesses and strata managers already looking for camera, access control or monitoring solutions, not whoever happened to be scrolling. The leads that came back were commercial from the start, already looking for exactly what a security systems business does.
Lead generation only pays off if there's spare capacity in the quoting and install calendar to take the work on. A flood of commercial enquiries that nobody has time to quote properly just becomes another backlog, which is why capacity and outreach need to be looked at together, not treated as separate problems.
What changes when AI agents handle quoting and follow up for commercial work?
AI agents, software that does a job the way you would, using your prices, your wording and your rules, can take on the non-billable work that commercial and strata accounts generate: following up a tender, chasing a strata manager for sign-off, scheduling the next visit on a service contract. That frees your time and your crew's time for the install and the callout, the parts of the business only a licensed security technician can actually do.
Commercial accounts generate paperwork residential callouts never do: tender documents, variation requests, site compliance records, renewal dates for each monitoring and service contract. AI agents can carry this load without dropping it, following every quote and every contract through the same steps each time, the way you would do it yourself, so nothing sits unanswered while a strata manager decides between technicians. Run well, this makes the business more human where it matters, your technicians on the tools and your customers dealt with properly, rather than everyone buried in admin.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching looks at the security systems business's own numbers first: what every current install, monitoring and service contract is actually returning, and where commercial and strata enquiries are coming from now. Through the Trade Business Intelligence, Greg Allan's coaching starts from that picture rather than a general sales process, because the real reason commercial work isn't converting, or isn't profitable once it's won, is usually sitting in the data rather than in the pitch. The how, the pricing structure, the outreach system, the quoting process, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member and the Academy is for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share what they learn.
