Alarm Company Business Plan: How to Write It & Template

What is an Alarm Company Business Plan?

An alarm company business plan is a document detailing the company’s goals, plans for achieving them, the implementation timeline, and key milestones for tracking progress.

It’s a useful roadmap document that guides vital decisions such as resource allocation, adaptation to market trends, and predicting future challenges.

A business plan differs from your company’s business model. 

A business model outlines how you plan to create and deliver your services to customers. On the other hand, a business plan simply explains the services you plan to sell to customers.

What to Include in an Alarm Company Business Plan

Writing an alarm company business plan can be daunting. Fortunately, we’ve created a business plan template with all the vital sections and information.

Here’s a step-by-step guide for writing each section of your alarm company business plan.

Pro tip: To get started immediately, grab our handy Business Plan template. 

1. Executive summary

This section gives a high-level and concise overview of the document and a brief business description. Although it comes first, experts advise writing this section last so it’s a succinct summary of the entire document.

Since this section aims to set the stage for the rest of the document, it is advisable to keep the length to one page. You should cover four key details:

• The document’s purpose.

• Security industry analysis.

• Your company’s physical location.

• A brief description of the business owner—name, experience, and certifications.

2. Business overview

Unlike the executive summary, the business overview is a more detailed description of your business. It outlines the services you’re offering, your reason for starting the business, and other elements related to your business.

When writing this section, explain your reason for starting the business. Use emotion to connect with potential investors and statistics to demonstrate potential profitability.

Also, mention your philosophy, vision, mission, goals, and objectives (PVMGO). This section will form the foundation of your company culture and help attract like-minded employees, so invest time in it. 

Other key details to feature here include:

• Business name. Before picking a business name, ensure no one else uses it, then trademark it.

• Business entity. Are you running an LLC (limited liability company), sole proprietorship, or partnership?

• Recent milestones (if it’s an existing business) include generating X amount in revenue, acquiring X customers, selling Y security systems, etc.

• Start-up costs. Briefly list the different things you’ll spend money on—hiring employees, tools, equipment, taxes, etc.

3. Services

After giving a brief overview of your business, explain the security services you plan to offer customers. Will you provide security guard services to organizations, run a crisis management firm, install CCTV cameras, or offer event security services?

To justify your choice of each security service, explain the value proposition behind each one, how it addresses customer pain points, and your expertise in delivering each service.

4. Market analysis

Market analysis involves gathering data about your target audience, competitors, and the current security industry landscape. The essence of this activity is to demonstrate demand and get insights to use in upstaging competitors.

In-depth market analysis also produces information you can use to design effective marketing strategies to promote your business and prompt customers to pick you over competitors.

Market research starts with curiosity, asking the right questions, and using data to find answers. Such questions include:

(a) What is the addressable market size?

This involves estimating the number of customers available compared to the number of competitors. The result will help you identify potential niches with less competition and craft a differentiation strategy.

You can rely on data from the United States Census Bureau and premium market databases. 

(b) Who is your target market?

Use your chosen security services to find your target customer segment. Then, create a document that outlines their demographics (age, location, family size), psychographics (interests and values), income level, and security-related pain points.

Leverage local security providers’ websites and social media pages to get the necessary data on your potential customers. Additionally, consider local security industry publications.

(c) Who are your local competitors, and what are they doing?

Find your top five competitors. Learn their pricing strategy, service area, and annual revenue (use their workforce size to estimate this).

To complete your competitive analysis, perform a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use the result to craft a value proposition and outline competitive advantages.

You can source data for this section by asking potential clients or making service calls to competitors.

Be as detailed as possible in this section, as it will form the basis of your marketing and operations plan.

5. Staffing & equipment

This section encompasses the employees (administrative staff and security personnel) and equipment essential for running the business and scaling successfully,

New businesses can list the core team needed for day-to-day operations, the additional positions they plan to hire as the business expands, and their salary ranges and responsibilities.

Next, list the materials, tools, and equipment you need to start your business. Then, list their costs, adding a buffer to accommodate price changes.

Rather than purchasing low-grade equipment, invest in essential high-quality items to ensure durability and delay repair costs. You can buy the rest later and rely on leasing companies to handle temporary needs.

6. Marketing plan

Offering exceptional customer service, the best offers, and competitive pricing is insufficient to build a successful alarm company. People must know your company exists to hire and trust you to handle their security.

That’s where marketing comes in.

Marketing encompasses all efforts to communicate your services’ value to customers, persuading them to pay for it or keep your company top-of-mind until they need security services.

For a new business, focus on low-cost digital and offline marketing strategies. Outline the plan for executing each strategy and track its progress and impact on business goals.

You can use the SMART framework to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals for each marketing campaign, making it easy to measure their effectiveness.

After setting goals and prioritizing marketing channels, identify the system for tracking progress. This includes the technology you’ll use to measure results and key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge success.

ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing software reveals the exact revenue each marketing campaign generates by using trackable phone numbers to help attribute each customer call to the campaign source.

The software also showcases marketing campaign performance using an intuitive dashboard that pinpoints the locations driving the most calls. This provides invaluable insights to guide you in reallocating budgets, pausing ineffective campaigns, and optimizing your ad spend.

Another useful ServiceTitan tool for marketing campaigns is its Marketing Pro software. This helps security companies maximize the efficiency and lead-generation potential of multiple marketing channels using the following features:

(a) Local Services Ads integration  

This integration automatically syncs leads and job bookings from Google’s Local Services Ads into ServiceTitan. This simplifies lead tracking and follow-up, ensuring you don’t lose potential revenue.

(b) Marketing Pro – Email

ServiceTitan created this tool to help entrepreneurs create email marketing campaigns even without design or marketing expertise.

With the tool, you create emails from templates and target specific customer segments with relevant content. For example, you can send upsell offers to customers who have not upgraded security systems they have owned for a certain number of years.

Such hyper-relevant content boosts conversions, generating additional revenue.

(c) Direct Mail

This tool has multiple professionally designed mail templates tailored to the needs of security companies. Simply pick a template and customize it. ServiceTitan will help you print and send them out.

Even better, ServiceTitan charges per mail delivery, which is far cheaper than the minimum print runs common with most direct mail providers.

You can also create audiences using specific criteria like expiring memberships and mail them promotional materials specific to their needs.

(d) Reputation Management

Reputation Management streamlines and automates the review request process, allowing you to easily collect multiple customer reviews. This helps you effortlessly grow your online reputation with positive reviews.

The tool also has a central hub, which collates customer reviews across business listings, allowing you to monitor and respond to reviews from one place.

This centralization of customer reviews makes it easy to resolve customer complaints before they escalate and damage your online reputation.

(e) Marketing Pro – Ads

This integrates with Google Analytics and Google Ads platforms, allowing you to track which campaigns, keywords, and ad groups are generating revenue.

The platform’s dynamic call-tracking system automatically attributes each call to the originating campaign. Scrapping ineffective campaigns frees up time for your CSRs to focus on other tasks and lowers your cost per lead.

7. Management summary

This section introduces the management team responsible for running the business. It also explains to the reader how you plan to structure your business, approach decision-making, and measure progress.

Begin your management summary with a list of the business's key people. Outline their responsibilities, skills, and previous experience. 

If you’re seeking funding, use this opportunity to sell your team’s credibility and ability to scale the business and successfully generate profit for the investor.

Next, outline the functional areas and the people heading them. For now, focus on the critical business units: leadership, operations, finance, accounting, people management, sales, and marketing.

Craft your organizational hierarchy and chain of command for decision-making to ensure clear lines of accountability. If you’re a solopreneur, simply predict your organizational chart to preserve a well-defined chain of command as you scale.

Finally, consider investing in technology like ServiceTitan’s Field Reporting and Service Scheduling software to manage your business and boost employee efficiency.

ServiceTitan’s Field Reporting software lets you track your company’s performance using pre-built dashboards. You can also create custom reports and schedule them to be automatically delivered to your inbox at specific intervals.

The software also analyzes CSRs’ and technicians’ performance, which it displays using dashboards that identify memberships sold, calls converted, and customer satisfaction ratings.

ServiceTitan’s Service Scheduling software empowers dispatchers to plan for particular jobs––weeks, months, and years ahead of schedule. They can tag jobs requiring special expertise, language knowledge, and tool proficiency, ensuring techs arrive prepared.

By planning schedules ahead of time, dispatchers can prevent overbooking and maintain a steady flow of jobs to keep the business operating.

ServiceTitan’s Service Scheduling software provides scheduler performance insights and allows dispatchers to bulk-book recurring services as outlined in membership agreements.

This helps security companies to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.

8. Financials

Finance is the lifeblood of every successful business. Therefore, it is key to have a clear financial management and tracking strategy etched into your business plan from the outset.

Before writing this section, open a business bank account to separate company from personal expenses. Also, acquire a business credit card to 

cover unforeseen expenses and grow your credit score to unlock access to loan facilities during dips in revenue.

At a bare minimum, the financials section should contain the following:

• Income statement: Outline your projected revenue after factoring in expected operating and overhead expenses such as payroll, taxes, insurance, and wages. This demonstrates the business’s predicted profitability.

• Cash flow statement: List the amount you expect to pay and receive over time to predict your ability to cover financial obligations, invest in growth, and weather economic downturns.

• Balance sheet: This is where you showcase your company’s assets and liabilities. If you’re just starting, use estimates.

• Pricing strategy: Specify how you plan to price your services after factoring in expenses, competitor rates, potential price increases, and profit margin. Also, pick a billing method—flat or hourly rate—and create tiered plans and ongoing service contracts. 

• Funding plans: State the capital you need and a breakdown of how you plan to spend and secure it. Will you apply for loans? Are you using savings or credit from family and friends?

To streamline your finances, pick a system for storing and analyzing transaction data, managing payroll, processing invoices, and accepting customer payments. It could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or as complex as accounting software like QuickBooks and Wave.

However, to save costs and manage all your finances in one tool, consider using ServiceTitan, which has tools for managing transactions, accepting payments, and tracking financial health.

ServiceTitan’s Accounting Platform provides financial reports, spotlighting what customers owe you, each payment status (pending, overdue, or cleared), and the state of your payables.

This clear breakdown of receivables and payables helps you follow up on payments to ensure a healthy cash flow, remain operational, and avoid late payment fees.

ServiceTitan’s Payroll Platform empowers businesses to streamline labor payments and fairly compensate employees.

It automatically updates technicians' overtime and drive time on their time sheets, and lets you create unique payment structures incorporating bonuses and commissions.

Another tool that streamlines financial management is ServiceTitan’s Payments Platform.

This allows technicians to collect cash, credit cards, and checks in the field. Customers can pay using any method, ensuring no payment is lost and that cash flow remains stable.

The Payments Platform also automatically deposits payments into your bank account and reconciles them with electronic payments so your accounts stay balanced.

This reduces the accounting errors that are common with manual reconciliations and prevents employees from spending hours in bank queues.

Discover more ways to use ServiceTitan’s financial reports to drive revenue and business growth.

9. Operational plan

Regardless of the loftiness of your business goal, with an execution strategy, you can avoid falling into the 25 percent of businesses that close within the first year of operation. As the saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

This section is your opportunity to craft a strategy for achieving business goals mentioned in the other sections. It bridges the gap between short-term, day-to-day operational plans and long-term strategy for hitting future targets.

Recruitment plans: List the employees you need based on your current budget, services, and size.

Future milestones: Outline the milestones you plan to hit and a specific timeframe. Examples include acquiring X customers in Y years, hitting Y revenue in five years, etc.

Daily tasks: List the different daily tasks you’ll use to hit long-term goals. This includes schedule optimization, quality control measures, customer communication plans, and employee training.

Inventory management: Explain your plans for sourcing tools, materials, and equipment and state your plan for managing inventory to reduce downtime.

Pro tip: Consider using ServiceTitan’s Inventory Management software to monitor stock levels and streamline inventory workflows.

Why Write a Business Plan for a Security Business?

A business plan is a great way to set up your business for success. 

A recent study shows businesses shut down or go bankrupt without a plan, as it serves as a roadmap document and helps businesses respond quickly to adverse economic conditions.

Chris Hunter, Principal Industry Advisor for ServiceTitan, has owned a service business and knows firsthand the clarity and increased performance that having a business plan brings to a business.

“We didn't have a plan,” Hunter says, “It was just, ‘Let's just keep doing what we're doing and hope we get better.’ It was just a bunch of hope.”

However, after updating his business plan, Chris Hunter says, “The first year after we did it, we went from single-digit profitability to double-digit profitability, just because we had a plan.”

Other benefits of writing a business plan include the following:

• It attracts funding: A business plan helps prove your concept’s viability to potential investors. That’s why financial institutions require business owners to submit business plans when securing loans.

• It facilitates effective resource allocation: Writing your business plan’s financial section allows you to allocate resources to each unit and activity without eroding profits.

• It prevents avoidable mistakes: Setting up a business is a precarious activity. Fortunately, computing cash flow predictions, discovering customer needs, and identifying competitor weaknesses reduce risk and improve your company’s chances of success.

• It guides goal- and benchmark-setting: Creating a business plan helps you gather data to set achievable goals and objectives. It also serves as a useful benchmark document for measuring progress.

• It keeps team members aligned: Sharing your business plan with team members keeps everyone on track, focused, and aligned with business objectives, keeping your business on the road to success.

Over to You

Creating a comprehensive business plan sets the stage for running a successful business. It also provides the tools for navigating challenges and capitalizing on competitor weaknesses.

Beyond creating a business plan, watch this webinar featuring Samuel Petrie, Red Barn Service LLC's general manager, to find out how to scale your business.

Also, invest in alarm company software like ServiceTitan to streamline business operations, grow revenue, and boost employee efficiency.

ServiceTitan is a cloud-based software security companies use to streamline customer interactions, manage finances, and automate marketing initiatives. Join thousands of trade companies who currently use it to boost their revenue.