Security Sales & Integration April 2021 - 28

EXCLUSIVE!
Executive Interview
SAGE Spearheads
Security

One of the
things we feel
makes us a little
different is with
these embedded
clients that we
have, it helps us
innovate and
bring them new
technologies
to solve
problems.
- John Nemerofsky,
COO, SAGE

more efficient but it was also a great customer
experience. Six companies bid on that opportunity and we won.
It was a five-year contract and while it was a
great day new challenges arose when they asked,
" Can you go find someone to install these? " We
were a virtual company. I entered in the world
of security integrations. The Wild West, I would
say, of security integration. We interviewed all
the big players, 18 or 20 different companies,
and narrowed it down to six. We gave each of
them three locations and said, " OK, here's the
playbook. Go at it, come back in two weeks and
we'll see how you did. " Two weeks later, all 18
sites were inoperable. That's when I went, " Uh
oh, I'm either running away or going to run toward this business. " Obviously, I did the latter.
We did a lot of research and I became fascinated with the industry. My partner and I
spoke to a whole bunch of end users and found
most were not thrilled with their integrator. We
talked to other integrators and we kept asking
them their value proposition. We heard a lot
of, " I'm the biggest. " " I'm the second biggest. "
" I'm the third biggest. " You know what none of
them were saying? " I'm the best. " Nobody focused on quality. They were all focused on size.
I'd never seen an industry that didn't have a
clear-cut best of breed. The other part of the industry that was interesting was how fragmented
it was. You had four or five players at the top of
the food chain and then everybody else.
We jumped in and decided this is the industry we wanted to go after, and do so in a meaningful way. We teamed up with an investor and
partner, Talisman Capital Partners. Most people
know Talisman for its association with Cardinal
Health, which is a Fortune 20 company. They
have built three businesses they started from
scratch and grew them into billions of dollars in
enterprise value. We were lucky enough to create
this partnership. We then went out and bought
a company in Ohio, then subsequently bought
another one in Atlanta and merged them together. That's how we got in the business.
As you go to market, is your play more
focused on operational benefits or the
security aspect? How do you balance it?
Frasier: We keep the business simple. With this

industry, I think creating a repeatable process
that won't embarrass the end user is kind of the
table stakes. If you can do that you've already
vaulted yourself ahead of a lot of the compet-

28 Security Sales & Integration APRIL 2021

SS2104 pp26-30 SAGE Integration.indd 28

itors. The competitors have taken their eye off
the ball and haven't focused on process. They're
focused on their size. They're focused on acquisitions. Nobody's focused on best-of-breed, repeatable processes. As simple as that sounds, and
by the way it's difficult to do, that's what we're
focused on - creating that consistent process
that people can go to bed feeling good about.
John Nemerofsky: To that end, we've put a
lot of detail and structure and training around
people, process and partners. We measured
utilization rates of everybody in the field. We
measure their efficiency on every job and service call. We track return trips to service calls.
We save KPIs around them. We're looking for
our team to be 95% utilized. We've put together incentive plans for people to hit those utilization efficiencies and margin goals and customer
satisfaction goals, purchasing goals.
This morning we had a meeting with our purchasing team sending KPIs out for 2021 knowing that we'll purchase north of $30 million
worth of equipment in this timeframe. Purchasing is a key area for the company, and just purchasing 1% or 2% better can draw past a million dollars to the bottom line. We've had all our
project managers security project management
certified, they run the job the same way they
use the tools we put in place with Smartsheets
and Sedona. They run the project with the end
in mind and then build their plan backwards.

Continuing with the people aspect of
SAGE, how are you building culture around
the " tip of the spear " philosophy?
Jim Geyer: One of the things that enticed me to

come to this company was the culture that was
being created. The logo's shield represents protecting our customers and the tip of the spear
represents how we're empowering our employees
on a daily basis. It's about the communication
and visibility we give our employees as to the direction of the company, with the big thing being
the messaging. The executive leadership here is
all on the same page in messaging our employees
and treating them with respect, and the opportunity to grow in our company is huge.
Another piece would be around training. We
look at continued training or continued education of all of our employees. A lot of companies
will focus on just getting somebody to certify.
We not only focus on getting that initial certification but ensure that we continue to help
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Security Sales & Integration April 2021

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