Most security companies grow through referrals.
A customer recommends you to another business. A facilities manager moves jobs and brings you into the new organisation. A contractor you’ve worked with before introduces you to a new project.
For many installers this works well for years. Referrals produce reliable work and long-term relationships.
But referrals have two problems
A natural limit. They only reach the people who already know someone in your network.
They are reactive and regularly cause a feast-and-famine pattern for security companies.
Beyond that referral network are organisations actively looking for security installers right now — businesses upgrading CCTV systems, property managers reviewing access control, facilities teams replacing outdated alarm systems.
The companies that win that work are simply the ones those buyers discover during their search — which is ultimately how security companies get customers beyond their existing network. But so many security companies struggle to attract that type of new work.
How Security Companies Get Customers Beyond Referrals
Referrals remain one of the strongest signals a security business can receive. If customers recommend you, it usually means they trust your work.
But once a company wants to grow beyond its existing network, referrals alone rarely generate enough opportunities.
Research consistently shows that the majority of organisations research suppliers before making contact — B2B buyers often complete significant due diligence before picking up the phone. A facilities manager looking for a security installer may search for companies in their area, review websites and compare suppliers before speaking to anyone.
The companies they discover during that research naturally receive more enquiries — a pattern we mapped in detail in How Fire Alarm Companies Get More Customers.
Where Security Companies Get New Customers
In practice, most new customers for security installations arrive through three main routes.
- Referrals and existing relationships
- Buyers actively searching for installers
- Companies that remain visible during buyer research
Referrals often produce high-trust enquiries, but they depend on who your existing clients happen to know.
Search and research reach a much wider pool of potential customers.
When an organisation needs a security upgrade, they typically begin by researching installers who:
- operate locally
- have experience with similar premises
- can demonstrate established competence — with evidence to back it up
In security, buyers aren’t just choosing a contractor. They’re choosing someone they can be accountable for appointing. That makes competence evidence essential, not optional.
The companies that appear during this research naturally become the shortlist. The companies that don’t appear are rarely considered.
Why Some Security Companies Receive More Enquiries Than Others
The difference between companies that receive steady enquiries and those that rely entirely on referrals is usually visibility.
Many technically excellent installers remain almost invisible outside their existing customer base. Their expertise is real, but potential buyers never encounter it during their research.
Other companies make their competence easier to find — and the results are hard to argue with.
CCTV Hire & Sales came to us with one instruction from founder Phil Clarke: “I want to be visible everywhere in the industry.”
When they started working with us, every enquiry came through existing customers. Outside that network, they were invisible — never considered by companies that simply hadn’t heard of them.
“We’re now getting genuine, high-quality enquiries from customers we never would’ve reached before. And they’re coming in steadily – not in overwhelming waves.”
– Phil Clarke, Founder, CCTV Hire & Sales
In year one, turnover increased by 40%. Enquiries started arriving from companies they would never have heard from before. And for the first time, they were no longer reliant on existing customers for work.
By year two the REG Army — their fleet of individually numbered mobile CCTV towers — had doubled in size, unlocking over £650,000 in potential extra annual rental revenue. The sign that something had shifted came from their own distributor, who’d been hearing the same thing from multiple contacts across the industry: REG here, REG there, the REG Army is everywhere.
Results vary — every business and market is different — but the pattern holds: make your competence visible and enquiries follow. Read the full CCTV Hire & Sales case study.
The same principle applies to installation companies. Blake Fire & Security in Southend-on-Sea had loyal clients, NSI Gold and SSAIB third party certifications and a solid offline reputation — but online, they were invisible.
In year one of making their competence visible, they built a £211,000 pipeline. One of those leads became a £1 million contract.
Turning Customer Discovery Into Consistent Enquiries
The goal isn’t simply to attract more leads.
It’s to make sure the right customers can discover your company when they begin researching suppliers.
That means clearly communicating:
- the types of environments you work in
- the systems you specialise in
- the scale of projects you handle
- the organisations who already trust your work
When potential customers encounter that information during their research, enquiries become the natural next step.
The enquiry is not the beginning of the sales process — it’s the result of a research process that may already have been underway for days or weeks.
What Happens After the Enquiry Arrives
Once a potential customer reaches out, the process usually moves quickly.
A site survey is arranged, the system is assessed and a proposal is prepared.
But many opportunities are quietly lost after that point.
A quote is sent… and the customer goes silent.
Sometimes they are comparing installers. Sometimes they are waiting for internal approval. And sometimes they simply have unanswered questions.
Companies that consistently win work don’t assume silence means rejection. They follow up professionally, check whether the proposal made sense and help the buyer move forward — a process we break down in How to Follow Up Fire & Security Quotes Without Losing the Sale.
Stop Chasing Enquiries. Start Being Found.
The security companies that grow most consistently rarely rely on sudden bursts of leads.
Instead they create steady visibility with the organisations most likely to need their services. Those organisations discover them during research, enquiries arrive on their own terms and the sales process becomes far more predictable.
If you can’t be found, you don’t exist — regardless of how good the work is.
If you’d like to see how we approach this for security companies, read more in our Ultimate Guide to Fire & Security Marketing — or if you’re ready to talk about your own visibility gaps, speak to Jo about where to start.
