Smart Life Integration – In the Know

 We wanted to take a minute to first, welcome you to the team of Smart Life Integration, and second, give you an update on what we have been doing and where we are going. We have been super busy over the last month getting things setup to get the doors open. Here are some highlights. As you can imagine, there are a lot of things that need to be done to get a company of this size off the ground.

As some of you know, we have created a strategic partnership with The Blind and Shutter Gallery. This relationship is very important to getting things rolling because of our common interest in Smart Home Technology. Peter has wanted to add this ability to his product offering to stay competitive with other vendors in the area and now he has it. We have added a flyer to his primary sales packet which will be given out to each of his prospects going forward which describes our relationship. Buckle your seat belts. The engine is started.

Our social media offering is now in full swing. We are already signed up with FaceBook, Instagram, Houzz, Yelp, and YouTube. Believe it or not, we are already being noticed and all we have out there is our logo. It is our plan to begin regular social media posts to boost our exposure. More to follow.

 As some of you know, we have been working on firming up our product offering which are the products we will be selling and installing. As of now, we have about 11 brands that we currently have experience with. These products have shown strength in their specific area such as cameras, smart switches, smart plugs, etc. While we believe we have a great offering, we have decided to expand out our search for additional products that are leaders in the market. These include Lutron, Crestron, Control4, Savant, and Sonos. Over the next few days, we will be meeting with each of these vendors to identify requirements to sell their products. We have experience with these types of relationships. Many will have requirements to become a partner/dealer so we need to be prepared to get busy.

Our website has finally taken shape but we are still not totally done. Over the next few days, we will be enhancing the site with additional images and content. This will also give us the ability to express our new partner relationships. More to follow on this topic.

So, after an exhaustive search for a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, we have chosen to go with Jira. While it is not a CRM, it is a tool that can be configured with infinite possibilities. With my experience with CRM’s, I created one that will serve us well for the short term. If we outgrow it, we might consider something more robust. The tool we have also comes with another tool which will allow us to bind each customer record with a notes area which is also very useful.

Our marketing efforts are now in full swing. We have four major campaigns moving forward. First, we are moving forward with 2 partnership announcements to the BSG customers of 2024. This will be an email campaign and a mailer campaign. Second, we are working on a campaign to notify the BSG accounts about the partnership on their FaceBook page. This will result in additional exposure. Lastly, we are working on a FaceBook and Google Ads campaign to begin to grow our market presents.

 We have been working very hard to get our corporate presents in place and I am pleased to announce that we are incorporated in the state of Florida as a corporation and we have filed for our S-Corp election. We have also received our Sales and Use tax number which will allow us to purchase products for resell without paying taxes. We have our bank account open and we have established our CC processing merchant account so we can now take credit cards. 

We now have several of our sales processes in place to support sales. I have created a excel calculator which will help us define how the order will look when we are with the customer. Over the next few days, I will be creating a proposal template which will be use to give to the customer during the sales cycle to help them understand what they will be getting. All of this is still evolving.

 We now have our official phone system in place. The corporate number is 727-625-3729. This number will start an IVR (Integrated Voice Response) which will direct the caller to sales, customer service, or support. Any after-hours calls go to a general voice mail box which allows the caller to leave a message. All other calls will ring my phone and then Karan’s phone until they are dropped to voice mail.

 Here is some exciting news. We have been given the BSG Showroom to add a full set of automation to which will give us a place to showcase the products that we will be selling. This is a massive leap forward and will also set us ahead of our competition. We are planning to finalize the buildout this week.