New construction vs retrofit: which territory to chase first
A short and opinionated guide to the most consequential strategic decision a new integrator makes in their first eighteen months.
Every couple of months a new integrator owner asks me which type of work to chase. New construction or retrofit. The honest answer is both, eventually. The more useful answer, for the first 18 months, is one. Almost never both. The teams that try to do both early end up doing neither well, because the muscles are genuinely different.
New construction: the cycle
Long lead, lower competition, larger ticket. You catch the project at permit stage. You sell the spec in months, not weeks. You install during construction, which is messier but cheaper per camera. The customer signs a multi year service contract. The downside is that the cycle is unforgiving. Miss the spec window by three weeks and you are not on the bid list.
Retrofit: the cycle
Short lead, higher competition, smaller average ticket. The buyer is reacting to a specific problem. An incident, a renewal, a budget cycle. You sell on responsiveness and price more than you do on partnership. Margins are typically thinner, but volume is higher, and the deal can close in three to six weeks instead of three to six months.
How to pick
- Pick new construction if your team has the patience for a six month cycle and the discipline to track permits weekly
- Pick retrofit if your team is closer to a service company in DNA and has the install bandwidth for higher volume of small jobs
- Pick new construction if your geography has a strong commercial development pipeline
- Pick retrofit if your geography is mostly mature commercial inventory with annual budget cycles
What changes when you pick
Your signals change. Your messaging changes. Your sales calendar changes. Your hiring profile changes. The reps who close new construction are different humans from the reps who close retrofit. The mistake every owner makes is trying to hire one rep for both. We have stopped recommending that combination entirely.
The lane you pick first becomes the lane your brand is known for in the territory. That reputation calcifies in 18 months. Pick deliberately.
“Both work. Both pay. Both build a real business. But the first 18 months belong to one of them, not both.”
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