How Smart Lock Dealers Can Grow Their Business by Taking Sales Ideas Out of Storage

Updated: Dec 2, 2021

Initiating smart lock sales at the front door makes sense. When located at the front door, smart locks not only put access control at the homeowner’s fingertips—they act as an extension of a home automation hub and provide system control at what is often the home’s most convenient location.

Most people interact with their front door lock on a daily basis—usually several times per day. For the ultimate in convenience, residents can program their front door lock to initiate specific scenarios every time they unlock the door, including disarming their home security system, turning on lights in the foyer, setting temperature levels, and opening blinds.

If you’re a dealer that wants to grow your smart lock business, perhaps you should start by expanding your thinking of smart locks as having an exclusive home at the front door. After all, many homeowners don’t even use the front door as their primary entrance. For these end-users, the main entry to a home can be a side door, or a door that accesses a stairway, foyer, or mudroom from inside the garage. These additional entry points not only bring greater convenience to the home’s residents, but can also mean alternative or even additional sales for dealers.

Some entries to smart lock sales are not even entries to the home at all, but actually entries to different rooms and spaces inside and outside the home. Think outside the box, or the entryway, and you might find ideal potential candidates for smart lock security and connectedness—wine cellars and equipment storage rooms, for example. And now just may be the ideal time to take advantage of these intriguing, albeit less expected, smart lock applications.

During the pandemic, many homeowners have spent more time in their home than ever before—quarantining with their family, staying home with kids, working from a home office, and often using the time to work on home improvement projects.

According to a 2020 survey conducted by Porch Research on home improvement trends in the time of COVID, “Over three in four (76%) homeowners in the United States have carried out at least one home improvement project since the start of the COVID pandemic.” Many of these projects were outdoors, but “44% of homeowners looked toward the future by introducing a tech improvement to their home.” And 14% took on projects that were specifically “making my home ‘smarter.’” These projects likely included home automation systems, incorporating a variety of connected products such as entertainment systems, lighting, connected thermostats, and of course, connected security systems, many featuring smart locks.

Now, with many people continuing to work from and spend time at home, it’s likely that these home improvement projects will also continue.

As I mentioned, the primary location for these smart security projects has traditionally been at the home’s main entrances. But in the interest of growing your home automation and connected security business, it makes sense to expand your vision for potential smart lock sales beyond the front door.

Today, smart locks are available in a complete range of price points, in many different styles, and with a full spectrum of capabilities. With the introduction of more affordable smart locks, your customers might consider putting smart locks not just at secondary entrance points, such as back doors and basement doors, but also entryways to various storage rooms, closets, and private areas throughout the home. Here are some examples:

Wine cellar: Provide adults-only user codes for entrance to a wine cellar, bar area, or liquor storage room. Many smart locks feature traditional or touchscreen keypads. Owners of these locks can use a personal user code for entry into the wine cellar while restricting access to children, teens, or anyone else who doesn’t belong there. These smart locks are a remarkably safe way to allow selective access to separate parts of a home. And even if a young family member is able to figure out your code, it takes a few seconds to change it and renew the security.

Cleaning/pool supplies: Similarly, smart locks can protect children from accessing cleaning products, pool chemicals, or other potentially poisonous materials. Not only can adults be privy to smart lock user codes, but time-sensitive user codes can also be given to housecleaners, pool cleaners, maintenance people, and anyone else who warrants access to the materials protected beyond the storage room door. And with the audit trail provided by a smart lock, you’ll know whether a service person actually showed up and when.

Home office: As many homeowners continue to work from home, they may be looking for ways to protect or allow limited access to their home workspace. Perhaps they’ve converted a basement into a workspace, or they’ve turned a barn into a painting or yoga studio. They may want to use a smart lock for added security, plus the ability to remotely grant access to co-workers or clients. Smart lock protection could be of particular value to people who do product sales and want to store an inventory of products in a user-code-protected part of their home.

A smarter shed: Do your customers have a storage shed where they house expensive gardening or landscaping equipment? Suggest that they protect that investment with a smart lock on the shed so they can give time-sensitive user codes to gardeners, landscapers, carpenters, and other workers.

Connected storage: Some home storage applications may also benefit from the connected nature of certain smart locks. Connected smart locks can act as an extension of a home automation hub. Each of these smart locks can be used to wirelessly communicate with and control other devices that make up some or all of a home automation system. For example, a smart lock located on the door to a library or sports collectibles room can be used to control the humidity within that room and protect its valuable books, letters, cards, and other contents. A smart lock located outside a wine cellar can be connected to the thermostats in that space. A smart lock near the garage can be used to control the lights and video equipment that you might install to protect the contents of that garage, whether it is an antique car or a carpentry shop.

Security, convenience, style and value: These are the attributes that make smart locks so central to today’s home automation systems. Just remember that not only can smart locks be integral in connecting to and even controlling the devices within a complete smart home ecosystem, but they also can bring these benefits to a diverse array of applications throughout the home. When you introduce homeowners to the possibility of pairing their diverse storage applications with smart locks, you just might be in store for long-term customers and prolonged smart security business growth.

As National Sales Manager for Kwikset Residential Access Solutions, Nick English is responsible for management of all sales and distribution through Pro Security channels, including sales and performance management of Territory Sales Managers and Key Account Managers. English creates, develops, and manages division strategy for the Security/Home Automation channels, and the associated National Accounts, Direct Accounts, and Distribution partners and installing dealers within each channel.