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KEN KIRSCHENBAUM,ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER
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PERS - Great Way To Increase Your Business
March 11, 2013
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Lee's comment below is both timely [because we are having a PERS webinar this Thursday] and because it's right on the money. Pers equipment is plug and play or within cell phone applications; this lends itself to a nationwide market which is attractive to well funded alarm operations. PERS is definitely a service you should be considering. The upcoming webinar will be helpful if you're already in the business or thinking about getting into the Pers business.
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Ken
Recently your Newsletter has referenced the PERS market. We offer more comments.
We have often suggested to our clients that the perceived PERS market has been a “phantom market”. Because it is believed that everyone qualified for Social Security is a good prospect for PERS, and believe the growing elderly population is expanding the market. That perception is a boobytrap. Success of a PERS business today has less to do with age and more to do with target marketing.
The definition of the PERS market has changed within last few decades and some of the technology has changed to meet the new definitions. PERS still means, Personal Emergency Response, but the market is now subdivided by “short range” or “long range” threat mitigation, and subdivided again with the different threats, having little or nothing to do with age.
Traditional cell phones have siphoned off much of the original PERS market as we have known it during the past 20-30 years. During that era, PERS pendants had a short range of about 50 feet from the two-way voice controller, and cell phones have become affordable for just about everyone. Much of that outdated PERS technology is still offered today to reach a very narrow market of “infirmed” that could now be captured by professional healthcare providers.
We believe there are other markets for the short range pendant, such as the younger at-home families where accidents happen..... or it could be used for threat mitigation in selected retail applications as a “suspicion button” for pre-holdup, shoplifting, disorderly customers, etc. Long range (cell) PERS pendants offer threat mitigation for persons of any age feeling a threat while away from their safe haven, including children and older students away from home.
Of course monitoring sources must update their support accordingly. All of which offers a big market for PERS, when not focusing on the elderly.
NOTE: Much of the PERS technology could be applied to solving the nasty intrusion false alarm problem, with "verification" monitoring.
Lee Jones
Support Services Group
TO SUBMIT QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS REPLY TO THIS EMAIL OR EMAIL Ken@Kirschenbaumesq.com. Most comments and questions get circulated.
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