Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Your first question comes from the line of Jeff Kessler - JTK Consulting
Jeff Kessler - JTK Consulting
I want to ask about how you were able to increase your RMR during this period where given the sluggishness we’re seeing with other companies, both public and private, with RMR creation as basically netting out foreclosures; it’s been tough for a number of companies. You seem while your RMR overall sequentially was a little bit lower, your net creations seem to be a little bit higher than what we have seen with other companies on a percentage basis.
Richard Ginsburg
First of all sequentially it’s a little lower because we did for the [AMPs] customers that choose not to upgrade, we lowered their RMR so part of the decrease is going to be in that and as I said in my comments that was kind of a pass-through charge. But as it relates to how we’ve been able to increase RMR in this tough environment I think two things. Number one is we started our marketing programs a little bit in the first quarter, not the whole quarter, but a little bit of that, but second is I truly believe that we have a pretty seasoned sales staff, sales management staff, and Vice President staff them, that have kind of been through some ups and downs in the economy and their careers and it really is just a very aggressive feed on the street, going after the right customers, selling the right product at a good price point. I think being disciplined we never were in that new construction business at all and that has helped us tremendously. And I think the focus on commercial, although we do hear a lot of concerns about is the commercial market going to grow, we still are seeing some nice increases in things like CCTV and access control. We’re starting to do a lot more fire across the country but I would really just put it at the sales force and sales management is just a seasoned team that is operating on pretty much almost eight cylinders.
Darius Nevin
I would just echo that our commercial group in particular, we have a higher headcount in that group and we typically brought over, as Richard mentioned, seasoned folks who want to work for Protection One, so we have a larger commercial sales force, very experienced and we’ve had I think consistently for the last four or five quarters pretty good growth in the commercial business and then we’re optimistic for the rest of the year in terms of growth, in terms of growth of additions, because we expect to see some benefits from the marketing activities which really only got started to a very limited extent in the first quarter.
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