On April 20, 1999, however, the path Hester laid out for Beacon hit a sharp detour.
Twelve students and one teacher were murdered inside Columbine High School, just a few miles from Beacon’s headquarters in Englewood. The tragedy led to school systems focusing more on security infrastructure with communication being a big part of that.
Consider that during a massacre and the immediate aftermath law enforcement have very little ability to see what is going on inside the school walls. So as a Rauland-Borg dealer in the Denver area, Beacon got a lot of calls from school systems in the wake of the tragedy.
“What they wanted from us was to be able to talk to the rooms, and listen and monitor each of the rooms,” Hester days. “It was the intercom [sales] that went through the roof. We’ve sold about 800 school systems, which is a humongous amount of school systems — over 50 a year for 17 years.”
While the initial demand may have been circumstantial, sustaining those relationships has taken business savvy. “We serviced and we serviced and we serviced, and we responded to everybody,” Hester says. “So now, when jobs come to bid, and schools do still have to bid, the spec says, ‘It shall be Beacon,’ and the phone number is there.”
It’s pretty straightforward and also “pretty easy,” Hester adds. “Folks ask me what’s the amount of bid versus direct sales negotiated. Our negotiated sales are 70 percent of what we do, so 30 percent is bid. However, of the 30 percent that we bid, 25 percent is specified us.”
In his role as NSCA president, Hester would like other integrators to benefit from what he’s learned in the industry. That “specified us” strategy isn’t just self-serving; it’s also an insurance policy for a firm. If a customer asked for a sound system in one room that’s similar to one that a firm has provided elsewhere, there’s always a risk, Hester says.
“They design and do all the legwork. They give it to the general and the general says I’m not going to take your price direct. I want you to go through the electrical. The electrical contractor bids off a spreadsheet. They don’t care if you designed it or if you’re best friends with the school district. They want the low bid.”
Brad Walsh didn’t think it was weird that Hester insisted he bring some friends to his job interview. It wasn’t a typical job interview after all. Walsh was operations manager for BoeTel Company, an IT firm in Tennessee. It was 2012 and Beacon recognized it needed leadership that was better equipped to provide clients with network-centric AV and life-safety solutions.
“It was just obvious to me that was where we were going,” Hester says. “It was also obvious to me that I knew nothing about it. Zero. What I needed to do was surround myself with folks who actually did.”
“Most people would have thought it was weird,” Walsh acknowledges. “But for me, Mike’s great at understanding people. He’s a great people person. He was able to peel those layers that sometimes it takes folks a long time to peel. He peeled them pretty quickly, so it wasn’t weird for me. It was comfortable and he knew that.”
Hester’s strategy worked. “We were up on a rooftop. The sunset’s beautiful. The weather is gorgeous. I did the full-court press,” he says. “I got up to go to the restroom and his friends turned to him and said, ‘If you don’t take this job, we’re going to.'”
Beacon had its network-savvy leadership with Walsh on board joining recently hired Brooks Wood, CIO and VP of sales. Of Wood, Hester says he’s as comfortable in the IT and AV sales worlds “as anybody I’ve ever met.”
That forward-thinking leadership shift ended up benefiting Beacon Communication significantly. Two years later in 2014 Beacon had a year of dramatic growth. Revenue jumped about 40 percent to $14 million and it increased personnel by 60 percent to address increased sales and backlog. Walsh explains the 2014 surge as resulting from a confluence of factors.
