How to Increase RMR: A Security Dealer's Playbook for Recurring Monthly Revenue
RMR is the number that sets what your alarm company is worth. Here are the four levers that actually move it — and how to pull each one without buying accounts you can't afford.
Recurring Monthly Revenue — RMR — is the single most important number in the security business. It's the monthly monitoring and service revenue that renews on its own, and it's what a buyer pays a multiple of when you sell. Grow RMR and you grow both your monthly cash flow and your company's enterprise value at the same time. This is the practical playbook for increasing it.
Why RMR runs the whole business
A security company is valued on its RMR, not its one-time install revenue. Buyers pay a multiple of your monthly recurring revenue, and that multiple is set by the quality of the book: how long your customers stay, how clean the contracts are, what equipment is in the field, and how many problem accounts come with it. Two dealers billing the same amount every month can be worth very different sums, which is why the multiple that matters is the one a buyer puts on your book after reading your cancellation history, not an industry average. A low-attrition book is worth more than a bigger one that leaks. That's why chasing installs alone is a trap: the recurring line is where the wealth is built.
The four levers that move RMR
There are only four ways to increase RMR, and every real growth plan is some combination of them.
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Free: Security Dealer Marketing Scorecard
Put in your company, your city and your website and it scores your Google listing out of 100, puts your review count beside the other security companies in your city, and reads your own home page. Three gaps in plain words, one next step each. Leave your email and we will send it over, then walk you through what it found.
1. Add net-new accounts. The obvious lever — more monitored customers. What matters is the cost to add them. Buying accounts through a dealer program is fast but expensive and dilutive; generating your own through local search, referrals, and reviews is slower but builds far cheaper, stickier RMR. Most dealers underinvest in the second and overpay for the first.
2. Raise ARPU (average revenue per user). You don't always need more customers — you need more revenue per customer. Interactive services (video, automation, smart-home control), cellular upgrades, and annual price escalators built into the contract all lift ARPU. A $5/month increase across 1,000 accounts is $5,000 in new RMR every month, with zero acquisition cost — and because a buyer values the company off that recurring line, it lifts what the business is worth at the same time.
3. Cut attrition. Attrition is RMR flowing out the bottom. If you're losing 12% of your book a year, you have to add 12% just to stand still. Cutting attrition from 12% to 8% on a $50,000/month book keeps roughly $2,000/month in RMR you were about to lose — the cheapest RMR you'll ever "add." Proactive save calls, contract renewals, and simply answering the phone when a customer calls to cancel are where this is won.
4. Upsell and cross-sell the base you already have. Your existing customers already trust you. Adding video verification, a second-system referral, fire/life-safety monitoring, or a service plan to accounts you already monitor is the highest-margin RMR there is.
To put your own numbers on all four levers, our free Recurring Revenue Growth Planner works out what your cancellations take off the monthly line and what each lever adds on your own book. The full method is here.
Where dealers leave RMR on the table
The most common leak isn't strategy — it's operations. Missed calls go to voicemail and never call back. After-hours leads (a homeowner whose alarm just went off at 2am is a buyer) hit a dead line. Cancel requests aren't met with a save offer. Reviews never get asked for, so local search dries up and new-account cost climbs.
This is exactly where an AI voice agent earns its keep for a dealer: it answers every call 24/7, qualifies the lead, books the appointment, and can trigger a save workflow on a cancel — so the RMR you already paid to acquire doesn't walk out the door while you're on a truck. Getting recommended by Google and ChatGPT does the same thing on the front end, lowering the cost of every net-new account.
A simple 90-day RMR plan
- Weeks 1–2: measure your real attrition rate and ARPU. You can't improve what you don't track.
- Weeks 3–6: stop the leaks — never miss a call, add a save offer to every cancel, ask every satisfied customer for a review.
- Weeks 6–10: add one ARPU lever (an interactive-services upsell or a contractual price escalator).
- Weeks 10–13: turn on a cheaper net-new channel — local SEO and AI search visibility — so you stop overpaying for accounts.
Pull all four levers and RMR compounds: more accounts, worth more each, staying longer. That's how a dealer builds a book worth selling.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good RMR multiple when selling a security company?
It depends far more on the quality of the book than on its size. Clean books — low attrition, strong contracts, interactive services, few problem accounts, equipment the buyer already supports — command the top of whatever buyers are paying at the time. A book with high attrition or weak paperwork sells at a discount. That range moves with the market and with who is buying, so the thing worth working on is not the average: it is cutting your attrition and tightening your contracts, which raises both your RMR and the multiple a buyer will put on it.
How do I increase RMR without buying more accounts?
Raise ARPU and cut attrition. A small monthly price increase or an interactive-services upsell across your existing base adds RMR with no acquisition cost, and reducing attrition keeps the RMR you already have. Both improve enterprise value immediately, and neither requires a single new customer.
What's the difference between RMR and revenue?
Revenue includes one-time income like installation charges and equipment sales. RMR is only the recurring monthly monitoring and service revenue that renews automatically. Buyers value a security company primarily on RMR because it's predictable and durable, which is why growing the recurring line matters far more to your company's worth than a big install month.
How does missing calls hurt RMR?
Every missed call is a potential new account that goes to a competitor, or an existing customer whose problem goes unresolved and who then cancels. Because RMR compounds over years, a single lost account is worth many times its monthly fee. Answering every call — including after hours, which an AI voice agent can do 24/7 — protects both new-account growth and retention.
Free, no call needed
Free: Security Dealer Marketing Scorecard
Put in your company, your city and your website and it scores your Google listing out of 100, puts your review count beside the other security companies in your city, and reads your own home page. Three gaps in plain words, one next step each. Leave your email and we will send it over, then walk you through what it found.