SBS Electric and SnapCount: 50% Project Close Rate for Family-Owned Business

SBS Electric, a family-owned business, was founded in 1948 with its roots established in the electrical distribution industry. With the emergence of new lighting technologies, SBS Electric added a lighting retrofit offering servicing customers in the commercial and industrial space, as well as residential projects. Aiming to ramp up the revenue stream from their retrofit arm, SBS Electric sought out to find a digital solution to help win more retrofit projects and grow their small business.

With an extensive background of over 31 years of experience in the field of electrical distribution and lighting, Kyle Keeton of SBS Electric has conducted lighting audits and retrofits in a number of fashions. After a quick stint working for a lighting retrofit contractor, Keeton re-joined the SBS Electric team with a clear goal in sight: ramp up the SBS Electric lighting retrofit project portfolio, particularly in their home state of Alabama.

Having utilized methods to conduct lighting retrofits in the past that include pencil and paper, spreadsheets, and multiple digital solutions, Keeton knew that in order for SBS Electric to truly achieve growth in the retrofit space they would have to evaluate a software solution. “Having used pencil and paper to conduct audits in the past was a nightmare. I could never collect the right information that would be best relayed back to the customer. We tried a software called EcoInsight but I was not particularly impressed with level of customization of the software, particularly when it came to audit functionality, labor, and solutioning”, said Keeton.

With aggressive growth goals ahead, SBS Electric began the search for a retrofit software in 2021. With past experience in mind, Keeton sought out to find a solution that not only digitize the audit, proposal and implementation processes of SBS Electric’s retrofit projects, but also enable them to customize various calculations and outputs to present the optimal solution to the customer.

After a brief evaluation period, SBS Electric chose SnapCount as the digital platform that best aligned with their growth goals in the retrofit industry. Having previously used SnapCount during a stint at a prior employer, Keeton was confident that implementing SnapCount at SBS Electric would help in presenting the customer with a highly accurate and polished deliverable that would tremendously improve the closing ratio.

“Having used SnapCount as well as some of its competitors in the past, I was excited to bring SnapCount over to SBS Electric. SnapCount is a very user friendly and intuitive platform that allows for a great deal of customizations such as custom calculations, power factors, and so much more that I could not do with other software options”, said Keeton.

As a small, family-owned business, Keeton found that SnapCount provided SBS Electric with a more professional appearance both in the field and in the deliverable. “After implementing SnapCount we’re certainly on the right track to achieving our aggressive growth goals. Facility managers are blown away with how professional both our audits and proposals are compared to the competition, and it’s a game changer to pick and choose which documents I can present to the customer since each facility is different”, said Keeton.