Portal, one of the custom integration industry’s most popular AV proposal & design software solutions used by thousands of custom integrators every day, has announced that they have struck a deal with two industry powerhouse brands – Snap One and Sonos – who will make the software available to their respective integration dealer bases. Both brands will underwrite the full monthly subscription cost for their dealers in an effort to help those integrators raise their level of professionalism, improve the efficiency of their operations, and increase their deal closing rates.
See more on the Portal program with both Sonos and Snap One
I have followed Portal for a number of years, starting back in 2015 when they were known as SupplyStream. Launched by industry insiders with integration backgrounds, SupplyStream created a carefully curated and centralized online catalog or database with an immense assortment of industry brands, products, and pricing. The business model has changed over the years with the company denoting the change with a rebranding as Portal in late summer/early fall of 2016.
Over the years the company has continuously refined its offering, emerging into one of the more prominent players in the proposal & design software segment with thousands of end users. How they managed to become a leader in the segment was by offering a solution that achieves a crucial balance between providing robust content and capabilities…while offering an intuitive and simplified design to enhance ease of use for an effortless user experience. This results in a solution that empowers highly efficient operations, saving dealers time and money.
An Impressive Inflection Point in the Ongoing Growth of Portal
Now the company has achieved an impressive inflection point in its history by partnering with two major players in the home automation industry – Snap One and Sonos. It seems inevitable that Portal’s solution will receive exponentially greater exposure to an even wider range of dealers than it has up to now.
How big is this opportunity? Consider the example of just one of these new partners – Snap One. Snap One, a public company, claims it does business with around 20,000 dealers. I don’t know the dealer headcount for Sonos, but it too is likely to be substantial.
We’re big fans of what Portal.io has built for dealers. We believe their proposal tool will help increase our Partner’s efficiency and elevate the overall standards of professionalism for the industry at large. We strive to provide comprehensive solutions that support our Partners’ growth. We are confident that putting Portal’s [p]roposal tool in the hands of our Partners will help them to save time, impress their clients, elevate the customer experience, and win more projects.
Ryan Marsh, Snap One Chief Revenue Officer
A Powerful New Benefit for Dealers
Today, all the dealers of both of these brands learn of a new benefit they are receiving courtesy of Snap One and Sonos. Thanks to the generosity of these manufacturers, dealers will receive a custom-built fully functioning Portal plan that will allow them to quickly and efficiently create professionally designed proposals and track the process from proposal to installation. All of this to be provided at no charge to the dealer – the monthly subscription fee will be paid by the manufacturer.
Sonos is extremely excited to be partnering with the team at Portal.io to provide an industry-leading proposal platform to Direct Sonos Dealers. One of our primary strategic pillars in the Professional channel is Simplicity and we believe that providing effective, powerful tools to our partners is one key way to make it easier to grow your business. We look forward to seeing what our partners can accomplish using Portal’s platform to design more Sonos systems.
Casey Clemens, Sonos Director of Americas Professional
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
It is important to note that this is in fact a full-featured plan, it includes unlimited proposals and continuously updated pricing information for the respective sponsoring manufacturers’ products. Portal says it is an incomparable value worth well over $600/year. Oh, and there is no ending date for the deal – so for dealers, this is the gift that keeps on giving.
There are still a significant number of integrators creating proposals that are a patchwork of Excel, Word, Quickbooks and other generic business tools. Dealers quickly discover that they can create a much more professional proposal faster, easier, and more accurately when they use Portal. Dealers constantly tell us that they wished they had tried us sooner, because they didn’t realize how easy it is to learn. They assume it will be like any other software, with a steep learning curve and onboarding commitment. With Portal, it’s possible for a dealer to close their first proposal on the same day they sign up – I’ve seen this firsthand. Dealers tell us their clients love the simple presentation and that they are closing more deals. Now, thanks to Sonos and Snap One, every dealer can have these benefits at no cost. It’s a really big deal for the industry. ”
Kirk Chisholm, Portal Founder and CEO
How Dealers Can Take Advantage of This Offer
If you are an existing Snap One or Sonos dealer, you may be wondering how you go about taking advantage of this deal. All dealers will receive a communication from the manufacturer with a link that transports them to a custom landing page with all of the details on Portal and the program. Dealers will also receive a promo code for the Portal deal. For the first two weeks after signing up, dealers are treated to complimentary access to a top-tier Portal program with the most available features.
After the initial 14-day period expires, they are asked to select the plan to which they desire to subscribe. Here, all tiers are offered, including the free one associated with the underwriting manufacturer. Simply indicate your choice and you are all set.
Why Dealers Chose Portal
I spoke with a couple of current Portal subscribers to learn just what it was about their experience that keeps them committed to Portal’s solution. Both of these dealers are long-time users of Portal’s proposal software.
I first spoke with Maitland Fritzley, Co-Founder and President of Infinite Home Theater based in Meridian, Idaho. Maitland told me that prior to subscribing to Portal, he was manually constructing proposals using Excel and other software. The process could be quite time-consuming, looking up product information, chasing down the latest price sheets, and then double- and triple-checking everything to make sure you didn’t make a mistake…which can be costly.
Then he went to a CEDIA Expo and came across the Portal booth. Portal was holding a contest in which they would give away a valuable prize (a flat panel TV) to any attendee who could build a proposal using the Portal software and a basic set of facts given to all contestants in the shortest amount of time. Maitland decided to give it a try. (Contestants had to have never used the Portal software before).
Maitland Won a Proposal Creation Contest in ‘Just a Matter of Minutes’
“And I want to say it took just a matter of a few minutes for me to generate my proposal, and I ended up winning the TV as the fastest one of the show,” Maitland said. “And I’m like, well if I’ve never used this tool before, and I could go on and make a quote that quick…that’s pretty impressive.”
Maitland signed up on the spot and has been using Portal for the last ten years or so. “It was just an absolute game changer, you know?” he added. Not only is proposal creation faster and easier, but clients like the final result too. “I constantly get compliments from clients about how easy the proposals are to read. Also, they like how transparent the numbers are.”
In 30 Seconds, ‘I was Building a Quote’
Jesse Smith of Wyred AV in Colleyville, Texas had a similar epiphany, although a completely different set of circumstances. Prior to signing up with Portal, Jesse had been using D-Tools, another popular proposal software. He began hearing from other integrators about Portal but didn’t know much about it at the time. Then, one day, he hired a new team member.
“So the new team member that I hired, had been using Portal at the time and he said, ‘Hey, we need to switch from D-Tools to Portal,'” Jesse told me. “He showed me how it worked, and in 30 seconds I was building a quote. I was like, wow, this is awesome!”
Portal Allows Jesse ‘To Do Business the Way That I Wanted to Do Business’
The more he used it, the more he liked it. Comparing it to what he had used before, Jesse said: “The data was so much more up to date and it just vastly improved our workflow. I have all my pricing right at my fingertips on my phone, or my tablet, on any of my computers at any time. So I could work no matter where I was without any restrictions anymore. I’ll tell you that was life-changing for me,”
Summing it up, Jesse said, “Portal really put the power in my hands to do business the way that I wanted to do business…which is out in the field. That’s a testament to what Kirk [Chisholm, as a former integrator] brought to the table and why Portal is the way that it is now. I’m a huge believer in what they’re doing and I think it’s the best product for what it does.”
For More Information…
Get more details on the Snap One – Portal program here…
Learn more about Sonos and Portal at this link…
To see all there is to see about Portal, visit portal.io.
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