How to Choose the Right Permanent Lighting Company to Partner With: 3 Questions Every Dealer Should Ask

If you already run a home-service business, permanent lighting is a natural service to add. You have the trucks, the ladders and the crews, and your customers already trust you on their property. The harder decision is which permanent lighting company to partner with, because the system you choose is the one your name goes on.

We talk with operators every week who are weighing that choice. One operator recently narrowed it down to three must-haves: a white that actually looks white, a backup data line so one bad light doesn't take out every light after it, and a company that picks up the phone when he calls. It's a good list, and it shaped the three questions below. Ask them of any company you're considering, including us.

1. Would I put this light on my own house?

If you wouldn't want a light on your own roof, you'll have a hard time selling it for someone else's. Every permanent lighting dealer finds out quickly that the install is a billboard. The neighbors see it every night, and they know who put it up. A light that looks blue when it's set to white, or a strand that goes dark halfway across the roofline, is a problem for the dealer long before it's a problem for the manufacturer.

A true white

Many permanent lights use three LEDs per light (red, green and blue) and mix them to make white. The result usually has a blue tint. Each TruLight light has six LEDs: the three color LEDs plus three dedicated warm white LEDs. Turn all six on and you get a clean, bright white that homeowners can leave on as everyday accent or security lighting. Our co-founder Ben has photos of his own house with both systems set to white, and the difference is obvious.

A backup data line

TruLight uses a 48-volt system with 16-gauge, four-wire cable. The fourth wire is a redundant data line, so if one light fails, every light past it in the line keeps working. The wire is tinned copper, which resists corrosion and matters in humid climates.

A longer-rated chip

We pay more for the UCS7604 chip, which is rated for 100,000 hours. The WS2811 chip used in many other systems is commonly rated around 50,000. The UCS7604 also dims more smoothly, which homeowners notice when patterns fade in and out.

A warranty with clear terms

TruLight's lifetime warranty means the rated life of each part. The lights and control box get full replacement coverage for five years from the installation date. After that, the lights carry prorated coverage through year 11.4, which is 100,000 hours of continuous use. Control box coverage ends at year five. The warranty applies to systems installed by a TruLight dealer, and the full terms are on our warranty page.

You don't have to take our word for any of this. Our comparison pages put TruLight next to the other systems you're likely considering, with the videos and the specs side by side. Prospective dealers often tell us those videos are what made them reach out.

2. Will someone actually pick up when I'm stuck on a job?

Our answer starts with Ben's own experience as a dealer, because it's the reason TruLight exists.

Before TruLight, Ben spent years building door-to-door pest control companies, teaching crews how to sell and how to take care of customers. When some of his former sales reps told him they were doing well with permanent lighting, he looked at every system on the market and picked the one he thought was the best. His rule was simple: if he wouldn't put it on his own house, he wouldn't sell it.

Then he paid to become a dealer and asked what training came with it. The answer was none. He could sell the product, and that was it.

So he taught himself on his own roof. When he got stuck and asked for help, the company offered to send one of its local installers to show him, for $300. He paid it. When he asked to talk to one of their salespeople so he could hear how they pitched the product, they told him no. He offered $200 for 15 minutes on the phone, just to hear a pitch.

He figured it out anyway. He was told permanent lighting only sold during the holidays, so he kept selling it after the holidays and stayed booked through the winter. He became one of that company's top dealers. But he got there through trial and error, after paying for installation help and still never hearing a sales pitch.

When Ben and his longtime friend Bowdrie started TruLight, they built the dealer program around everything Ben had to find on his own. Bowdrie, who came from tech sales and app development, moved his family to Arizona so the two of them could launch TruLight there. He was on the early installs himself, troubleshooting every system they put up.

Here's what a TruLight dealer gets from the start:

• Install training with our install lead. He has thousands of installs behind him, so there isn't much he hasn't seen. Nobody has to pay $300 to watch someone else do it.
• Sales training from the founders. Ben and Bowdrie recorded how they set appointments and how they close in the customer's home. You don't have to buy 15 minutes on the phone to hear a pitch.
• A marketing playbook and ready-made ad creative.
• Help on the job. When you're on a roof and something isn't behaving, you send our team a video and get an answer from people with thousands of combined installs.
• In-person training if you want it. You're welcome to come train with us in Utah, but it isn't required. Everything above happens remotely.
• Fast shipping. Orders placed early in the day ship the same day.

One of our early dealers tested that promise on his very first job. It was a big project with a demanding customer, and the customer wanted more going on at once than the system had been built to handle. He was on the phone with Bowdrie late into the night trying to figure out what was wrong. Ben and Bowdrie brought in our development team, and they fixed it. The people who built the product were the same people taking his calls.

Our job is to make sure no TruLight dealer is left to figure it out alone, the way Ben was. If that's the kind of partner you're looking for, start a conversation with us.

3. Will this company still be ahead in five years?

When you choose a permanent lighting company, you're betting your business on its product for years. Ben left his last brand because he felt it had stopped improving. He asked for a true white so his own house would show its real color, and for more voice assistant support, and he was told to stop pushing. One prospective dealer told us that a brand selling the same light for years was a bad sign.

We built our own app instead of licensing an off-the-shelf one, so we can add features when dealers and homeowners ask for them. It has 144 moving patterns and a live preview of the house, so a homeowner can see an effect before it plays on the roof.

This year we added motion sensors that sit in the track and turn a zone to bright white when someone walks by. That turns a holiday purchase into a security light.

We engineered our landscape lights at 48 volts so they work from the same control box, in the same app and on the same account as the roofline lights. That gives you one more thing to sell to every customer, all year.

We also keep looking for the next upgrade. Ben and Bowdrie were recently at an LED industry conference in China, looking at new technology to bring into the system.

Already run a Christmas light installation business?

If you hang and take down temporary Christmas lights every year, you already know the customers, the rooflines and the busy season. Permanent lighting keeps all of that and drops the yearly cycle of hanging, storing and rehanging. Your customer stops paying for a new install every season and gets lighting for every holiday and every ordinary evening. You also get something to sell outside the holiday rush. Ben found that out when he kept selling after the holidays, the season he was told not to bother with.

New to permanent lighting? You can still do this

Ben came to permanent lighting from pest control, and our dealers come from a mix of trades. You don't need permanent lighting experience to become a TruLight dealer. The training covers the install, the sales appointment and the marketing. Expect to call us a lot on your first few installs. That's normal, and it's what the support is for.

Who TruLight is a good fit for

We're a little picky about who we bring on, because we commit real time to every dealer and want each one to succeed. TruLight is a good fit if you care about the quality of what goes on your customers' homes, you're willing to put real effort into marketing, and you want a partner who will pick up the phone. If your plan is to win jobs by being the cheapest bid in town, we're probably not the right fit.

If you'd rather sell a light you'd put on your own house and work with a team that treats you as a partner, we'd like to talk. Book a call on our Become a Dealer page, and we'll walk you through the program, the product and whether TruLight fits your business.