Saturday, June 6. 2009If God Had Wanted Cost Efficiency In Business.......John Linton .......he wouldn't have invented Telstra. For those of you who read my earlier peroration on Exetel being too cheap for some financial controllers (whose knowledge of IT and communications is on a par with their ability to decipher one of the earlier Sumer valley cuneiform variations) I thought you may have been interested in 'what happened next' as it would probably come as a surprise to you, as it did to me, that there was a next. To cut a long story short I was sufficiently 'miffed' by the statements about low pricing = low quality that I did something I haven't done for a very long time - I decided I would stir the pot, or perhaps the mind of the person who had 'miffed' me by providing some trouble making information that would at least screw up the cosy incumbency if I could do that simply.....and, quite surprisingly, it had a greater impact than I had expected. I sent this email: "Dear 'rrrrrrrr', Thank you for taking the time to explain the reasons why you will not be asking Exetel to bid for your upcoming network tender although you and 40 other members of your company have a long and trouble free experience in using several different Exetel broadband services in your homes for both your families personal use and, more importantly, as VPN connections to your company's intranet. I fully understand that small companies are, by your definition, less able to provide the level of reliability and support that larger businesses require in their key infrastructures and that you believe that there are substantial differences between Exetel's demonstrated abilities, for over three years, to provide your personnel with 'residential' connections in their 40 different locations around Australia than providing connections to 22 business locations around Australia. As we have known each other for a very long time I thought you would be interested in knowing, should you be seeking a bid from your current VPN provider (or in your case the third party systems integrator you prefer to use to provide the services as you believe they provide a higher level of service than the carrier itself), that the basic costs of providing internet services over high speed 'business grade' links has fallen quite considerably over the past year or so and even more considerably since you, for reasons best known to you at the time, locked your company in to a fixed price contract for 48 months. The costs of the IP content you are currently paying in your contract are over $750.00 per gigabyte for (as advised by you during our telephone conversation) have fallen over 80% over that time and, as you will see from this press release, they have actually fallen at least 44% (from prices much lower than you are paying) quite recently: http://www.southerncrosscables.com/public/home/whatsnewdetail.cfm?WhatsNewID=69 I could provide you with other recent announcements of a similar nature but I'm sure that both you and 'aaaaaaa' are quite familiar with these and other price movements in the IP and transit fibre/cable aspects of delivering data communications services around Australia. Should the communications companies who bid for your business bid similar or even slightly lower prices than you are currently paying it might be sensible for you to get someone in your company to spend a few minutes doing some 'google' research to arm yourslef with some incontovertible facts and figures on just how business communications pricing has fallen over the years since you last made a decision on who you should use. Any way it was good to talk with you again and I wish you every success with your future network provider which you would have to pay far less for than you are currently paying. Kind Regards John" First thing the next morning I got a call on my mobile from my business acquaintance apologising for how he had come across during our phone conversation and saying that he would welcome a bid from Exetel for the VPN and would we also separately bid to replace their telephone systems with the VoIP systems I had talked about and demonstrated at the recent 'seminar' he had attended. We had an amiable disussion during which I, again, said that I completely understood his company's views and didn't disagree with them at all. I thanked him for his re-consideration and said I would think about what Exetel could perhaps do for him in terms of assisting his company use similar VoIP services to the systems Exetel had developed over the past three years. I hung up the phone with a guilty feeling of satisfaction that human beings are so simple to manipulate if you can find a way of pressing the "you're being ripped off" 'button'. Later today I'll send him a "after considerable thought we have decided not to..." email together with three more references on price falls and two other issues which, in the unlikely event he attends to work issues during a long weekend, will really annoy him and make his 'grievance' with his current provider even more irksome....I'm pretty sure the current provider will not retain the business. Petty? Quite possibly. But also very satisfying.
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Wouldn't it be more satisfying to win his business, and use that company as a referencable customer to in turn win further business, thus building Exetel's profile in the business market.
After all isn't this the aim of employing your new sales team? Not every customer is going to be " the perfect customer" right from the start, but you personally have the power to make them the perfect customer. By turning them away they will never have the chance to be the perfect customer, and they will not pass on to anyone else just how good Exetel could be for them. Comments (2)
You would be quite right in most circumstances.
In this particular circumstance I think the FCs view woud be a commonly held view in positions above and around the FC. I try and help our trainees as much as I can to build their knowledge and, as imprtantly, their confidence. I think asking someone to ut a ot of work into a tender response when you have almost no chance of winning is not a good use of their and other people's time. I could be wrong but that is my rationale. Comments (3)
View is everything.
In my company's case, having to meet with BDMs and not being able to get pricing off a website is actually a real frustration for us and in particular our MD/FC. Some of our employees currently use your services for connectivity and mentioning the Exetel name makes most uninvited bidders for any IP service either try and rubbish your name (always without any knowledge of your excellent network) or thank me for my time and cease trying. Comment (1)
On second thoughts, if there is no chance of winning the bid, I agree that you should not bother spending the time to bid. I have seen myself the negative effect of continually losing bids like this can have on morale.....Lawrie
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...and equally....there is no point in wasting time, money and morale on bidding if you can't win.
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I don't think JL has "turned away" anyone, he has just not been obsequious and pandering to a someone who has been promised much, potentially delivered little and undoubtably charged a lot.
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john,
I feel that business relationships are sometimes built on a large brown paper bag being placed on the desk of the prospective client -- the kind thats stacked with $100 notes. Its an accepted practice in some places , QLD in the seventies / eighties might be an example, also many places overseas. If you have $20k in the draw and a decent sized brown paper bag , you may well win more tenders / quotes than you expected. cheers b. Comment (1)
You sir, are amusing. I needed a decent laugh.
Thankyou Comment (1)
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