John Linton
......though as I no longer work in the CBD I don't know whether the Christmas tree has been erected in Martin Place together with its grotesque decorations.
I do know that I have received a far greater number of "please join us
for....." invitations this year, so far, than I have ever received in
any year of my commercial life to date.....including more than one very
'expensive' event (Chairman's dinner at Tetsuya's for really important
clients? Exetel - a really important 'client'?). I was tempted by that
one as Tetsuya's food is superb and it is almost impossible to get a
table unless you book well in advance which is not my idea of a
pleasant dinner - how would you know that you felt like having dinner
so far in advance?. I almost never/never (at least I can't remember the
last one) attend these events as I really don't see the point of
milling around a space that always turns out to be too small for the
number of people seemingly intent on swilling down as much free,
sub-standard, alcohol and stuffing their faces with tired 'savouries'
while yelling to make themselves heard. But they are the inevitable harbingers of Christmas as the first flakes of snow in more Northern climates.
The new ADSL applications over the weekend were strangely at a new record level - although weekend applications seldom run at more than 25% of a 'working day' application level they were at close to 40% over both days of this weekend with ADSL2 applications overtaking ADSL1 applications for the first time in over two months - though, as I said, on much lower volumes. Maybe this is an indication that the 'pre-Christmas rush' has started early this year or perhaps the new plans we finally completed adding to the web site have gained us a little traction after they have been 'examined and considered'. Residential sales usually increase by around 30% in the second half of November and the first half of December so maybe this is just following the annual pattern a little earlier than usual.
Another sign of Christmas is that, usually, commercial employers seldom consider hiring people at this time of year in anticipation of the annual business slow down and, for the more parsimonious, the three public holidays and the 'dead days' between Christmas and New Year. Exetel, a very small company, doesn't hire many people at any time of the year being doubly blessed by almost no loss of personnel and a constantly developing automation of all of our processes. This year, for several different reasons, we are finding ourselves in a different situation with continuous hiring being done in Sri Lanka and the fact that we are about to try and hire 5 new sales trainees for the Sydney business and corporate sales teams......a unique experience in our short history. It's the 'wrong' time of year in most respects to be trying to hire new graduates which may well mean we don't succeed in finding the right sort of people - never having hired people in November/December I have no idea.
So for once it looks to me as though we will be much busier over November/December/January than we have been since Exetel began offering end user services getting on for six years ago. I think that if you had asked me then whether I still expected to be working as 'hands on' and such long hours at Exetel back in January 2004 I would have laughed at the thought. However things haven't turned out as I expected and probably never had any chance of doing so. I have learned the difference between patience and hesitancy over the past six years and now understand that it will take at least a full ten years for Exetel to go anywhere close to achieving what we originally, in our ignorance and optimism, thought could be achieved in less than five years.
So the task now is to make the most of the opportunity to consolidate our good start to building our corporate business more rapidly using the amazing 'promotional discount' from one of our suppliers and see if we can take full advantage of the 'slow down' in the residential ADSL marketplace via the newly constructed plans and the likely changes that will occur in those marketplaces. Then there is the 'new directions' for HSPA and the hard decisions we will have to make to bring them about. Perhaps Christmas can't come too soon?