John Linton
........and give up because you simply can't come up with any solution at all,
The start of another week bringing the second last month of this financial year to an end. It has certainly been a very difficult last five months and shows no sign of becoming any easier over the coming months in terms of ADSL and wireless broadband. So, rather than maunder on about how difficult those markets are to provide products to and how very difficult it is to find pricing and inclusions that are appealing to today's customers I have, at least temporarily, abandoned spending any more time looking at what is appearing to be a set of insoluble problems and do something more productive......and something that may be capable of sensible analysis resulting in sensible executable ideas.
I wish I knew what that was.....but was glad enough of the 'distraction' of going out to a simple Sunday lunch with my wife, my father in law and my brother in law.
I had one of those 'bolt from the blue' thoughts while having that small family lunch yesterday. I have picked up some sort of bug which made the food, and especially the wine, taste almost unpleasant and as the food was simple and the wine from makers and vintages I like I realised that the problems were with me as the other three family members expressed no such negative views. So, although the conversation was as pleasant and diverse as always I tended to 'drift away' first thinking how much less attractive the harbour looks on rainy days then how much I miss sailing regularly and then moving on to how much easier, financially more lucrative and infinitely less time demanding it would be to become a 'salesman' again selling mega ticket technology to the largest corporate and government buyers it would be as I had done three times in the distant past....earning million dollar commissions and spending large amounts of time 'messing about in boats' and doing other personally pleasurable things.
Like all 'day dreams' it was merely idle thoughts - probably caused by a mixture of alcohol, medication for the bug I was suffering with and sleepiness from the effects of all three. But then it struck me. The best/most enjoyable/easiest/most lucrative years of my life were spent selling Fujitsu mainframe computers when they had struggled and failed to establish a presence in Australia for 7 years (in that seven year period they had sold one computer by 'giving it away). In the four years following my taking on (literally single handed to start with - then building a highly effective sales team) selling their M Series large scale computers they went from zero percent of the market to selling more large computers in a year than IBM (the then dominant provider who when I started had 80%+ of the large end market). After three years Allan Moyes, the then MD of IBM Australia went to the then Prime Minister and threatened to close down IMB's Canberra branch unless the PM did something about giving all government business to Fujitsu. I worked very 'short hours' to accomplish that and obtained a great deal of money doing a tenth of the work I do today.
In this 'day dream' all I have done for the past 6 plus years is work immensely long hours trying to sell services for other people (Telstra Wholesale, Optus Wholesale, AAPT Wholesale etc) into marketplaces that are over-supplied and commercially got nowhere in terms of competitive advantage for Exetel and personally have earned very little. All we need to do to solve Exetel's endless battles is to find a very large Japanese company that has failed to gain a presence in Australia and become its 'sole agent' rather than continuing to pursue the current courses and relationships we have pursued since we started the Exetel business. By using two of Exetel's unique advantages and by protecting the new businesses from the me-tooism of a saturated market by having an exclusive contract we can 'cross subsidise' the services provided to our current customers with the profits that can be obtained from the new services to a different marketplace.
It's amazing how you find the solution to a problem you have despaired over as soon as you decide to stop thinking about it. All I have to do now is to find 2010's version of Fujitsu in 1977. Simple.
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