John Linton ....before the end of Exetel's 7th year in business.
It has been a very productive week in almost all aspects of running a business of Exetel's size. We did complete the man, many changes to the 2011 operating plan by COB yesterday which is always a source of satisfaction. We had another great corporate sales day with 7 more sales to add to the 9 received yesterday which set a new record for the number of corporate sales made in a two day period in any month - to make that number of sales on the 16th and 17th of December is amazing. Residential sales were well above our expectations and the new mobile bundled plans continue to sell very, very well - again - above expectations. We also completed all but a few loose ends of a major software development project we have been doing for an Australian company which was very good to see.
All that remains now is to finalise the pricing for our business and residential services for 2011 which we have pretty much done all the ground work for and can now use the 'quiet period' of the last two weeks of December to make those, always very hard, decisions. One of the easier decisions is to discontinue the supply of 'naked' services which we will no longer offer to new users in the immediate future. Our buy price cost difference is $2.20 (inc GST) between a working PSTN line and a 'crippled' PSTN line service which is already very little and when you take into consideration the complexities of provisioning and support and the customer difficulties of moving to another provider and all the hassles that causes on many occasions it is simply not worth having a 'naked' service - unless anyone can tell me why there is an advantage?
Our new Sales Director came in to attend the Friday sales meetings we run so that he could get an initial impression of how the sales people 'present themselves' and how future sales prospects look across all of Exetel's services. For the first time since we 'created' Exetel I didn't attend those meetings and it felt a little strange. Hopefully someone with a great deal of experience and knowledge and who is able to devote 100% of his time to the job will have a very positive impact on Exetel's sales growth next year. A very necessary step for us to take as we begin our eighth year in this ever more difficult business.
Steve and I had an end of year lunch at our favourite Sydney restaurant and talked about the new and very different opportunities we could see that we might get involved in over the coming months and how we could improve the things we are already doing. The really good thing about the communications industry is that technology moves so quickly there is never any shortage of new implementations to look into and see what can be done to improve what is already 'out there'. 2011 looks like being one of the more interesting years in that respect. Perhaps it was a little too much wine - but we both agreed that one of the best decision we have made in Exetel's almost seven years of existence was to decide to establish an operation in Sri Lanka. Not for the short term benefits of more effective support but for the opportunities it allows us to now pursue that would be impossible to contemplate if had not taken that deep breath.
So it is feeling a bit more like summer and Christmas and I am now looking forward to a more relaxing time....for a few days at least.
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