John Linton ......I have lost count of the exact number of times I have visited this city since we decided to set up an office here but I think it is my 12th trip. The hotel doorman greets me like a long lost friend and 'everyone' else on the way to the check in does the same. This particular trip was marked by the most nightmarish drive from the airport to the hotel of the 23 trips (to and from) - which is saying something because, even though I am very familiar with it and usually close my eyes for most of it, I truly feared for my life this time.....not because it was too fast....but because it was too slow. The car, I eventually worked out was a Prius with zero acceleration and a driver who, even taking into consideration the rain, insisted on driving in the middle of the two lanes with the result that dozens of angry drivers overtook him on either the inside and sharply cutting back across or risked the oncoming traffic overtaking on the outside and doing the same....blasting their horns while they did so. The drivers preferred 'tactic' was to sit just behind the even slower trucks in their blind spot to compound the danger to all and sundry. The usual 35 minute trip took an hour and I was thoroughly shaken up by the dozens of 'near misses' encountered over that Hellish time.Not an auspicious start. However the hotel room is so familiar it's almost like coming home and the add ons are always appreciated.
I think the two day stop over in Bangkok 'worked' as I feel more relaxed now than I can remember and am looking forward to meeting with the various Sri Lankan supervisors over the next few days to determine just how we can improve all aspects of what we are currently doing and just how effectively and quickly we can switch the focus of the SL company from 'inbound' to 'outbound' activities and from an almost total residential set of processes to an increasingly business set of processes. I have this quite simple set of objectives to put in place and I'm hoping I will have the clarity of exposition to allow other people to understand the 'beauty' of their simplicity. I was hoping that the Australian corporate sales person would be here for at least an overlap of one or two days to make the explanations easier but fate determined against that simple requirement.
I was sent this 'news item' yesterday:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/service-provider-dodo-mulls-float-in-energy-play/story-e6frg8zx-1225989018284
which surprised me for a number of reasons - none of them related to the head line which, it seemed to me, was strange in itself. I always love seeing figures stated by company 'spokesmen' because they provide the only real input into what a company may or may not be doing. The various numbers quoted in this case are so self contradictory they must have been 'winged' over too much alcohol you would think. 700 personnel for 350,000 customers but only generating "around $A200 million in revenue" are tough numbers to make any sense out of - surely? Even assuming the majority of the Manila based personnel are outbound sales people it is hard to make any sense of them. But - as the CEO made the statements you have to assume they are, if not totally accurate, then in some sort of 'ball park'. Perhaps the reporter misunderstood some of the figures that were quoted?
The only reason I was interested in the article was related to our own, far more modest, plans to build an outbound sales capability in Sri Lanka which, currently, we are only in the very early stages of putting in place. Our plans in 2011 are to build our outbound sales force from the six current people to around 50 people by the end of the calendar year but that is totally dependent on getting an awful lot of things very, very right and is by no means certain we will be able to do that let alone in the time frame we have set . To read that a company like Dodo have built a 500 person 'call centre' in Manila is an amazing achievement and I would be fascinated to know how that was accomplished.
It's time to start my Sri Lankan business day here now so I will leave further speculation for another time.
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