John Linton .......just as it is in 'real' life.(though perhaps I should have used the non-word "ellamunt" to fall into line with Australia's prime minister's execution of spoken English).
Two years ago today the first corporate sales trainee commenced with Exetel. Some three months previously we had looked in to the future of residential ADSL and formed the view (now proven overwhelmingly correct) that there was no future for Exetel in being largely dependent on providing residential ADSL services and that the coming three years would see the most difficult times in residential communications markets we had ever encountered and would make surviving, let alone making even our modest profits, a challenge if we did not do something about it.
Yesterday the twenty first corporate sales trainee commenced work at Exetel. Over the two year period we have 'lost' three of the people we recruited in to this continually growing part of Exetel's overall operation and have transferred one to another part of the business. Overall the program, to date, has been a success with each of the people developing their knowledge of communications and the skills to compete with their competitors to a level that in December produced over 80 new sales of data link services and monthly revenues from business data and related services now reaching over 20% of total revenues and almost 100% of Exetel's total monthly profits.
Over the next four weeks the other three of the first trainees will reach their two year 'anniversary' with Exetel which in many ways is a very satisfactory achievement by the people themselves individually and the program of development we have put in place. So while it is unwise to ever indulge in 'self congratulation' it is a fact that if we had not seen so accurately in to the future in December 2008 and planned and executed as competently as we have we may not have survived as an ongoing business. Be that as it may - there is little doubt that the data communications business in Australia will continue to change even more rapidly as Telstra's assaults on the various residential markets reaches the conclusion of Phase II and whatever has been achieved over the past two plus years will need to be modified and improved upon.
We have another two corporate sales trainees commencing with us before the end of February and will look for one more to complete the staffing of the three Sydney based sales teams. Last week we began the training of selected Sri Lankan personnel to, initially do the basic 'prospecting for the experienced Sydney based sales people and then, as they gain experience and skill, progress to selling in their own right to smaller businesses Exetel's small business services. We will complete the second phase of the training of the 8 current outbound Sri Lankan sales people this week and will continue to add 'corporate' sales people in Sri Lanka over the coming months eventually having 18 'sales partners' in Sri Lanka working with 18 sales people in North Sydney.
That's the current plan and although we are bit behind the schedule we put in place in December 2008 we have made quite considerable process in building the 48 person corporate sales team we planned what seems like an eternity ago. Of course, an enormous amount of work, together with a not inconsiderable amount of luck, is still needed but we have come a long way in the past two years.
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PS: An early indication on how Telstra's constant 'win back strategies' have cost it and other providers dearly will become apparent when they officially release their half year figures - they are not pretty to read but it is a stark lesson in how 'successful' they have been in 'winning back' over 600,000 residential ADSL users. Telstra's half year figures remind me of the old joke about visiting Las Vegas:
Q: How do you guarantee you can leave Las Vegas with $100,000?
A: Take a million and leave $100,000 in an airport storage locker in the departure lounge.