John Linton .......or in the old language - Phase IV of Exetel's original plans.....which actually only went to Phase III.
We continue to 'test' just what can be accomplished from 'outbound' selling in Sri Lanka and are pretty satisfied with the results to date though, as always, they certainly could be better. We will complete the VoIP small business training today and Michael will 'come home' tomorrow. We will send the head of corporate sales to Colombo on Sunday and he will spend two weeks sitting along side each of the outbound sales people mentoring them on improving the 'approach', 'development and 'closing' techniques. The number of outbound sales people has grown from two in early December 2010 to ten today with the intention of growing to fourteen by the end of March and twenty four by the end of April.....assuming the planned progress in terms of sales are made on a day by day basis.
These outbound activities are overwhelmingly directed at small/medium business with some projects aimed at Exetel's current customers in terms of mobiles. Depending on who you believe there are between 1,000,000 and 2,400,000 'businesses' in Australia, the vast majority of which would be one or two person part time operations. However their needs are different to those of residential users and very different to the needs of medium and larger sized businesses. Give or take some mis-classification, Exetel has something like 5,000 small businesses (those that sign up with a company name rather than a personal name) using our current residential services. A growing number of business name customers each day are signing up for our "B" small business plans and those, plus VoIP, will be the ones we will use the outbound sales teams to sell.
For over a year we have been considering some sort of 'consulting/trouble shooting' service for very small businesses along the lines of those announced by Apple in the USA today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576174990675236956.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
I think that as an add on service at the right price this could become a 'key differentiater' if it was done effectively. No-one either inside or outside Exetel has anything positive to say about this concept so we will do nothing about it for the time being - it isn't as if we don't have enough to do already. However I will continue to think about how this could be done.
We are still having trouble sourcing suitable hardware for very small businesses though we decided that the entry level Siemens hardware was the most suitable VoIP set up for a small business and, unlike the 'magic box' at a very affordable price. Low cost handsets and a pre-configured CTU would make it very simple to install 'out of the box'. We still hope to have an 'all in one' box to provide to very small businesses but as all of them will already have an ADSL modem/router it seems an appropriate first step to provide a very low cost 'add on ATA' box with low cost, but high quality, handsets. We need to make more effort in developing a small business hardware suite over the coming months - but then I have been saying that for a very long time....the Siemens boxes are a simple and cost/effective solution.
https://www.exetel.com.au/modemorder/index.php
We have begun the process of developing an 'exploratory' business plan for an "Exetel II" and will spend more time and effort on that once we have some sensible data regarding how to successfully approach the very small and small business market places as well as further refining and improving our medium/large business offerings. We are also in the latter stages of redeveloping the residential offerings to make them more appropriate to the new positioning that appears to be required in 2011. It's a very demanding time for everyone at Exetel at the moment. The key issue, as always, is can we get and then continually develop the right people to make these very ambitious plans realities? Really good people are not easy to come by as everyone involved with hiring well knows. How to hire 300+ really good people within a relatively short time frame is a challenge I have never faced personally nor observed done by another entity though it would be commonplace around the planet.
Are you ever too old to learn new skills?
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