John Linton ....but that means the new year is only six days later.
It's now less than six weeks to Christmas and the Christmas party invitations are in full swing with the first events already held. Exetel's Christmas party will again be held at the Star Casino complex though because of their rebuilding program our 'usual room' is unavailable (it has been knocked down) so we will be using a slightly different configuration taking over one of the smaller bars. I am not much of a fan of non-Exetel Christmas events and virtually never attend such things - I actually can't remember the last one I attended as I see zero purpose, let alone benefit, in them. However other members of Exetel's management seen to get great pleasure from them so perhaps I have reached the "Bah, Humbug!" stage of my commercial life (I must remember to cancel that office coal order). Despite living in Australia for getting on for 50 years I still associate Christmas with a totally different set of events and the consequences of cold weather that never seem to allow me to consider "Christmas" as actually occurring in Sydney - perhaps that's why I am not at all affected by it here.
Having said that, it is necessary to examine what 'Christmas specials' various companies offer as December draws nearer. I have always found it a pathetic display as crassly money grabbing for venal commercial companies to try and boost their declining sales in the 'Christmas slowdown' (there is no hint of "goodwill towards men") but it is a regular occurrence. The fact that the majority of Australians take their annual holidays in the period from mid December to mid January causes a significant disruption to the 'sale' of a whole lot of products and services including basic communications services such as residential ADSL. Because of this major shut down it also means that business data services suffer "the embargo" when the major carriers will not install new business services for a period of around 4 weeks as they still cling to Telstra's dictat that so many engineering staff are on holidays in December/January that nothing can be done except maintenance.
So to conform to the norm perhaps Exetel should offer a Christmas present to new users (bearing in mind that carrier discounts are only ever available for new business and never to "loyal customers") perhaps something totally vomit inducing like "A merry Christmas from Exetel - no ADSL or Telephone payments until February 1st" might conform to the crassness of insincere December offerings? Or maybe an even more insincere "unlimited downloads at no charge in December and January for the first 1,000 new customers....." or something along such lines? I wonder just how tacky an offer has to be to make a 'sales impact' over the coming few weeks? I am sure, given some time we could come up with a truly cringe inducing 'offer'.
In the mean time we have to get on with trying to improve all aspects of what we do and formalise those ideas and changes in to a revised business plan for the coming new calendar year. This is made even more difficult, for me, this year by the imminent departure of our planning manager who departs to prepare for her wedding and then long honeymoon - I have become far too dependent on her 'running the numbers' for me over the past year and I failed to take account of the fact that young, attractive, females tend to have a personal life that is apparently more interesting and important than re-creating spread sheets and endlessly dissecting other companies pricing and configurations. So I have lost the 'leeway' that has always been previously available and will have to, really, complete the work by the end of the first week of December.....
.....though the up side is that there will be no need to be trying to complete the planning for 2012 between Christmas and New Year's day as has always been the case in the past.
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