John Linton ....after the usual slog from Sydney to Singapore, 2 hour transit, then the 3.5 hour flight on to Colombo airport followed by the usual terrifying 40+ minute trip via darkened streets and maniacal traffic/drivers in pouring rain to the hotel. However the usual pluses of Singapore airlines impeccable service in every respect and a bonus of zero people in front of us at immigration and our bags were on the carousel almost as soon as we cleared the formalities. It is not an easy trip and you end up in your room at the equivalent of 5.30am in the morning having been traveling since 1.00 pm the previous afternoon - all being well. We will get some sleep now and start the first aspects of the agenda later this morning (Colombo time where it is now 1.20 am).
Such trips are never really wasted as there is time without emails or other interruptions to think about all sorts of things - most of which are to do with some aspect of Exetel and the industry or the people inside and outside the company.....the penalty for having all your personal money tied up in a business operating in the toughest conditions I have ever seen in the industry in all the decades I have been associated with it.......there are no "long weekends" for such foolish people. But there are the rewards of gaining satisfaction in keeping the company you are associated with not only 'alive' but growing faster than the vast majority of your competitors by the efforts of the people who work to make Exetel an ever more efficient and competitive entity (and without achieving 'growth' by simply borrowing money to buy out other companies - though I envy the companies that can do that).
The main things that crossed my mind as I dozed away the travel time were all to do with how we could change our position in the residential marketplaces we operate in and how we could more quickly grow the results we are achieving in the corporate marketplaces we have established some presence in over the past eighteen months. While I didn't reach any new decisions on how either of these two objectives could be reached it has helped emphasise that we have to totally change our 'ways to market' in residential services and to do far more in the development of suitable services for the corporate marketplaces. Easy to 'say' - not so easy to make plans to actually deliver results. What is true is that our revenues would be double what they are today if we had ever 'bothered' to include wire line rental and call charges in our offerings - they could be treble if we had pursued a mobile provision policy that included simply re-selling a carrier's retail services for a commission. What is equally true is that we would have made far more progress in more rapidly growing our number of corporate customers if we had more sales personnel with a better 'story' than the one that has worked so relatively well so far.
I hadn't actually ever looked at either issue in those particular ways before; you often miss the obvious when you are involved in too much daily detail, so it is something to work on over the balance of October. I have never been very interested in 'copying' but in these very tough times perhaps it isn't the worst idea to simply do what 'everyone else does' for a year or so while the current different scenarios play out and the 'tectonic shifts' grind their way to whatever conclusion they are going to produce. Either that or 'start from scratch' by assuming that Exetel is back in January 2004 and look at what you would now do if you were just entering both those markets.
Time for sleep.
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