John Linton Annette and I flew from Sydney to Singapore yesterday to make the connecting flight to Columbo out of Singapore at 7 am this morning - necessitating a 5.00 am early morning wake up call to ensure we made the flight. Never a pleasant start to the day.
We had a pleasant flight yesterday and, as usual, I slept/dozed most of the time as I just have to walk in to an airport to start yawning. However my dozing was occupied with thinking about ways of achieving considerable growth in Exetel's business and longish airline flights are ideal times to 'toss and turn' in a semi comatose state while considering how this could be brought about. What I would really like to do is to find a 25 year old 'John Linton' (please excuse the vomit inducing self indulgence this implies) to drive the sales efforts that are needed to make the advances we need to achieve over the next 18 months.
I suppose what I really am trying to put into words is that Exetel needs is a sales impetus that can only be achieved by someone who wants to achieve results that most people around him/her will think aren't possible. Annette and I desultorily discussed this when we reached Singapore in the very nice bar of our hotel and failed to reach any sensible conclusion. The Martini's (for me) and Singapore Slings (for Annette) were of the highest qualities but our conclusions didn't begin to meet the bar staff's standards.
It's still pitch dark in Singapore as I type this entry waiting for the time to quit our overnight room to catch our flight to Sri Lanka. The issue is that to keep a company growing, when everything else is taken in to consideration, are the initiatives/processes that it has in place to generate interest, and ultimately, sales of its services. To date Exetel has used 'word of mouth' and an agent network to achieve this - and that strategy (if that word is appropriate) has been successful enough to grow Exetel from zero to 70,000 customers of its different services.
If we now need to double the current customer base to 150,000 over the next 18 months we will have to do things very differently to the way we've done them over the past 4+ years and that, almost inevitably, means we have to put in place a sales force under the influence and control of an excellent sales manager. Not a particularly innovative scenario nor a particularly difficult thing to do - at least traditionally in terms of the sales scenarios that I have been involved with over the past 4 decades.
The problem, to me at least, is that as I review the resumes of "top" sales reps and managers I just don't see the actual and real qualities that I have become familiar with over so many years of being part of successful sales teams and operations. I don't think I'm stupid nor do I think I'm "living in the past" in terms of evaluating sales people. I just don't see the required characteristics I thought were essential in the people who are paid a lot of money to produce what I would have thought were very mediocre sales achievements.
So, no offence to Singapore Airlines for their excellent passenger comfort facilities, my conclusion to reviewing some 20 'top sales resumes' was that none of the applicants were worth half the money they were, apparently, currently being paid - and I had advised the 'head hunters' that I'd briefed that Exetel was happy to pay up to $A250,000 in the first year of the job against a very modest, in my view, sales targets.
Perhaps I have it all wrong in my conceptions of how sales are made these days and the characteristics required to do that. Perhaps small companies like Exetel aren't going to be seen as good opportunities for competent sales people to advance their career with - I think that's more likely.
So, from what I can see it seems unlikely that Exetel will be able to recruit suitable sales people or even a key sales manager - irrespective of what we pay as our company isn't seen as a career development - this is all I can make of the resumes sent to me by two head hunters who determined their choices based on "people who would be suitable to work with Exetel".
My current view is that, one more time, I'm going to have to buld a sales force from the ground up out of the 'raw material'.
I'm really too old for this ****.