John Linton
....and advised us that our NF/23BYO Line ADSL2 service had been declared PCUSER's Internet Product Of The Year for 2009 and would be reported as such in the February edition of the magazine (page 54).
While the only 'awards' that count in business are the monthly management accounts (and the subsequently yearly tax return) that show the company has achieved a planned profit and a planned revenue growth, getting some sort of external recognition is always a very pleasant experience particularly when it is so unexpected. We have one of the walls in our small reception area in North Sydney pretty much full of the various awards given to Exetel over the last six years (the first one dating back to July 2004; SMH - Best Broadband Product in low download, medium download categories and runner up in high download category) and we have small table the top of which is getting quite crowded with 'trophies'. Of course, in the scheme of things these displays don't mean a great deal but they are a vague reminder to our employees (and maybe to our visitors) that the company is recognised outside its own operations as doing some very good things and consistently doing them over time.
(I imagine it also annoys Exetel's detractors to realise their views about Exetel are not held by publications that have wide/widish circulations).
Following the Asian Fast 500 inclusion last week and the 'Elephant Project' in mid January Exetel has got more positive publicity in the last four weeks than we have got in most years of our existence (Annette received an email from an acquaintance in London over the weekend saying she read the 'Elephant Project' story in the UK media - pity we aren't offering services there as we had planned! Only time will tell if there are any 'financial benefits' in this little grouping of positive stories about Exetel but, on balance, they can't do any harm. Exetel remains an 'under the radar' organisation that only continues to grow due to word of mouth recommendations and, over the last year, due to its active agents around the country to whom Exetel has paid close to $A2 million in commissions since the program started - not very much by other ISP's standards perhaps but large and more rapidly growing for a company of Exetel's size.
Each time something like this happens we get to consider advertising again and how we could use it effectively. Every effort we have made over the past six years (very small efforts for the main) has simply been a total waste of money that has done absolutely nothing for us at all. I have no doubt that advertising 'works' for every other company that involves themselves in it but my experiences (with one exception 15 years or so ago) is that money spent on advertising is wasted money.I wish I neither thought that nor had consistently experienced that but it remains the case for anything I am involved in; and yes, I can understand that a logical conclusion to reach from that track record is for me to never be involved in any attempt at advertising (but I have tried that too).
Now that Exetel has passed the $A50 million in annual revenues it is almost certainly past time that we made more effort to promote the company and its services and ceased to rely on word of mouth. I suppose that's why we've looked at advertising more often over the past year. Our problem is that of most companies of our size - we can almost afford to do a reasonable amount of advertising but we can't quite afford the money that is really required to sustain some truly effective (produces more money than it costs) campaign that actually works to the point that we could sustain it on an ongoing basis. It remains a dilemma.
As Exetel moves, if in fact we succeed in making it happen, to a much higher percentage of our total revenue coming from buiness users residential advertising will become less of an issue so we may never have to involve ourselves in something we are so completely incompetent at. How we become better known by businesses is a different problem but we have a lot more experience and competence in that than we have in residential promotion. Clearly a cop out but I have no other current ideas.