John Linton ....or there probably would be if we actually looked out over a meadow of ripening corn.
We made some progress over the last week in a number of areas which was good to see. Among the highlights were business data link sales passing the 50 mark earlier in the month than in any previous month with a stronger than ever 'prospect list'. The rapid progress being made in setting up the outbound call centre in Colombo with the first two people each making 30 sales each yesterday and the second 'round' of people all making progress. The continuing growth of sales of the new Optus mobile plans as both standalone and bundled services continuing to exceed our, very modest, expectations.The completion of a major software development project pretty much on time and a record number of new business installs for any two week period. Much to be satisfied with and perhaps even proud to be part of bringing about. Perhaps it's the bright and sunny morning in contrast to the previous few miserable days?
So we had a very good 'sales' week and no real 'disasters' in any other part of the business with provisioning and support both reaching new 'highs' against the metrics we set for them and the performance of the network reached new pleasing levels of symmetry. The only negative things about the week were the level of ASDSL2 sales (ADSL1 were quite good) and, of course the ever lower pricing of ADSL2 sales generally. If I was going to be really picky I would add the attitudes of two of our suppliers to commercial reality which left a bad taste in my mouth.
We are considering hiring a Sales Director in the new calendar year as I, at least, have given up looking for a General Manager or even an Operations Manager. This is a path fraught with extreme danger (for both Exetel and any possible hiree) as I doubt that the position of Sales Director with a company of Exetel's size is a position that can be easily handled....and not only because of the diversity of 'products' and 'marketplaces' but because our company is a very different working environment to other companies and our work ethic and methods of operation (especially our sped of decision making and implementation) are so different it might prevent even the most skilled and experienced person lasting very long. However the job of managing our current breadth of sales activities is becoming beyond my ability to cope with (personally I think that has been the case for some considerable time) and we do need to add new insights and knowledge to this rapidly growing part of our business...in the not too distant future.
The problem is finding someone who is capable of managing in the hands on way we need across such a broad area of products and responsibilities. The other issue is, of course, adapting to the very unusual way Exetel is structured and the very young age and diverse backgrounds of our sales people - in two different countries selling to very different demographics with no marketing/advertising/promotion budgets. Anyway, nil desperandum, I began the process some two weeks ago in several different ways and would hope to determine whether such a person can be found from the 'short list' I established with some help from an old acquaintance who knows far more about these things than I do.
So I am going to do very little this week end other than read a couple of meaningless books and look at real estate web sites offering beautiful (in my opinion) houses in far away countries - ie. indulge in pointless escapism.
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010
ABN 350 979 865 46