Most of the time I write about sales and networking ( hence the blog name) but I like to write specifically about telecom from time to time. Today I want to share a real story about the importance of reviewing your telecom bills and more importantly having someone else look them over for you.
I have a client with about 6 locations in a fairly close area ( they are all about 40 miles apart). Currently I provide a very small percentage of their service and they have given me the opportunity to review & determine how we could help them with the rest. To give you a brief overview they connect all offices with a data network that also provides Internet access. They have 2 connections that support all inbound and outbound telephone calls and then they have about a 12 telephone lines for faxes, alarms and ETC. They currently have 9 Telecom bills (10 not including their service with me). One bill represents about 80% of their service. Another represents about 10% and the 6 others represent another 3% and then one bill is just 2%. You can see where this would be complicated and time consuming to follow for the customer. The good news is, the 5 bills with the 12 telephone lines are clean and the pricing is about what it should be. The good news for me is that the two big bills representing 95% of their service is at a margin that I can really help them reduce expenses with my companies product line. Here is the interesting part, during my evaluation, the one bill representing just 2% of their total billing is a mistake. It should have been incorporated in the big bill but was overlooked, probably during the transition period. Now this bill is only about $250 a month, but over a year that is $3,000.00 they are spending when they shouldn't be. In addition this bill has a $12,000 annual spend agreement. Because it was never cancelled, they will be facing a $9,000.00 bill at the end of the year (as a lump sum) because they didn't hit their spend agreement for the year.
Think this can't happen to you? 80% of telecom bills I review have a charge on them that shouldn't be there or is being charged at the wrong rate. So, if you think you are part of that 20% that has a clean bill, BY ALL MEANS, keep going along as you have. Here is what I know, the overwhelming majority of the people that don't want me to look at their bills have MULTIPLE billing errors. There is almost a direct correlation between their level of reluctance and the number of mistakes. Perhaps that is the result of someone being afraid of being called out for making a bad decision, I can appreciate that. I think most people think that reading their bill is fairly simple and they can do it by themselves. That would be the equivalent of me doing auto repair work on my car to save myself some money. Nothing good will come from that.
My tip to you is, Telecom is not DIY, get someone to look your bills. I do this as a free service for potential & existing customers, because I want the opportunity to do more business, if not now then later.
If you are a telecom sales person, show this to your potential client and use me as an unbiased 3rd party ( because I have no idea who will read this , I can't possibly bias it past my own desire to do business with people).
If you are a potential customer, First THANK YOU for reading my blog, you have put yourself far ahead of most people I meet with. Second, call me or call a telecom rep you know and trust and get an evaluation done. Even without changing providers, you could save your company THOUSANDS of dollars.
And if that isn't worth meeting with a sales person, I don't know what is.
Thanks for reading today
Mike Shelah
BTW follow me on twitter @mistertelecom
No comments:
Post a Comment