Archive for June 20th, 2008
Common pitfalls in sales strategy and remuneration schemes
Working for a telecom operator in east-africa is reminding me of the old-times of the third-entrants in Europe in the lates 90s. Every visit to the country is giving me some kind of a ‘deja-vu‘ as if I had that same situation in the past. My last deja-vu is related to sales strategy and the approach of our client towards the distribution network and their commisioning plan.
At this point I have to say that fraud, inneficiencies and pitfalls in sales and marketing is one of the major exposures for a mobile telecom operator business. If we consider hot emerging markets, where acquisition is a must, this exposure can be translated into several millions of revenue erosion.
The african operator in which we are currently working is victim of non-competitive incentives for the sales channel, fraudulent actions designed to generate fictitious commissions, (or sales representatives may defraud customers for the benefit of the operator and themselves) and a quantity (vs quality) approach making it really difficult to achieve the sales objectives in the short term, and therefore, to mantain their current market share in the mid term.
