Survival
Strategies
For the Little
Guys

MCI / BT, Sprint / France Telecom / Deutsche Telekom, AT&T / Unisource / et al. enormous telecommunications companies becoming even more enormous by forming international partnerships to compete in the exploding global market. How can a relatively small telecommunications provider survive, let alone prosper?

Here's my list of survival strategies for the little guys:

1. Keep The Services Simple. Providing reliable, quality telephone calls for a reasonable price is all that the vast majority of people and businesses demand from their telecommunications provider. If you can throw in a good travel card, you're golden. Don't spread yourself thin by trying to be an all-in-one shop for the relatively small number of customers that really need exotic services. Frame Relay, ATM and X.400 may have serious sex appeal to your engineers, but trying to build and support those services on top of your core business is a strategy that will bankrupt you for sure.

2. Keep The Business Simple. Don't model yourself after MCI or France Telecom in the hopes of becoming as large as they are. There are some things that are quite enjoyable in excess, but innumerable layers of bureaucracy aren't among them. Keep management layers to a minimum, keep decision processes short and clearly defined, make sure every person in your organization knows where you're going, why you're going there and what they individually need to do in order to contribute to the journey.

3. Give Excellent Customer Service. Too much has been said about customer service, but not nearly enough has been done about it. A single happy customer may recommend you to one or two of his or her friends, but a single unhappy customer will drive nails into your coffin for at least nine prospects. If you're not answering 98 percent or more of your calls before they go to voicemail, if you don't have an e-mail address for off-hours customer service, if you don't proactively talk to your larger customers to see how they're currently viewing the world, one of your competitors will be happy to do so.

By Cliff Rees

4. Learn How to Say 'No'. The field of telecom is passing from effervescence to hypervescence. So much change and innovation is occurring so rapidly that small companies risk being totally overwhelmed by the temptation to try and take advantage of every new opportunity that presents itself. If you can't support it, don't do it. If it doesn't fit into your overall plan, don't do it. If it just doesn't 'feel right', don't do it. Resist the temptation and focus on what you do best.

These are the strategies we have used to build Telegroup into the largest callback company in the world and the second fastest growing private company in the U.S. I think they can help any small business competing in a global market prosper.

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