Tweet

Whose Number is It

Written by: Steven G. Atkinson

Article Overview: Cellphones are a valuable tool for businesses. Do you consider the cellphone number an asset. Perhaps you should. This article gives a reason why you should consider it as such.

Whose Number is It

Businesses uses a multitude of tools to get their work completed. It doesn’t matter whether you have a product or a service, all business need to sell. There are plenty of “cost to do business” items, such as rent, utilities and telecommunications systems, to achieve this goal.

Most businesses would never dream of allowing their employees to own or control important sales tools. But it seems as if some businesses have no problem in allowing their employees, especially those in sales, to have full control of their cell phone number.

There are many reasons for this. There is the cost involved in administrating the accounts. It may be easier to give them a monthly expense for it, or even reimburse the entire bill.

It may seem to the owner or manager of the business that they are doing the employee a favor by not forcing them to have a business and personal number. Of course there are IRS issues that can make it hard for the employer, but that’s not part of this conversation.

But is that wise or is it a big mistake to allow the employee that much control.

Are you a pure sales based company, reselling a product made by others? If you are, you probably require your salesperson to have a cellphone so they can always be in touch with your clients. The salesperson may think it’s their clients, but they are clients of the business. And for the small business owner that means yours.

Do you control the cellphone number or does your salesperson?

Salespersons makes many contacts and will hand outs even more business cards each day. The telephone number on the business card may have the desk number that the business controls. But sale persons like to be directly contacted. Even is the cellphone is not on the card a good client has more than likely been given the cellphone number?

Now let's look at a What If. What happens if the salesperson decides to leave to work for your chief competitor? Your client dials the cellphone number of his favorite salesperson. An order is placed and instead of your company getting the business, your competitor has it. Now you've lost a client.

It may be time to rethink the issue of whether cellphone number should be consider as another asset that you own. Who shall own the number? It really doesn't matter who owns the device, a device can always be replaced.

If you allow the employee to control their cellphone number, why don’t you let them control their desk number? That way they can keep in touch with all of your company clients when moving to another company.

Who knows, the number that you protect may be the one that is called in the middle of the night that could make, or break your business depending on whose salesperson is at the other end of that conversation.

© 2006-2007 Steven G. Atkinson – All Rights Reserved

Related Articles
  The 7 magic ingredients to become a winner at selling
  How to Get an 800 Number without the Traditional Hassle and Cost
  Increase Your Chances of Being Successful - Insurance Sales Training
  Play The Letter Game. What Type Of "E" Are You?
  Call Forwarding Numbers Are Essential for Answering Services

Article Tags: business cards, business need, cellphone number, small business owner, telephone number



Related Forum Posts
how much for a franchise fee? - Dear Colleague There is no easy answer to this question. Things to consider: [list=] The sizeof the Franchise Clent base Expected Turnover Intellectual Property costs (recoup) Number of Franchises Number of employees Original Set up costs Franchise admin costs An example: A franchise that I was involved in setting was to a simple "lawn mowing/home repair" franchise. The Franchise included national/local advertising - preparation of client lists - general admin - central accounting etc The Franchise involved 300-500 clients - and an annual turnover of about $300,000 . The annual franchise fee was $30,000. Hope that this gives you some idea Take care Ian[/list]
Re: 10 Proven Blog Marketing Tactics You Can Use Today - Hi Evan, Excellent points. Number 10 about making enemies is one I never thought of before. I imagine there are several ways a blogger can go about this: writing something very controversial, attacking another blogger (for whatever the reason), etc. Do you have any experience with this tactic?
Forum Referral Program - Hi Evan Have you ever thought about inserting a "Referred by" field into the forum sign up process? This field could help track the sign ups that have resulted directly from a forum member inviting someone to join. Under the user profiles you could also include a "Number of referrals" field that shows how many members a particular user has referred to the forum. You could then run a competition every month for the highest number of referrals but then again you would prefer quality not quantity. What do you think?
What do you want to achieve? - Hi Evan Can you work out what you want to achieve and whether you can achieve it by any of those 3 options, or which option would help you achieve your goals faster? Number 1 allows you to retain full control of your advertising and you can allow/deny advertises at will without having to pay anyone else, so you keep 100% of your advertising revenue. You would need to find someone good for number 2 as you don't want to advertise the wrong type of companies on your website nor do you want someone working for you who misrepresents your organisation. You will also need time to work out an employment package and how the person will be rewarded after making a sale etc. If you are time poor and do not want the responsibility of trying to find advertisers this may be the option. Is the percentage take a small price to pay in return for receiving quality advertisers and the extra amount of revenue you could be receiving? If so, this would be the preferable option.
Re: When do you process online orders? - [quote="OmnivoreInk":21q56s98] If I may speak as a customer, I expect anything I order to be sent out the next day! Of course, all I ever order are books from used books dealers on Amazon.com.... I've also ordered a few things from Ebay and again, as soon as I pay - and I pay immediately, I expect that item to be winging its way toward me... I hate to speak ill of my sex, but the only problems online retailers have are, *I* think, with women who buy clothes and then send them back! I think 90% of women who buy stuff from catalogs do that! (I used to work at a catalog phone center and half my calls were from women wanting to get a Return Authorization Number so they could send stuff back...).[/quote:21q56s98] Hi OmnivoreInk, While I agree with you, I don't think that woman are the problem, the big problem is buy clothes out of a catalog without trying them first. Women just buy more.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Basic Operating Question (BOQ) for Empowerment

Good News Travels Fast

Multilevel Marketing: 4 Tips To MLM Success

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.