Whose Number is It
Whose Number is It
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
Whose Number is It - To learn more about this author, visit Steven G. Atkinson's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
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
Whose Number is It - To learn more about this author, visit Steven G. Atkinson's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. |
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Steven's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 Press Advertising CAN-Spam Checklist Getting Past Your Past Managing the Unimaginable Maximize Trade Shows |
|
 | ||
 |
The Top 10 Guy Kawasaki Posts
Best Posts for Entrepreneurs | |
 |
Top 50 Marketing Blogs
Top Blogs To Watch In 2008 | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
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 and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
| ||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||