We want our resellers to stay with us because we deliver a great product, at a great price, with great service technolog y reseller.co.uk 21 COVER STORY sales agents in return for a share of the revenue or commission. You didn’t own the customer, it was impossible to differentiate your offer, and, with the long contracts involved, you took on a degree of financial risk. If a customer went out of business, the reseller was left to pick up the balance of the term,” he explained. “In order to differentiate ourselves, we came up with One and Only Mobile. This was a true wholesale proposition – Daisy contracts with the reseller and the reseller contracts with the end-user. We provided a SIM-only product on a 30-day contract and at a hugely competitive price. All the reseller had to do was add bolt-ons for data and roaming. It was a simple proposition on a 30-day term and resellers could do with it what they wanted. They could determine the length of the contract customer by customer; they could bundle mobile SIMs with other products; they could even give them away with a new telephone system as part of the overall solution. If the finances worked for them, we didn’t mind. It really was a true wholesale proposition. “At the time, naysayers predicted that providing a rolling 30-day term would be followed by massive churn. They could not have been more wrong. In fact, our churn was and continues to be very low, and mobile became an incredible success for us. And it still is today – we very rarely drop below 5,000 new connections every month and often do over 10,000,” Growns said. “This is the model we now use for everything. We don’t want resellers to stay with us because they have another 18 months left of a 3-year contract; we want our resellers to stay with us because we deliver a great product, at a great price, with great service. If we don’t give them that, they will vote with their feet and take their business elsewhere. Thankfully, that’s a very rare occurrence.” Evidence of Daisy Wholesale’s success in developing close, supportive relationships with its resellers is demonstrated by a continually improving Net Promoter Score (NPS) which currently stands at 33. Growns believes that the phenomenal success Daisy Wholesale has enjoyed in recent years is testament not just to its product offering and the clarity of its business model, but also to the commitment to customer service that runs right the way though the business. “Daisy is an exciting place to be at the moment. There is a true passion to focus on our customers whilst growing the business. It doesn’t matter whether you are in sales, billing, support, provisioning or accounts, our mantra is that if it’s right for the customer then we should be doing it. That philosophy seems to be working,” he said. To find out more about Daisy Wholesale’s product offering and reseller proposition, please call 0330 100 1233 or email
[email protected] . What’s next? Daisy is continuing to invest in its partner relationship. Two initiatives that really stand out are, firstly, a new partner training programme, the ‘Daisy Partner Sales Academy’, due to be launched this summer, and secondly, an online webstore that lets partners benefit from Daisy’s huge buying power. The launch of the Daisy Partner Sales Academy is something that Growns is particularly excited by. “There are a number of things I am passionate about, and one of those is sales,” he said. “Sales is the boiler room of any business. Yet, it is often overlooked. Selling is a skill and like all skills it needs to be developed and fine-tuned, but when I ask partners what training they give their sales people, a very large percentage say ‘not a lot’. The Daisy Partner Sales Academy aims to redress that.” Offered as a free service to partners, the programme will provide online training in three main areas: the trends and drivers behind convergence; the technologies involved in delivering convergence; and sales skills. Students are assessed throughout the programme and those who meet the required standard receive an accreditation. Growns says that to encourage participation and competition, the programme has a strong social media element. “We are going to link it very heavily with social media so there will be lots of visibility and recognition within a business. If the owners want to expand it even more, there will be the ability through LinkedIn and Facebook to push it out to a wider community. We are very excited about that, and the concept has been very well received by partners,” he said. Buying power Also due to go live this summer is an online webstore where partners can buy a huge range of products – from telephone systems and routers to cables – all at competitive prices. “Daisy is one of the biggest players in the industry and interfaces with a huge number of suppliers. To enable partners to benefit from our huge buying power, we are going to create an online webstore that they can access through the existing Daisy portal. It will offer an Amazon- type experience, with a raft of different suppliers to choose from and quick and easy purchasing.” Another big benefit, says Growns, is the built-in finance capability. “Partners will be able to buy products outright or choose different finance options. A partner could say ‘I have £2,000 of equipment here which I want to put on a lease for my end user’. After approval, which takes minutes and hours, not days and weeks, the paperwork is sent to all parties to be signed electronically. After which, the end user receives the products and the reseller gets the money owed to them. We are effectively proving another source of financing whilst helping to facilitate that sale,” he said.