All You Can Eat

July 31st, 2008 Chris Posted in Financial, Telecom | 2 Comments »

For those who don’t know me very well, I have a dangerous combination of deadly or near-deadly sins: gluttony and cheapness. First, I love food – ranging from chicken wings to foie gras – and I love them in quantity. And I am cheap – I love getting good value for money. That’s why “all you can eat” always appeals to me in theory. Unfortunately, in practice I usually find the product sorely lacking.

For example, I’ve never found an all-you-can-eat sushi meal that I like. It’s always a bunch of kappa maki and no tuna or salmon to be seen. And God help you if you get between the big overweight guy and the shrimp tempura roll…

While I can’t always find satisfaction with the all you can eat buffet, I am increasingly finding great all you can eat deals in service offerings for our micro business, especially in telecommunications. Much of it happening in the last 12 months.

Here’s a couple of examples:

• Long Distance. In the past, we’ve paid per minute charges for our long distance and toll-free lines. In the last few months, different vendors have introduced flat rate or bulk minute plans. At home where I sometimes work, we have a $20 a month, all you can call 24 x 7 in Canada and the U.S. At the office, we just switched to a bulk minute package that meets our needs and is cheaper than what we were paying before.
• Teleconferencing. Again, we’ve been paying per minute per participant in teleconferences. We recently switched to a vendor who gives us unlimited use of teleconferencing up to a certain number of phone lines for a monthly rate. This is really cool – we can have as many teleconferences each month and we just pay one rate.
• Web conferencing. Here is an area that has seen substantial pricing changes over the last six months. It started with Microsoft changing their web conferencing package to an unlimited use, per month charge. Adobe has also entered the fray with similar pricing. There are some restrictions on the number of participants at different service levels, but regardless, the price difference is substantial (I mean like 80% less than conventional plans).

If you’ve not re-examined all your vendors and their price plans in the last year you should. Ever year virtually every market gets more competitive and you can reduce or even slash costs which, for the micro business, means more direct money in your pocket.

And it’s not just saving money that makes these all-you-can-eat plans attractive. It’s the change of behavior that results when you know you have essentially eliminated variable costs.

For example, if you’re paying flat rate for web conferencing, why would you ever do a customer presentation with only a teleconference? (OK, there are probably some examples but bear with me as I make my point). If you’re paying flat rate long distance, why would you ever hesitate to contact a prospect via email when you can give them a phone call. Etc…

By shifting to fixed service costs and eliminating variable costs, you put yourself in the position to expand marketing efforts, to increase customer touches and improve the professional look of your company.

So make a list of your top 5 service costs (start with telecom) and go see if there are better deals out there. It is time well spent.

C.

P. S. Bonus points if you can identify where this post’s image is taken from.