This particular company that I was hoping to make my way in was also known as not being very “vendor friendly”.  They were a great account if you managed to get, but that was the entire battle – just getting in.  For about a year and half I managed to pester a particular individual about getting in until one day, the contact I had was GONE!  No longer employed at the company.  Scrambling, I somehow managed to find the name of his replacement and after some persistence, I finally managed to secure a meeting with the new manager in charge of telecommunications for the firm.

I was excited the day I met with him.  He was a very cordial and pleasant person, I learned that he had just moved from the West coast and it turned out we has some similar interests.  After some time discussing what we might be able to do for them, he decided it might be a good idea to see what we might be able to come up with as far as providing them some new services and perhaps even reducing costs.

We were given the opportunity to work on a portion of their existing telecom business and if our solution had merit, we would be able to implement it.  I was elated.

When it came time to review their existing services, what I managed to see absolutely left me speechless.  What our team discovered was a mishmash of convoluted and redundant services that was scattered with non-functioning services that, from a cursory view may have made sense but as we started peeling back layers of the “onion” we discovered what was pretty obvious to us was a sales rep who was looking to pad his own wallet.

I kept hearing conversations I had with the previous manager telling me how his sales team at the telecommunications company was “taking care of them”, in reality it was a mess.  In the end, we provided a proposal that lopped nearly 70% from the monthly costs of their prior account and reduced the number of bills significantly.  The lesson here is to make sure you’re aware of what you’re getting is what you need or at a competitive rate.  You have to stay diligent and on top of your vendor, while it doesn’t happen frequently your sales team may not be looking out for your best interests.

She had a puzzled look on her face.

“Do you review for errors?” I asked.

“No” she responded

“What about tax strategy and classification for your clients?”

“Not really” she answered,

“What about fraud and waste review?  Are you focused simply replacing services or looking at the better technologies?  Do you account for all lines, services and circuits for your clients?  Do you actually do a line-by-line inventory for the client?”

“No, what we do isn’t that detailed” she replied acting a bit more defensive.  “We take their most recent bill, take a look at what services they’re using, and find an alternative product for them.”

Many companies that sell services such as phone systems and carriers claim that they will be able to provide you with a through audit, when in fact they’re simply do no such thing.  An actual audit for a small company can take 20 plus hours, larger companies?  Plan on months.

Vendors who want to sell you something take a look at your bill, tally numbers and push out a quote, by simply reviewing a client’s existing services, plugging it into a spreadsheet and spitting out a comparable service.  Those aren’t audits and it doesn’t help you one bit.

Companies need to take into consideration all aspects of business into account and factor those in when deciding to move to another carrier or vendor.  No carrier will be an advocate in helping you garner refunds for services you’ve paid for from rival company.  The need to reduce line count goes counter-intuitive to a sales person who wants to sell you bigger, fatter circuits so they can get the bigger and fatter paycheck.  How about your existing carrier?  If you’re happy with them and you don’t want to move but you’re being pressured because another carrier is offering savings that you can’t pass up, will they care to try and match it if your sales rep has NO skin in the game?

Get a REAL audit from an audit company that works for you, and has your best interests at heart.