News item: “SPRINT NEXTEL yesterday reported a $29.45 billion fourth-quarter loss and said legions of subscribers continue to abandon its service, many because they can't pay their bills.”
Dan Hesse who took over from Gary Forsee in late 2007 as Sprint Nextel’s CEO has the unpleasant task of presenting more bad news to Wall Street, the media and his shareholders yesterday. Hesse, a veteran of the old (versus new) AT&T, like Forsee, has more than his work cut out for him. While he has announced a number of initiatives – such as consolidating the corporate headquarters in Kansas (currently there are two headquarters locations with one in Reston, Virginia), the turn-around is not yet apparent.
Some steps this management consultant would recommend for SPRINT include:
Stop the Bleeding
Sprint is losing customers due to poor customer service AND a push in the past to offer service to customer with poor credit histories. Retraining and shifting more resources to customer service is a “no brainer”. The issue of customers with poor credit is tougher. Tightening up their standards for new customers AND cracking down on delinquent accounts NOW is essential. Hesse must drive Sprint to take the hit now rather than drag it out over time.
New Products and Offers
Sprint needs to bring in customers and listen to them. They also need to bring in “front line” sales and customer service people and gather their ideas. These efforts should produce a snap shot of customer needs and issues. These then can be prioritized with product management “SWAT Teams” charged to develop new products and offers for maximum market impact.
Resources
The majority of resources should be focused on generating revenue. As such, a top to bottom assessment should be made of all functions, roles, processes and performance results. The goal is not lay-offs or even cost reductions but rather putting most of the resources in areas where they are generating revenues or improving customer satisfaction.
Cost Cutting
Similar to new products and offers, the ideas of the employees – at all levels and across all functions is essential. Everything must be done better, faster and in a totally results-driven manner. These ideas need to be quickly gathered through “SWAT Teams” and then brought to the leadership for real time decisions and action. If there are to be lay-offs and pay freezes or reductions – the actions should begin AT THE TOP, rather than in the ranks. Leadership by example is powerful and all too rare.
Speed
The larger organizations are, the longer time they take to make decisions and then to turn the decisions into actions. Steps must be taken to focus on speed – but not at the cost of quality. The speed to market, the speed to turn decisions into actions, the speed to improve financial and other performance results all must be driven home daily at every level in the organization. Sprint is a big company. Unless they become more nimble, they will be acquired or just die a slow corporate death.
Sprint Nextel’s Dan Hesse would be well served to abandon his “old” AT&T experience and move to embrace the many things that new technology start-ups do right. The old formulas of reorganization, lay-offs of workers and other corporate shell games will not help his company go from Wall Street’s outhouse to the penthouse any time soon.
George F. Franks, III is the President of Franks Consulting Group – a Bethesda, Maryland management consulting and leadership coaching practice. Franks Consulting Group is on the web at:
http://franksconsultinggroup.com
George can be contacted by e-mail at:
gfranks@franksconsultinggroup.com
2 comments:
Certainly streaming audio and video and applications that make it work will be big revenue in the next 18 months. Now, who distributes that content today. Hmmm...cable do alot of that. Hmmm...hey those guys don't have a wireless business. Hmmm....hey maybe make a deal with them.
George: I had commercial space next to a retailer that sold Sprint and Verizon. They quit selling Sprint because the customers were so frustrated with Sprints horrible customer service. The are just one location that was selling maybe 4-5 dozen new lines per month.
The other problem with Sprint was coverage gaps in areas away from Interstate Highways.
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