Comment on Proposed Changes to the Do Not Call Register for Business-to-Business dialling

Senator Conroy has announced a plan to allow businesses to add their name to the do not call register.

 It is a plan that amounts to the regulation of business-to-business communication.

 Let’s run the logic.

 You are an Australian software developer who has spent five years developing a product that is useful to banks. Life is a struggle. Finally you are ready to pitch your product to the Commonwealth Bank.

 But, the Commonwealth Bank has added its phone number to the do not call register. This is because a bean counter has figured out that they can cut general switch board calls by 35% and save three head count by registering – an action that is free of charge.

 Result is you can’t ring them to pitch your software product.

 Obviously this is nonsense; surely the rule would apply only to contact centres.

 The logic here is that you can call the Commonwealth Bank yourself – but you can’t hire the services of a specialist tele-sales organisation that knows exactly how to navigate through a large and complex company and get the correct decision maker on the phone.

 If the outsourced service provider rang the Commonwealth Bank that would be a breach of the law.

 This must also be nonsense, as it limits the access that Australian businesses have to highly specialised service providers. It puts our small Australian software company at a disadvantage versus a top shelf US software company who exclusively reaches out to the market via the agency of highly specialised telephone prospectors.

It also puts at serious risk an entire industry that employs and trains thousands of Gen Ys and gives them their start in life, teaching them basic skills such as how to sell. Let’s not forget that tomorrow’s highly paid software sales people are today’s tele-prospectors.

But surely the scenario is nonsense. A big company like the Commonwealth Bank can’t be allowed to put its name on a list preventing other businesses from making speculative calls into its switchboard. That would not be fair.

So, let’s apply the rule to companies of only a certain size.

 Let’s say that small businesses with less than 5 employees are the only ones allowed to put their name on the register.

 Setting aside the enforcement nightmare for a moment, let’s run a scenario.

Tony, an out-of-work financial guru from a large company wants to get some consulting work. Having recently been made redundant his confidence is low. His sales skills are almost non-existent. He has to pick up the phone and make a cold call.

Why can’t he outsource it? Perhaps he can find a small tele-prospecting firm that will get on the phone and set some appointments for him. They might charge him $500 per appointment.

But Tony only wants to work with small businesses – lacking in confidence and chutzpa, he just wants to focus on picking up bookwork helping local retailers and other micro businesses.

But, when it comes to business X or business Y, he can’t get someone else to ring for him because they are on the register.

In this way, allowing smaller businesses to register is a direct penalty against other small businesses (both Tony and the micro-contact centre who potentially could do the work) because it is mainly small businesses that ring other small businesses. After all, PWC is unlikely to want to ring Bob’s Fish Shop for some work.

But also Bob’s Fish Shop is unreasonably penalised. A small, fiercely independent business man, Bob is a reactionary. He registered on the Do Not Call Register to stop those pests from the The Police Gazette from calling him. But now there is no way for Tony the bookkeeper to contact him other than junk mail or local media (which Bob uses to wrap his fish and chips in) or walking into the shop himself.

The penalty to Bob is about the unforeseen consequences of his actions. He has limited himself to the selection of service providers exclusively from companies big enough to run large scale marketing programs. By putting himself on the Do Not Call Register, he has actually harmed his business by limiting his access to business conversations.

So, both Tony and Bob are losers, not to mention the tiny service provider who could have mad the calls on Tony’s behalf. It seems there is no reasonable way of allowing the Do Not Call Register listing to be governed by the size of the listed company.

Well, why not build the rule around the size of the contact centre? Contact centres with more than 5 seats can’t ring businesses listed on the Do Not Call Register.

For a start, this sounds like a medieval guild provision. It would result in either a very large number of tiny businesses with poor levels of process design and technology investment – or it would lead to larger organizations who use structural flexibility to side-step the regulations thereby making the regulations redundant and possibly opening a few tax loopholes at the same time. It would cost the government a fortune in enforcement costs while producing a poor outcome for the national economy by limiting productivity in a key sector.

Why not build the rule around technology? Only contact centres that use manual dialers can call businesses listed on the register. Well, where do you draw the line? What about dialers that flash coloured LEDs on the key pad so the operator doesn’t even have to think about the number? Or can you just press the same button eight times with the computer automatically feeding the value so as to mimic the manual dialing process? What about soft phones?

And putting all this to one side, what about the most basic question of all – why consider this in the first place.

Business is all about the marketplace, it is all about the hustle and bustle, people interacting, communicating, trying to push a sale. Do you really want to regulate the use of just one medium – the phone?

What about convergence? If I use my computer as my phone, are web advertisers suddenly subject to the same rule? Only if they use sound / voice in their messaging? What about video? Can they mime?

And are you going to attempt to regulate offshore providers ringing into Australia? Are you going to penalize Australian companies that use the Philippines to dial into Australia but let foreign firms off Scot-free?

Or are you going to monitor all incoming voice traffic over the Internet and filter out sales calls?

Or is a Federal Police Officer going to knock on the door of some foreign firm in Kuala Lumpar and issue some sort of summons for illegally trying to contact Australian businesses to sell them stuff?

Or, is it the Government’s intention to just issue some sort of Government statement on their intention to introduce this new regulation.

Why not make this announcement at the same time business investment is collapsing (which includes business spending on services such as B2B contact centres). Throw into the mix a global financial crisis and let’s hope that in the middle of it all the largest single company in the business-to-business space goes broke and throws 500 people out of work (CustomCall).

Let’s create the maximum amount of uncertainty possible inside a key industry that employs thousands of young Australians and gives them their start in life.

And at the same time, let’s put some roadblocks in the path of normal business-to-business communication – because, hey, businesses don’t need to talk to each other.

Bottom line, the idea that the government needs to step in and regulate business-to-business communication is breathtaking.

The big impact is not on larger businesses who can afford the budget to run large marketing campaigns or employ huge numbers of door knockers to get their inbound phone lines ringing.

Instead, it is going to place a massive dead hand on smaller businesses who rely on small professional sales prospecting centres to open doors on their behalf. And as for Tony the out-of-work business consultant, it could be the end of the road. Much as he is a great finance guy, he will never muster the courage to make the 10 cold calls a day he needs to make in order to keep his wife in shoes.

Chris Moriarty is the Joint Managing Director of Strike Force Sales Pty Ltd, one of the dozens of small contact centres that dig out and deliver countless sales opportunities each day to hundreds of small Australian businesses who are looking for clients and an excuse to invest more time and energy in the development of the Australian economy.