telcoinabox

This year’s conference, like so many conferences and road-shows before it, was a hearty mix of priceless information and drunken debauchery, hosted in the heart of Sydney’s Darling Harbour.

With a wide range of speakers from all corners of the industry and beyond, no-one could have returned to work without picking up tips, hints, information and ideas to help succeed in the Telco world.

Day 1 saw TIAB management and staff outlining ‘the year that was’ and what to expect in the year to come in terms of products, services, improvements and additions to the TIAB system. The afternoon welcomed our guest speaker Tony Gattari, former General Manager of Harvey Norman’s IT division, who delivered an upbeat and entertaining seminar designed to reignite the fire in the belly of the audience and inspire them to take the proverbial bull by the horns and take full control of the future of their businesses. The feedback was good and many seem to have taken on board the fairly crudely delivered message of ‘get out there and do it!’ That evening, the aforementioned debauchery ensued, feebly disguised as 10-pin bowling, the evening rapidly deteriorated into drunken shouting into a karaoke microphone and demolishing the bar’s beer supplies.

The second day kicked off with Telstra Wholesale being generous enough to spare us their Director of Sales (Northern & Global Region), Jim Clarke and our account manager Maree Taylor. The extraordinarily open and honest Q&A session gave everyone a great insight into the relationship that TIAB hold with Telstra Wholesale as well as providing reassurance and answers to any question that could be thrown at them. The middle part of the day was handed to TIAB staff who conducted a host of workshops ranging from ‘sales strategy’, through ‘improving collections’, to ‘profitability’, ‘motivation’ and ‘keeping the customer’. TIAB received very positive feedback about these workshop and credit must be given to those who ran them, many of whom had never presented before and were less than comfortable with public speaking. Following the workshops, our resident motivator John ‘JJ’ Jacob upped the tempo and got the conference room rocking with a board-breaking ‘fear into confidence’ session that left everyone pumped up, positive and ready to take on the world, or at least a few bottles of red wine later in the evening. Following the board-break, this year’s Topgun incentive program was announced, more information can be found in the Topgun article. The evening activity was a buffet dinner and a panel of franchisees who kindly agreed to face an onslaught of questions.

The final day comprised of Optus and Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry phones, presenting us with all the facts and figures with everything 3G. The afternoon was again broken into workshops to give us a closer look at the Optus mobile products, a chance to have a play with the Blackberries and finally to battle it out on arcade-style car-racing for the chance to win one of the new Blackberry Bolds. The conference drew to a close that evening with the awards dinner on a glass boat on Sydney Harbour. Presentations were made between courses for the minor awards, and following dinner plaques were handed to the TIAB Top 10, and ultimately to our joint winners of Franchise of the Year – IfCom and Oracle.

After the awards, an auction was held to raise money for 2 teams that recently took on and completed the 100km Oxfam walk. An amazing $7,500 was raised and thanks must be given to all those that donated and to Brendan Hede of Westalk for his efforts as auctioneer. In true TIAB style, the evening carried on into the morning, and rumour has it that the stragglers were out past dawn, a fine effort worthy of congratulations!

All in all, it was a very successful few days. We at TIAB hope that all who attended came away with brains loaded with ideas and excitement for the year to come.

Author: Tom Fry
Email: tom@telcoinabox.com