I know you will be aware of the value that the small intermediary collectively has to your business. It is something you have acknowledged over the years and I understand your intention is to do more business through intermediaries. Your procuration fees are competitive and the overall service given to the intermediary market is normally fairly good. Your product range covers the field and I do enjoy giving you my business.
However, what really annoys me is having to pay for the privilege of giving potential business to you, and all the phone calls thereafter following it up, and the cumulative cost all of this has on a sole trader.
Let me explain to you how this happens. You supply 0870 numbers for me to call you. No doubt that may be considered helpful to me to have one of these numbers. You also supply 0845 numbers and this also, you may feel, is helpful for me. The fact that you and or the telephone company benefits financially to my detriment may not have occurred to you. You will also no doubt be aware both these 0870 and 0845 phone numbers sit over the ‘real’ telephone number in a similar way to the free-call (costs me nothing) 0800 numbers.
I am sure, in your heart of hearts, you would be horrified if you thought the small intermediaries were having to pay costs over and above their normal ‘all-in’ telephone packages with unlimited calls to ‘real’ telephone numbers just to speak with your company. We are, after all, merely your unpaid staff placing our business with you, and you are asking us to pay for the privilege of calling you.
I have a cunning plan that will allow you to steal a march on the competition and win the hearts and minds of the intermediary market. It is a ‘win-win’ situation – you publish the real telephone numbers for intermediaries so it does not incur those intermediaries with inclusive telephone packages anything more to call you, and you also give an 0845 number for those who do not have a inclusive package telephone deal who may like to use this. That way, you cannot be open to charges of profiteering on telephone numbers that cost the intermediary over and above their normal costs and they will then love you and ring you more often to place their business and hear the music being played for 10 minutes or so before they get picked up.
Yours sincerely
Danny Lovey
The Mortgage Practitioner
PS – please can you request whoever chose that bloody music that gets played whilst we are holding on to change it because it drives me crazy!
