Cellphone number portability together with a capitulation by the taxman, who says he will no longer bother with taxing the personal use of business cellphones, makes it more compelling than ever for business owners to move all their staff cellphone contracts into one group package.
Cellphones can now legitimately be offered to employees as a perk. And because a small business with a handful of salespeople can collectively clock up thousands of minutes a month, it makes sense for the business owner to try to negotiate a volume discount. It also makes sense for the cellphone company that, by winning over one small business, it signs up several active individual contracts.
Yet only one South African cellphone company seems to have cottoned on to the potential of small businesses as fertile recruitment ground. Still only six months old, it is difficult to say if MTN's Connectivity-4-SME offering for small businesses will work, but it seems to press all the right buttons.
MTN's senior manager for SME marketing, Natasha Basson, says any registered small business signing up more than one mobile number will get rates discounts, which grow with the number of staff members they sign on. "You can't dilute a corporate offering and then say to an SME [small or medium enterprise] 'there you go' and think they'll be happy. They have specific needs," says Basson.
full story from M&G here
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