Introducing Steve Smith, our Head of Commercial!

Questions & Answers #

Q. You’ve helped businesses evolve and grow for years, what’s your greatest skill that you’ve developed, and why?

A. I’ve been doing this for three decades now, in some shape or form, and the most important thing I’ve worked on and improved on, is more of a behaviour than a skill and it’s one we should all have anyway, but I didn’t for many years - and that’s patience.

Being patient with prospects or clients who need more assistance than others. Or people who aren’t making quicker decisions, as they have other pressing matters to deal with. Or teammates who don’t have the knowledge or experience to do what I can.

I’ve seen times when these would almost offend me, so coming to an understanding that I don’t operate in a vacuum where everything fits to my will, was my “Road to Damascus moment”.

Q. In one sentence, how would former clients describe your sales philosophy?

A. Selling the solution to the problem, not selling what I want to.

Q. Which market shift taught you the most about adapting quickly?

A. Working in and around the energy sector means you have to be agile in business planning, as you are at the mercy of ever changing market conditions. However, of greater wider impact has been the change in how we communicate. I trained to be face to face or telephone, but this has changed with the advent of instant messaging and social media, meaning I had to adapt to communicate how clients wanted me to, not how I wanted to.

Q. Where do you see the biggest opportunity for Revolve Communications to connect with new customers in the next 12 months?

A. It’s an exciting time to be joining Revolve Communications, as we have a vast estate of mobile connections out there and have a strong handle on that side of the business. We have recently partnered with Abzorb and now have a strong Connectivity offering, therefore we can help our clients even more to securely stay connected with their clients, prospects and suppliers.

Q. Revolve prides itself on integrity; how will you keep deals transparent and value-driven from first pitch to renewal?

A. It’s as simple as being honest at the outset with what we can do to meet the client’s expectations. And, it may be a cliché, but also a truism, always under promise and over deliver. I’ve not built the network of strong connections I have over the years by lacking integrity. Trust is so important in any relationship.

Q. What part of Revolve’s offering do you think more businesses need to know about?

A. Our business has been built on the back of mobile phone provision and this still holds great importance, but everyone knows we deliver impeccably well in this space. And whilst there’s still room to grow here – talking more about the phone purely being the delivery system for the apps on it, rather than the device itself – I’d have to say we offer a market leading connectivity proposition.

It becomes more essential by the day for businesses to have a fast and robust connection to the outside world and we have the tools to ensure that’s the case for our clients. Add in a simple journey for the client and we won’t be beaten on this service.

Q. If you could give one crucial bit of advice to a business scaling their telecoms infrastructure, what would it be?

A. It would be to engage with a company like Revolve. There’s so much information out there that a lot of business owners, IT Managers etc. could certainly secure and deploy a new phone system, but engaging with Revolve means they can concentrate instead, on their actual jobs – running the business, strategizing IT, etc.

Having a team of people, who know you and your business well, involved in the delivery and ongoing support of a system means you don’t have the headaches often associated with these deployments. This is hugely more important than the brand of the solution.

Q. Our solutions revolve around customer needs—what’s your first step when mapping a prospect’s pain points to deliver the right communications strategy and package?

A. Once I find out what the pain points are, I investigate the effect of those on the business. The effect may be fiscal loss, reduction of staff morale, damage to the reputation of the business, or a combination of these. The pain point has a reducing effect somewhere, I need to find the solution to turn that to a positive effect.

Q. Beyond revenue, which single metric will tell you we’re genuinely elevating a client’s day-to-day communications?

A. Outstripping everything, including revenue, would be how satisfied our clients are. Be it an official application like Net Promoter, or an email survey, we will only know we are delivering our offering with integrity and meeting our promised objectives.

Q. You’ve seen plenty of comms tech—what’s your all-time favourite phone (or quirkiest gadget) and why does it still wow you?

A. I had the privilege of working for Apple for a few years and was there for the launch of the first iPad. I’d used one before the launch on a visit to Cupertino and it wowed me then and still does today. It remains a piece of design that is pleasurable to use and pleasing on the eye and the huge range of apps makes it very difficult to live without.