Amid investor unrest, Sprint's Board of Directors have put Dan Hesse on a short leash.
If the Board called you in to interview for the position what would you do to turn Sprint around? Remember, Sprint hasn't turned a profit since '07 so you're limited to spending the change under the sofa cushions in the lobby.
My list:
The US cellphone market is an oligopoly - a handful of players who don't want to rock the boat so they pretty much all do the same thing. The only way Sprint can differentiate themselves is to take some chances and do things that aren't being done today.
1. Allow customers to NOT buy subsidized phones. Give customers the $150 upgrade credit if they want it, but if they don't want it give them a $7/mo. discount on their bill if they renew without a subsidized phone.
2. Don't spend money on national advertising. Figure out which markets your service is competitive in and advertise locally in those markets only.
3. When the networks are upgraded, focus on a state then a region and OWN IT. They can make minor, incremental upgrades where needed, but DOMINATE in regions. If they focus their energy on markets and regions instead of the piecemeal roll-outs they've been doing they can promote more effectively and gain more customers faster then use those payments to fund additional roll-outs.
4. Sell modular phones. Case, display, radio board and mainboard. If a customer wants to upgrade a component they can drop by a Sprint store and get a faster CPU, a 4G radio, a higher-res display or a different case style (tablet, slider, candybar) or color for a reasonable fee instead of having to buy a new phone every time. This would never be your top of the line phone, but you could support several upgrades before moving on to a new design every 5 years.
5. Give rollover credit for unused minutes and let customers cash out on contract renewal. Let's say you have a plan with 500 minutes a month but only use 250 minutes your first month. Your second month you would have 750 minutes available. If you averaged 250 minutes a month over your 2-year contract that would mean half the portion of your bill allowed for talk would be lump-summed back to you when you renew your contract. If Sprint allocated 60% talk/30% data/10% text and you paid $80/mo. that would leave a credit of .5*.60*24 months*$80 = $576.
This would give customers an incentive to limit their use of the network (self-imposed throttling). Give Sprint an interest-free loan and pretty much guarantee that customers would renew both for the future cash back at the end of the contract and the payout for renewing. The numbers above were pulled out of air to illustrate the concept, but it wouldn't take a lot of effort on Sprint's part to figure out how to make the average payout be about the cost of a mid-range smart phone.
If the Board called you in to interview for the position what would you do to turn Sprint around? Remember, Sprint hasn't turned a profit since '07 so you're limited to spending the change under the sofa cushions in the lobby.
My list:
The US cellphone market is an oligopoly - a handful of players who don't want to rock the boat so they pretty much all do the same thing. The only way Sprint can differentiate themselves is to take some chances and do things that aren't being done today.
1. Allow customers to NOT buy subsidized phones. Give customers the $150 upgrade credit if they want it, but if they don't want it give them a $7/mo. discount on their bill if they renew without a subsidized phone.
2. Don't spend money on national advertising. Figure out which markets your service is competitive in and advertise locally in those markets only.
3. When the networks are upgraded, focus on a state then a region and OWN IT. They can make minor, incremental upgrades where needed, but DOMINATE in regions. If they focus their energy on markets and regions instead of the piecemeal roll-outs they've been doing they can promote more effectively and gain more customers faster then use those payments to fund additional roll-outs.
4. Sell modular phones. Case, display, radio board and mainboard. If a customer wants to upgrade a component they can drop by a Sprint store and get a faster CPU, a 4G radio, a higher-res display or a different case style (tablet, slider, candybar) or color for a reasonable fee instead of having to buy a new phone every time. This would never be your top of the line phone, but you could support several upgrades before moving on to a new design every 5 years.
5. Give rollover credit for unused minutes and let customers cash out on contract renewal. Let's say you have a plan with 500 minutes a month but only use 250 minutes your first month. Your second month you would have 750 minutes available. If you averaged 250 minutes a month over your 2-year contract that would mean half the portion of your bill allowed for talk would be lump-summed back to you when you renew your contract. If Sprint allocated 60% talk/30% data/10% text and you paid $80/mo. that would leave a credit of .5*.60*24 months*$80 = $576.
This would give customers an incentive to limit their use of the network (self-imposed throttling). Give Sprint an interest-free loan and pretty much guarantee that customers would renew both for the future cash back at the end of the contract and the payout for renewing. The numbers above were pulled out of air to illustrate the concept, but it wouldn't take a lot of effort on Sprint's part to figure out how to make the average payout be about the cost of a mid-range smart phone.
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