by Overhead Watch Expert | Mar 14, 2018 | Expense Reduction Audits, Podcast | 0 comments
If you’re one of those who wince every time your company’s telecom bill arrives, then you probably haven’t heard of Mobilia Consulting Services. Donovan Lashley, Founder of Mobilia Consulting, a telecom expense management firm established in 2013, explains how cost consulting services can help you save 20% to 40% off your monthly telecom expenses so you will be paying the least amount possible on devices. Mobilia Consulting offers a no-risk, win-win solution by going through your account line by line to check for bill errors and look for best pricing and new promotions to optimize your current plan, as well check if you’re being charged for services you either don’t use or need.
Listen to the podcast here:
Manage Your Bill And Enjoy Great Savings With Mobilia Consulting Services with Donovan Lashley
We’re doing our first podcast now. I have Donovan Lashley with Mobilia Consulting on the line. Donovan’s going to tell us a little bit about Mobilia Consulting and the world of telecom consulting and cellular audits. Donovan, thanks for being with us.
Thank you for having me.
In the world of cost consulting and contingent consulting, there are a lot of folks like myself that are overly educated in a lot of these costs sectors as far as how you’re able to help companies reduce their costs. Let’s talk a little bit about how you got into the industry of consulting companies when it comes to things like cellular services and telecom services.
I started working for AT&T fifteen years ago. I worked there for about five years and then I transitioned over to Verizon. I worked there for another five years. It was while I was working at Verizon that I really started to see a need for this business. I had quite a few clients and business customers that would come up to me and ask, “Is there any way you could help us to cut our cost? Our cost is too high. We can’t seem to get this under control. Is there anything you can do to help us?” Working at Verizon, the quotas were always pretty high so you didn’t have the time to help your clients to cut cost. I referred them back to customer service. I had one particular client that became a close friend and he had come up to me, met me at the office and he was like, “Is there anything you could do? There’s got to be something you could help me out here with and get this under control.” It took a few hours, I went through his account, and I was able to save him a little over $40,000 a year in savings. Needless to say, he was super excited and ecstatic but that really got the wheels turning. There are so many other clients that weren’t being taken care of. They were way over spending. Your average consumer that has a plan on their own. There are not a lot of options they can choose but on the business side because they’re so competitive with each other, the carriers, that there’s constant new turmoil in that industry. New promotions, new plans and many times these are not advertised.
There’s a big push with these unlimited plans right now. If you’re saying things are constantly changing in your industry, as well as many other industries, I can see how there’s opportunity there with various promotions as the market changes. We’re trying to do a podcast that poke our head into these various cost reduction industries and talk to experts like Donovan and not get into too much detail as far as the category goes, but maybe just enough to enlighten us to call an expert like Donovan and see if the service makes sense. Maybe Donovan can help your company save $40,000 a year. Who wouldn’t want to consider that, especially in a contingent consulting realm? At Overhead Watch, we’re going to be trying to do one of these at least once a month. We’re starting off here with cellular audits and telecom consulting with Donovan. I wanted to give a basis as far as what we’re trying to accomplish with these podcasts.
Donovan, you provide these consulting services. You’re going through invoices and contracts, identifying things like billing errors. Tell me a little bit more as far as these promotion opportunities. What’s the difference between a cellular review or cellular audits in telecom? Can you explain that a little bit?
Usually when we get a telecom audit, we go through it, which would be like a wired audit like your voice phones, hotlines or internet. It really gets into just negotiating the contract with that particular vendor. Our goal is not to change the vendors with any other companies that we work with unless they want to have us look at other vendors. With the telecom, we are able to look at thousands of different companies that we’ve audited and then benchmark what the pricing should be. We know based on the company size what they should be paying, and then we can go back and negotiate the rate. They’re going to pay that rate for the next three to five years depending on the contract. What’s the difference with wireless though is that’s not the case. You don’t negotiate a rate that you pay for so many years. When they come up with a new plan, if it benefits, you can switch to it. If a new promotion comes out, let’s say taking 50% off of your plan, if you implement that, you get it. Usually, it’d be grandfathered into those and you will have that savings on into the future unless you change something. Many of those promotions are not advertised. Imagine if two months from now, after we’ve done a review, we find we can save the client 20% every month. If the client never finds out about that, how much does that 20% that they didn’t know about going to cost them over the next three to five years? It ends up being a significant amount of money.
Mobilia Consulting: Our goal is not to change the vendors with any other companies that we work with unless they want to have us look at other vendors.
We’ll find promotions like that not one time but usually at least once or twice throughout the year. We’ll find things and we’re able to continue to drive the cost down. Overall, our clients that use our service pay significantly lower costs to their telecom vendors than the average company. Upfront, we typically can save 20% to 40% right off the bat, off their bill. Over time, the savings ends up being around a total of 50% additional savings.
My understanding was your services, it’s risk-free review. If you don’t procure any savings to your client, there’s no invoice coming to them. They really have nothing to lose here as far as to have you take a look, correct?
That’s correct. That’s not happened to date. We’ve always found savings for our clients and we have it set up to where they also have no risk. If we show them what we find in savings. For some reason, they don’t want to implement it, they’re under no obligation to fill their accounts. They can make the choice what they want to make with their account, but it makes sense to at least look at our findings and see if they make sense. Every client we’ve shared our savings with has taken all, if not most of what we recommend. We’ve not had a client yet that looked at the savings and gone, “We don’t want to do any of this.” Everyone has benefited from it.
From a billing perspective, we only bill based on savings we find. It’s contingent. We take a percentage of the savings we find and only as long as those savings are in place. We’re going for savings say on a wireless line on a particular number and that discount that we found or promotion that we found is no longer showing up on the bill, then we’re no longer going to bill you for it. Part of what we do every single month, part of the service that you’re paying for is that we go through your account line by line. We’re looking for billing errors. We’re looking for new promotions. We’re looking for any ways that we can optimize this plan to take advantage of more data or just streamline the whole process. We’re also validating the savings that we will bill you for. It’s a win-win for every company.
One point that pops into my head when you’re talking is that as a business owner or a manager, babysitting these monthly invoices takes a lot of time that they don’t have. You’re providing a risk-free service where you do the babysitting and ensure that not only they’re billing correctly but that hopefully, they have below market pricing for years to come. I really see a good value to use the service. One of the questions a lot of folks might have is, “How does Mobilia get paid?” We don’t have to go into a ton of detail on that, but my basic understanding is that you are going to invoice for a portion of the savings you procure, correct?
Yes, that’s exactly correct.
That seems fair. You have procured it. You get a percentage of it and that’s all probably worked out inside your agreement for the client to review early on. What’s the common billing error when it comes to cellular services that you see in the industry?
We see things when new phones are added to the account, the sales rep will add insurance on. You might add a promotional feature. Sometimes they’ll have promotion on navigation or voice mail promotion and it’s free to put it on your account. After a month, they will begin to bill you. The sales rep gets a fit for that, so they’ll throw it on the account. Before you know it, you’re paying for $8 a month for something that you never agreed to. If no one’s looking at that, you pay that for years. That ends up costing companies quite a bit of money.
I know Mobilia Consulting. You are out of Charleston, South Carolina but you provide these services nationwide. I want to give the folks some contact information. Your website is MobiliaConsulting.com and your main office line is (843) 732-4848
I’m sure if people have questions, you want them calling you or contacting you through their website. Tell us what’s one of your best success stories as far as for savings and being able to help a company, whether it be a nonprofit?
We have still a client of ours and they had a new sales rep come in and basically tell the client that we didn’t know what we were talking about, that they could significantly cut costs even way more. They implemented a bunch of plan changes. While we went through our monthly review of their account, we noticed all these plan changes. Immediately we called our contact, the CFO, and let them know that we had him paying around $3,000 a month. There where overages for data but there was no way around that. It was way less expensive to pay a couple hundred dollars in overages than to make some plan changes, but the rep made him feel like the overages were a real problem. We have him paying a little over $3,000. By the time that sales rep gets done on their account, they’re now going to pay over $15,000 because we had implemented so many grandfathered in promotions that we just had an account so dirt cheap. It’s just mind boggling. I’m still shocked at the sales rep actually thought that they were going to be able to do anything better. Fortunately, we were able to go back and put everything back in place. Many times, this doesn’t happen. Many times, if the client makes the plan changes, they lose out on what they have. We encourage our client, if your sales rep reaches out to you and wants to help you, that’s great, but that’s not always the case.
At least let us know before you make the plan change because we always have your best interest at heart. A sales rep, they might, but they might be very new to this. They might make a big mistake, but that mistake could cost you a lot of money. It doesn’t hurt to have us look at it. Worst case is if you’ve found some savings. We won’t take the credit for the saving. We will implement them and it’ll be good for you, but it’s better to have two people looking at that than just the sales rep.
A lot of those sales reps are working on commissions, so sometimes they forget about those promotions. We appreciate you joining us, Donovan. Make sure to reach out to Mobilia Consulting. If you have an interest in reducing your cellular or your telecomm services and get some detailed information from them. Thanks for joining us, Donovan.
Thank you for having me.
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About Donovan Lashley
Donovan Lashley spent over 11 years in the wireless industry and many years managing different companies. He is using his experience in both fields to help businesses save time, frustration, and money. He has seen first hand how wireless corporations fleece businesses and now he is using his skills to help your business.
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