Smart beefs up salesforce to target residential telco market

Smart Telecom is to step up its assault on the residential telecommunications market with a new sales team whose management will include former Eircom sales executives.

The company announced yesterday that it plans to create 130 new jobs throughout the Republic, a move that will bring its total workforce to 480.

The staff will be part of a newly created residential sales division that will target the domestic market with voice, data and broadband services.

The 130 new posts will include 20 managers, with the balance made up of sales reps. They will be split into eight groups, three of which will be based in Dublin.

The remainder will operate from six centres around the country, including five new regional offices in Cork, Dundalk, Galway Limerick and Waterford.

London-listed Smart recently raised €55.2 million, mainly from institutions, to pay for the roll-out of its corporate and residential services.

Chief executive Oisín Fanning said yesterday that the company was on an aggressive growth path.

"We plan to continue to grow substantially throughout 2006 in an effort to achieve our ultimate aim of offering customers all over the country an integrated voice, data and broadband service," he said.

Smart poached a number of Eircom's sales managers last autumn and they will be involved in running the new division.

Its management will ultimately include James Cremin, Eircom's head of national residential sales.

He agreed to move to Smart last autumn with a number of other colleagues.

The move was a significant one for both companies as Mr Cremin and his colleagues were seen as particularly effective in winning back customers that had left Eircom for its smaller competitors.

However, a number of them had a clause in their employment contracts with Eircom banning them from working for its competitors for a year after leaving the company.

At the time, Eircom said that it had to consider "contractual issues" related to their departure, but took no further action.

In Mr Cremin's case, he agreed to continue working for Eircom for a period of time after he served notice, and is due to join Smart in a number of months.

A number of the departed staff worked for counter products marketing (CPM), which acts as Eircom's agent and employs the bulk of its sales team. A number of sales reps are understood to have moved as well.

Smart won the Republic's fourth and final licence to develop a third-generation (3G) mobile phone network, and intends to launch the new service next summer.

Last month it added Quinn Group to its shareholders' register when it raised €56.7 million which will be used to develop the new network.

The Seán Quinn-controlled group contributed half that figure in the form of a loan that can be converted to shares.