Last year I met with a lawyer who was curious as to whether his firm was spending too much on their phone lines.

By spending an hour with him asking some simple questions, and looking over some of his past bills, it was easy for me to see that he was spending too much. By observing his office environment and how many people were on the phone during the day, we were able to determine that he was paying for more lines than he was actually using.

What struck him as funny is that the company he had been dealing with for 20 years hadn’t visited him to do the same thing. What he didn’t find so funny was that they were also rolling him into new contracts every three years without letting him know.

He didn’t have many features other than voice mail on his current system and his phones were old enough that they didn’t even show caller ID.

The replacement system wasn’t cheap (roughly $9000 installed and programmed for 24 phones in his office) but the savings were $4700 a year. Close to $400 dollars a month he would save with the new system and the features he now had would allow him to travel and stay connected to the office without any long distance charges. He could now keep his personal cell phone number private and have calls go from his office to his cell phone without difficulty. When you factor in the 5 year warranty, his phone system pays for itself in 2 years, and he saves an additional $14,100 dollars over the next 3.

He also wasn’t stuck in a contract anymore and this way when the competition changed pricing, he was able to take full advantage of the competition.

When I met with Dave it was just to take a look at his bills to see if he was paying to much. It was easy to see from the detailed bill that he was paying too much per line, and also had a system so old that it didn’t have a display on the phones. During our meeting I determined that Dave travelled a lot and still wanted to stay in touch with his customers and family without it costing him too much.

By replacing his outdated system, and getting him to switch phone line providers, we were able to save him a more modest $200 dollars a month on a system that cost him just over $4000 dollars. Now I suggested leasing as an option to him so that he didn’t have to put out the money himself and when we took a good look we realized that the system would cost him just over $80 dollars a month to lease over 5 years. So now we have him saving about $120 dollars a month after the lease payment. That is $1440 dollars a year and that includes the price of the equipment.

As an added bonus, the system included a phone that he could take with him when he travelled. This allowed him to utilize the internet he had access to and was paying for already to take calls. When he was in Mexico at his condominium, he could pick up the phone and the dial tone he got was dial tone in Winnipeg. He could call his friends and family here without any long distance charges at all.

When his customer would call his office, the phone would ring wherever in the world he was and he could answer it without any additional charges, or anyone being the wiser that he was halfway across the world.