Mardev complains Corporate TPS hinders selling to large companies

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 20-Sep-05, 07:30

LONDON – The Department of Trade & Industry and Ofcom have been urged to review the Corporate Telephone Preference Service by Mardev, which claims the service is making it more difficult for smaller businesses to sell to larger ones.

Nick Martin, general manager of Mardev, said that he would like to know what is motivating large companies to register telephone numbers with the Corporate TPS, which set out to protect smaller companies.

Mardev studied the profile of Corporate TPS registrants and found that companies with more than 100 employees had registered 40,000 telephone numbers. "[This] is clearly not what the Corporate TPS is about," Martin said.

"As a result of this practice smaller businesses are finding it more difficult, and expensive, to sell to larger companies. Corporate TPS in this respect is an overhead that favours the status quo, and bigger businesses with more sales and marketing resources and know-how," he said.

Companies with more than 100 employees accounted for 14.8% of the companies registered with Corporate TPS. Companies with fewer than 100 employees accounted for 82%, and companies with fewer than 20 employees accounted for 54.9%. Another 2.2% of companies were unclassified.

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