I see the consultants behind the Global Revenue Assurance Professional’s Association (GRAPA) are still up to their old tricks. Whilst promising their members they are “vendor-free” and that “only employees of telcos can join” they conveniently forget to mention that the staff of the association are identical to the staff of the XiT consulting business founded by GRAPA’s president, Rob Mattison. So it is no surprise to see one of the questions they ask prospective members:
Do you have consulting projects? (in the past, currently, in the future)
It would be pretty funny if it was not so shameless. Why would an association that does not sell anything need to know about whether telcos intend to buy consulting? Only because it helps XiT with its marketing, that is why.
Next up from GRAPA is a benchmarking project. Guess what they will be asking – how big the telco is, what products it offers etc. In other words, the questions are identical to the ones that marketeers go through when getting information about their sales prospects. How convenient that GRAPA members will be asked to supply all the information in the name of “benchmarking”, saving XiT the trouble of doing any sales research.
