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Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Sprint axes 4 execs; merges consumer, business sales teams

By | January 6, 2012, 1:36pm PST

Summary: Sprint is starting off its new year by cutting some slack up top while undertaking a major reorganization of the company.

Instead of making some new year resolutions about better business strategies, Sprint is taking serious action going into 2012.

Sprint is ousting four of its top executives, according a memo to company employees written by CEO Dan Hesse that was reported by Reuters on Friday.

Those four individuals are:

  • Bob H. Johnson, president of the consumer services group
  • Danny Bowman, president of integrated solutions
  • John Carney, senior vice president of consumer marketing
  • Chris Rogers, senior vice president of corporate development and spectrum

The revelation presents a major shift in the company going forward especially as the memo also reveals that the nation’s third largest mobile provider (behind Verizon and AT&T) will be merging the sales and marketing teams belonging to its separate consumer and business units.

The news also comes on the heels of the announcement that Sprint plans to launch its 4G LTE network (part of its Network Vision plan) within at least 10 cities by the middle of this year.

And, surprise, surprise. Apple’s iPhone, which caused buzz at Verizon earlier this week as that telecommunications company expressed its desire for an LTE model, has something to do with this development as well…at least slightly.

Here’s an excerpt from Hesse’s memo concerning the reorganization:

We believe that we no longer need to support two separate business units (consumer and business), and that it is more logical now to evolve to unified marketing and sales organizations…

Because of the enormous investments we’re making this year in Network Vision and in the iPhone, we need to consistently be looking for ways to be more efficient.

So instead, all consumer and business sales teams will answer directly to the chief sales officer, while all marketing efforts will be organized by the chief marketing officer.

The results of Sprint’s reorganization has the potential to save money rather than make more (at least in the short run), but it is curious as to whether or not Sprint is going to end up focusing more on business customers than consumers, or vice versa.

The pitfall here would be that Sprint doesn’t have enough resources to address both parties, and instead spreads itself too thin to serve either customer base efficiently.

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Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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