Mo Saedi doesn’t have the same problems selling wireless phones that he did 16 years ago.
When the concept of a portable phone was still a novelty, Saedi struggled to convince a wealthy Cleveland doctor that he could indeed drive along I-480 and talk to his grandson in Germany at the same time.
It’s a comical image, especially considering that today, every other driver seems to have a cell phone glued to his or her ear. But back in 1985, the good doctor wasn’t swayed by Saedi’s sales pitch.
“He thought I was some sort of con artist,” Saedi says in the soft Persian accent of his native Iran. “So he and I got in my car and made a call. He talked to his grandson, and then he believed that, yes, it was happening. Today when you go to a restaurant and a phone rings, seven or eight people reach for their phone.”
Few could have predicted today’s wireless phone boom back in the early 1980s, when Saedi joined in. At the time, industry analysts predicted that, at most, there would be between 1 million and 1.5 million wireless phone users in the United States by 1999. Instead, was closer to 100 million users. Many companies, including AT&T, followed the analysts’ advice and steered away from the burgeoning market, only to spend billions playing catch up in the 1990s.
But Saedi knew that mobile phones — like all technology — would increase in quality and become affordable to the average consumer. Progress was slowed, though, because in the early 1980s, there were only two cellular phone service providers in the Cleveland area — GTE and CellularOne.
The two companies held a duopoly over the area and offered almost identical services, quality and prices. Saedi was one of the few competing entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio excited about the new industry.
“It was incredible how this thing could make a huge change in your life,” Saedi recalls. “As an early user, I realized I don’t have to wait on a pay phone for two hours. I don’t have to search for one only to find out it’s not working. Plus, the useless time suddenly became useful time.
“Then I started to really push it, and in the early stages, it was very difficult.”
By the late 1980s, cellular phones were primarily installed as car phones for busy, wealthy executives. The first truly mobile phone manufacturer to hit it big was Motorola when it released the MicroTec flip-phone, ranging in price from $1,700 to $2,500 and weighing at about 15 pounds. Before that, the first portable phone was $4,500 and was called the “brick” phone, for obvious reasons.
Saedi displays one of the first versions in his Valley View office headquarters.
Because of its tremendous cost, Saedi leased the bulky phones to customers for between $29 and $59 per month.
That changed in 1989, when the price of mobile phones dropped from between $799 and $1,000 to nearly half that amount. Saedi recalls when his company, then called Call Comm Inc., ran a newspaper ad one Sunday advertising the new, lower-priced phones. The response was overwhelming, and not just from wealthy clients.
“We thought it was a big revolution,” Saedi says. “I’ll never forget that day. The following day, we had a six-line phone and all lines were busy. People were coming in (to buy it). It became the phone that everybody wanted to have.”
That response prompted Saedi to change his strategy. He realized cellular phones were no longer a luxury item only the privileged could afford. They were a tool that could not only change the business world but also how everyone communicates.
“We needed to become more of a consumer product as opposed to just a B2B product,” he says.
By the early 1990s, Saedi was meeting regularly with other GTE cellular phone retailers in the area to discuss a possible merger. Five companies were involved in the original talks, but only three — Saedi’s Call Comm, Spectrum Communications Inc. and Cleveland Systems Cellular Inc. — eventually joined forces in 1996 to become United Wireless.
The deal put United Wireless on the map with seven stores across Northeast Ohio. Soon after the merger, one partner dropped out. A year later, despite rapid industry growth, the other partner exited. Saedi was left as sole proprietor.
“It’s always difficult to match three cultures,” Saedi says. “It takes a long period of time because everybody does things differently. But I believed in the product and the technology. I also made a commitment to the people who started to work here.
“We had a plan and we said we were going to execute it. You cannot let people down. That is probably most important to me.”
In wireless phone terms, 1998 was the year when Cleveland changed from a two-horse town to one of the industry’s most sought-after regions.
Suddenly, six companies were battling for consumers’ airtime. Few other cities of Cleveland’s size have as many cellular and other wireless phone carriers available.
“It’s a very competitive environment, and the carriers want to protect their turf as much as they possibly can,” explains Brett Dodridge, general manager of sales operations for United Wireless.
With so many new carriers in the region, Saedi saw value in offering products from other providers. Up until then, he’d focused his efforts on GTE. So in 1999, he began negotiations with GTE to allow him to carry other carriers’ products. It was one of most difficult sales jobs of Saedi’s career.
“It’s typical in a business case that you want to control your distribution,” Saedi says. “And they controlled me for 14 or 15 years. But it came to the point where the market changed their attitude. It was a matter of sooner or later, and they were smart enough to do it sooner.
“We really sold them on the vision that if we offered the customer everything out there, then the customer is going to be happy. And hopefully, you’ll be able to get your majority share of the business.”
Saedi’s prediction proved correct. When United Wireless became a multicarrier provider, Saedi flooded local radio airwaves and ran newspaper ads offering deals not just from GTE, but from Sprint PCS, Nextel, Cingular (formerly Ameritech), AT&T and Alltel. The marketing campaign was a success.
Last year, he opened his 15th store in Northeast Ohio and begin plans to expand into other regions of the state.
“(Our carriers) also recognize the vision that Mo had that by having a choice, you can attract more customers to your locations, thereby having a greater opportunity to reach more customers through your distribution point than if you only had one product,” Dodridge says. “It has proved out in every case. Now our carriers that we partner with embrace that philosophy. Initially, some of them resisted it.”
Saedi is not alone in offering a choice of carriers, and he knows it.
The big box electronics retailers usually carry more than one provider, as do supermarket and discount store chains. Saedi believes his edge over competitors is his employees.
He has an on-site trainer to regularly update his staff on the latest advances in technology, new airtime rates and special offers.
“We have probably the clearest and most knowledgeable sales staff that you can find in this market, and I’m very comfortable to say, in the state of Ohio,” Saedi says. “We’ll put our company against any mass merchandiser or direct carriers themselves, or any agent.”
Despite his confidence, Saedi refuses to rest on his laurels. During one of the company’s strategic planning sessions a few years ago, he highlighted training as one the company’s core competencies. But he also pointed it out as one of the business’s competency gaps. He says he recognized without continuous training and retraining, United Wireless would fall behind the trends.
And that, he says, would be the first step to closing its doors.
“On a daily basis, we look at how we can improve that training so that when a consumer walks into one of our stores, we can answer every question,” he says.
Saedi’s dedication to his people has resulted in twice being named a “North Coast 99” award recipient, recognizing United Wireless as one of the region’s best places to work. The company also received an Outstanding Achievement Award in the area of Training and Education.
But at the end of the day, it’s all about the products Saedi is able to offer his clients. The wireless phone of 15 years ago looks nothing like today’s small, light, high-speed offspring. To predict what the devices will be like in another 15 years is almost impossible. There are already prototypes of handheld devices that allow users to join a videoconference while they change their schedule, download an .mp3 file and burn a small compact disk right in the handset. And that’s just within the next few years.
“We have something exciting here,” Saedi says. “I feel it’s in its infancy. We are between the second and third generation of wireless, and I think that we can be a force in this market and really influence the consumer market.”
And to think that less than 20 years ago, Saedi could barely convince somebody that he could call Germany on one of these things.
How to reach: United Wireless, (216) 573-9000
Morgan Lewis Jr. ([email protected]) is a reporter at SBN Magazine.
