Virgin Mobile CEO: Why I left
Reacting to a report in the recent Financial Mail (FM) claiming he’d been asked to take a leave of absence and that several staff members reportedly had issues with his management style, Sacranie said taking the company from nothing to a powerful brand with more than 500 people in less than five months had been no easy task. Made tough calls
Sacranie admits that during this time, he was forced to make some tough calls, and in this process, some people may have felt left out. It was probably these that leaked the story to the FM, he said.
Aggressively building a company in the way that Virgin Mobile had just done required leadership by conviction, he said.
"You can’t be universally popular,"Sacranie said, describing his management style as "outcomes-based… I do drive quite hard". Sacranie said if he had made any mistakes it might have been not surrounding himself with all of the right people for his team.
There was also a style difference in managing people in the UK compared to managing people in South Africa, Sacranie said.
Poised to grow
He says Virgin Mobile is financially sound, operationally stable, and well placed to take a good market share. It has also managed to build an extremely strong brand and pervasive presence (it already has 1 000 outlets where people can buy Virgin Mobile products) in a short time. "I am ecstatic with what we’ve been able to achieve," said Sacranie.
Sacranie declined to release subscriber numbers, citing the fact that Virgin Mobile is a private company. But, he said it was "pretty much on target" in terms of the number of subscribers that it had set out to achieve.
The company – a service provider and joint venture with Cell C – said at the outset that it wanted to sign up between 200 000 and 300 000 subscribers in the first few months, and was targeting a 10% market share within three to five years.
Sacranie also declined to divulge how much it had spent on an aggressive marketing campaign so far. But he says it is a fraction of what the likes of Vodacom and MTN spend, and yet, has had a massive reach. That the company – a service provider – was perceived as the fourth mobile operator in the market was testament to this marketing success, he said.
Company builder
Sacranie said he had been in discussions with the board of the company for the past month around what its strategy should be going forward, and the consensus was that it required an operational person at the helm, rather than a builder of companies, which is what he considers himself to be.
Having come to South Africa in 2003, Sacranie says he had been investigating a number of opportunities, which possibly included working with Virgin (he’d been with the group for around eight years). He says he’ll remain in South Africa and sees an array of opportunities requiring his particular skills set. But, he would still be available to do Virgin work – in a business development capacity – should this be required.
Sacranie’s replacement, current vice president of marketing for Virgin Mobile in the USA, Peter Boyd, takes over from the beginning of next month.
Finweek
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