AT&T's Dennis Payne to Retire
After 33 years of working in the directory business, Dennis Payne has been a firsthand witness to the changes and evolution in the industry. Denny began working for Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. as a directory sales rep in Kansas City when it was a division of the giant AT&T Corp. He was there in January 1984 when SBC was created after the breakup of the Bell System. By 1990, he was a regional manager, and in 1997 became the vice president – sales for Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages. In January 2000, Denny was named vice president – sales for Ameritech Advertising Services. He became president of SBC Directory Operations in October 2001. With the purchase of AT&T and adoption of its name, Denny was named president and CEO of AT&T Yellow Pages. Finally, with the acquisition of BellSouth and the merger of BAPCO’s business into AT&T’s Yellow Pages operation, Denny became the president and CEO of AT&T Advertising & Publishing, the largest print and online Yellow Pages operation in the world.
Those are the descriptive facts of Denny’s rise, but they only tell part of the story. SBCDO was the last of the RBOCs to embrace new technologies, and Denny led the massive mind-set change that was necessary. The most important piece of that puzzle was the joint purchase of the Yellowpages.com network by BellSouth and AT&T. In listing the top national IYP properties by share of IYP searches, comScore research shows the Yellow Pages network with a market share of 17.6 percent. q1-07-marketshare.ppt
As the keynote speaker at last year’s Directory Driven Commerce conference, Denny told the audience, “If we approach change with a real passion for our business, our products and our customers … the Yellow Pages industry has a long, strong future.” Denny had that passion, twice serving as chairman of the board of the Yellow Pages Association and serving on the board of the Association of Directory Marketing.
Most important, he was one of the many good guys in the business. When I spoke to him last night and asked what advice he would give to someone starting out in the industry, he quickly replied, “I would tell the rookie to master all of the different components of the Yellow Pages solution so you can understand the real potential of the business.”
Replacing Denny will be Frank Jules, AT&T senior vice president – business marketing. For a little bit of insight about Frank, you might find this page one article in The Wall Street Journal (subscription req’d) before the SBC-AT&T merger interesting. We welcome Frank to the industry at this time of change and wish Denny well in retirement.
I worked for Denny Payne out of Los Angeles for over five years. His insight and leadership was invaluable throughout the PBD to SBC to AT&T transitions. He always listened to his subordinates with great understanding and compassion. Although I recently left AT&T to work as a CMR, Denny Payne had a great influence on my career by taking time to hear me and praise my efforts in a competitive environment. Plus, he’s just a nice guy. I wish him the best!
Denny Payne would not listen, talked out of both sides of his mouth and destroyed Yellow pages.
As testament he would not address competition look at the markets dominated by SBC before he crapped out.
Denny liked to say a producing salesman is a starving salesman. A starving salesman is looking for a job.
He would start a policy and it would morph into a burden of a failed policy that got creamed over and over on the line in front of the customer. Proof is the 7 -15% decline per year in print revenue.
The telemarketing group in Tx has 100% turn over.
Hope the FNG can see from the bottom up instead of the top down.
I agree with Ted Levee wholeheartedly! I am a retired Account Rep with ATT Yellow Pages.
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