One ordinary month
David thought the empty chair was saving him £30,000 a year.
Then he looked at what had happened in his company that month.
£1,200A missed call became a job for somebody else.
£3,400Two forgotten quotes were never followed up.
£900An unpaid invoice was no longer being chased.
The empty chair had cost him £5,500 in a single month—£66,000 at the same rate over a year.
So David installed The Office Manager. Calls were answered, quotes followed up and overdue payments pursued as a matter of course.
The empty chair£66,000 a year
The Office Manager£15,000 a year
The chair remained empty. The role remained.
David’s story is an illustration, not a promised result. Your figure depends on your own calls, quotes and payments.
Behind Merchants Virtual
Four decades of turning conversations and dreams into businesses.
Robert Daubigny founded Programmes Ltd in 1981, a pioneer of telephone marketing in Europe and the first outbound business-to-business service provider of its kind. It grew into The Merchants Group, employing more than a thousand people internationally and helping household-name companies enter the internet age before its sale in 1996.
He subsequently invested in industry and became involved in one of the early joint ventures with China, selling his interest back to the Chinese partner three years later.
Then came what Robert calls the most expensive education of his life: a move into manufacturing that cost him millions of pounds—and taught him that he wasn’t immortal. Past success protects no one.
The education was expensive.
Now he is building again. He helped large companies enter the internet age; Merchants Virtual helps smaller firms move beyond it into the age of AI.
The principles haven’t changed: answer the customer properly, remember what was promised and follow through. What has changed is that the capability is now within reach of smaller firms—at a fraction of its former cost.
