Pete Mayer Telecommunications Consultant Deals With Boths Side For Best Deal

Some people have vanity license plates. Pete Mayer has a vanity telephone number.

Punch 444-4444, and you reach his desk at the accounting firm of McFarland & Alton, where he is a consultant.

For the last three years, Mayer has patched clients through the vast switchboard of vendors offering local and long-distance telecommunications services.

He also helps with equipment purchases.

His own provider is Nextlink, from whom he requested his unique number months before the Spokane company was even in a position to comply.

The result has been something of a surprise.

“I’ve gotten all kinds of oddball calls,” Mayer said. “For some reason, people like to dial it.”

As a consultant, Mayer said he keeps track of how well new telephone networks perform because he wants to be sure vendors can fulfill service commitments before he invites them to meet with clients.

A meeting is part of a process that usually begins with a referral from a McFarland & Alton client, or from previous users of his service.

Mayer, 45, assesses the client’s needs, finds out what they have been paying for their existing service, then solicits proposals from vendors.

He said he tries to avoid recommending one company over another, instead focusing on striking the best deal he can with whomever his client picks.

The one-time political activist - he once ran for the Spokane City Council against Sheri Barnard - said he gets results.

In the case of one local non-profit agency, for example, bidding for long-distance service ended up with the same carrier but a rate half that paid before.

A separate process for local service produced an estimated $13,000 in annual savings.

And another $13,000 was trimmed by a third contract for equipment maintenance.

Mayer said those savings are small compared to those he has negotiated for some clients, which include major users of telephone service in the region.

But not everyone is happy, particularly the vendors either cut out of bidding managed by Mayer, or those forced to accept lower revenues to keep a customer.

“There’s a world of options,” he said, facetiously adding, “We know where the enemy sits all over town.”

Although some telephone service providers perceive him as an adversary, Mayer said others consider him someone who can get them involved in deals they might have missed before.

He said those doing a good job know they will be able to keep their customers.

Often, Mayer said, clients think they have been getting a reasonable deal on their phone service because they take information from vendor representatives at face value.

“They really haven’t done due diligence,” he said.

But once the options are laid out for them, Mayer said, businesses see the savings.

Sorting through the potential connections is easy for Mayer.

He earned a business degree with a focus on communications from San Francisco State University in 1974, and took additional coursework in visual media at Spokane Falls Community College in the mid-1980s.

He started with MCI Communications Corp. in 1988, jumping to Dialnet in 1991 as area manager. In 1993, Dialnet was purchased by LDDS, which has since become Worldcom.

But Mayer had moved to McFarland & Alton by then, replacing a former MCI co-worker, Kevin Baker, who had moved on to Seattle.

Unlike Baker, who merely rented space from the accounting firm, Mayer is an employee.

Since moving into the company’s Seafirst Financial Center offices, he said, business has increased by more than 50 percent, exceeding $250,000 in revenues.

Mayer said telecommunications will change even more in the future.

He foresees offices without desktop handsets. People will communicate through their computers. Personal identification numbers will ring individuals anywhere they go.

Everything will run over the Internet, he said. “The technology’s there, they just need to refine it.”

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