The deal is particularly exciting for OneCom as it includes Black Sheep’s valuable B2B databases and its team of 21 highly-skilled members of staff.
It means information and leads normally sold to OneCom’s competitors will now go directly to OneCom.
The OneCom sales force will now have exclusive and unprecedented access to details of more than two million qualified fixed line contracts and eight million mobile connections – 80 per cent of the business market.
Information from Black Sheep will also let OneCom know when these lines are out of contract, so the customers can be offered packages from OneCom at exactly the right time.
The Black Sheep team work exclusively on business mobile phone contracts and fixed line renewals and have a focus on customer service and access to the latest technology.
As a result the company has gone from strength-to-strength since it was established five years ago. It now works with a diverse portfolio of companies from blue chip nationals to small start-ups.
The operation and its staff will continue to be based in Brighton, but staff will now only represent OneCom. The mobile team at Black Sheep is currently booking around 700 appointments a month.
In addition to its appointment and lead generation services, Black Sheep also delivers call centre services, data cleansing and data profiling.
Darren Ridge, chief executive of OneCom said “The potential of converged communications is offering some of the most exciting opportunities the industry has ever seen – we have to be able to maximise this opportunity. This acquisition will help us to achieve that.
“Our business is a stable and profitable one which has been trading successfully for more than 14 years. We have embarked on a new development plan and have recently created more than 80 new jobs. We have a number of other acquisitions afoot.
“The opportunity to acquire Black Sheep will enable us to continue to grow while maintaining our focus on industry-leading standards of customer service”.