By Stephen Wunker
Wonderful movies have been made about people singlehandedly taking on the world to prove a new idea. If this is your dream, snap out of it. Change results from alliances of people and companies.
I ran one of the first companies using cell phones as marketing tools. As the dot-com boom turned to bust, competitive rivalry became fierce. One of the best things I did was to bring the competitors into an industry association. Our battles were really not against each other, but against a market-place slow to accept this new idea. As we collaborated to build awareness of new solutions and set industry standards preventing cell phone spam, we discovered that many of our efforts were actually complementary. Collectively, we changed customer attitudes far more than we ever might have done on our own. In the early stages of a market, your would-be competitors may be some your closest allies.
Building alliances does not mean you should rely on others to do your sales. As a new market gets going, direct contact between a venture and its customer is essential. You need to learn immediately, through firsthand experience, what works and what doesn’t. Sales channels may tell a lovely story about how they can gin up your revenues (being salespeople, they’re outstanding at telling nice stories). But ultimately new markets are a hassle for sales channels to develop, and they don’t do much to help people meet their quarterly quotas. Channels are great partners after your company has proven itself. For the first sales, do them yourself.
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