Re:Tell HN: My startup is making money and I don't know what...
by pbreit on Friday June 27, 2014 @04:52PM
(#7956245)
I would think 1 student-employee per school could do it. You're only going to get 20-100 advertisers per school.
Re:Tell HN: My startup is making money and I don't know what...
by hkmurakami on Friday June 27, 2014 @05:23PM
(#7956349)
Lots of programs/companies have "student advocates" on their payroll for their very role. :)
Re:Tell HN: My startup is making money and I don't know what...
by late2part on Friday June 27, 2014 @08:11PM
(#7956890)
This. Build students as channels. Find regional sales managers - Junior Business Majors will love this. Have the regional sales managers bring on part time sales executives in college who go to landlords, apartments, businesses, using your marketing tools and methods. You have a good chance of succeeding!
Cracking this particular market without a super motivated and nicely paid phone force is really difficult. SMB are hard to get on the phone and to pitch. Over the long term of course. Anything short term is possible. I've been in this market and even purchased a company that did this where the previous owner moved out of town [1] and specifically said "you can't do this type of selling remote you have to be physically in their face".
Others have done this of course but iirc they tended to be well funded and able to lose a ton of money gaining sales. (Groupon).
[1] My point being he wouldn't have sold the company if it could be operated remote and that had in fact been tried by previous owners. (This was advertising to reiterate in a printed publication).