Sramana Mitra: All right and with this model, you have generated about a $100 million in affiliate commissions so far. Of which, about 70% of that has been paid-out to your partners? David Sharpe: Technically, 100%. Last year, we did around $63 million in product sales. All of that, less processing fees, are given out
Sramana: What industries did you initially target and what was your sales cycle like? Mark Organ: Initially, we targeted the insurance, finance, and real estate markets. There are a lot of finance and insurance companies in Toronto and I had a lot of experience working with companies in that space during my time at Bain.
Sramana Mitra: If you’re claiming that part of your secret stuff in building this company is this 30,000 affiliate network, then I need to understand how you got to 30,000 affiliate partners in two years. I’m looking for round numbers. Let’s say you pay 90% commission to one layer of affiliate and they go and
Sramana: What was your pitch to potential clients? Mark Organ: We can provide the best quality leads to your sales people, because those leads are already on your website and you just need to talk to them. Sramana: It is very easy to get people to talk to you when you give them that pitch.
Sramana Mitra: You pay what percent as affiliate commission? David Sharpe: It’s not quite 100% commission because we’ve got merchant, accounting , and processing fees. The commission is between 90-94% for our core product lines. We’re doing a $12,500 event at the beginning of March. Clearly, there’s event cost for that but instead of paying
Sramana: What specifically did you do during the incubation process at Bain? What did you accomplish before you left to run Eloqua full time? Mark Organ: I focused on customer development. One of my co-founders, Steve Woods, was also at Bain and did a lot of coding. He was also on a lot of customer
Sramana Mitra: What were the profiles of these people? Were they sales people? David Sharpe: Yes. Initially, we were looking to find people who would help us go out and promote our products and services. We went after salespeople, promoters, and marketers. Sramana Mitra: What did you tell them? What was the call to action
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Raised in an entrepreneurial home, Mark was encouraged to become a doctor or professor and delighted his parents when he went to Northwestern to earn his PhD in neurosciences. In no time he was incubating Eloqua from within Bain and Company during the Internet boom years.