| By selling information about Bay Area businesses to sales and marketing folk, Hayward-based TMWCommerce.com has become one of Silicon Valley's few profitable dot-com startups.
Privately held TMWCommerce.com, sole proprietor Tom Wilson, culls information from local businesses and sells it on his 2-year old Web site.
"(The information) saves sales people time, its convenient and it saves them money," Wilson says.
The site includes information about which Bay Area companies plan to hire, build new offices, relocate or liquidate, among other things.
Wilson's lead gathering method is simple: Call a company and ask.
"I know the different terminology," he says. I am able to speak their language... so it's very easy for me to get the information. (Another) person may get hung up on."
His method seems to be working.
"Within the past year... I would say his leads have been maybe 50 percent of my business," says TMW customer and interior designer Linda Reighley Designs.
With five employees, Wilson recently expanded TMW's coverage to include businesses in Orange County. He plans to add Los Angeles County to the site by the end of April and Dallas by August.
Leads per region cost $195 per month, which may be part of TMW's success.
Wendover Corp., a Haverford, Pa-based competitor, charges $30 to $1000 per lead, says CEO Larry Dillon. Customers also can subscribe to leads for $10,000 to $500,000 per year. Wendover only tracks information technology leads.
Wendover's 200 employees generate leads for businesses throughout the country and in the United Kingdom for customers including Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Oracle Corp.
Dillon boasts that Wendover is profitable, but declined to provide financial details.
Although TMW's target customers are different, Wilson identifies Wendover as a competitor because some customers may overlap. However, he adds, TMW also provides regional information, such as business deals and other news. TMW's customers include San Jose Construction Co, Inc., Cornish & Carey Commercial, Corovan Moving and Storage, and Lem Construction Inc.
TMW also competes with TrueAdvantage Inc., of Westboro, Mass.
Wilson has been supplying leads to local businesses since 1989 when he left his Bay Area-based marketing job with security system maker Sonitrol Corp. Wilson also had a background in construction, so he knew the lingo and industry codes to extract information from businesses, he says. He would pass information onto others who soon began offering him money. Wilson has since evolved the business model.
"(TMW's) credibility is there, the track record is there and our referral via word of mouth is increasing consistently," he says. |