TRADING FOR CELL PHONE EQUIPMENT

There was another interesting and highly profitable project that was right time, right place for me during the MCC years.

In 1985 a friend, Tim McNamara, General Manager of KXL Radio in Portland, referred me to (name).  At the time his new company, Nentel, was rapidly growing their business of merchandising cellular airtime and equipment.  I met with (name) and sold him on the concept of engaging MCC to provide his media advertising on trade. Everything cellular was new and hotter than a pistol at that time.

I was sure that media managers would be delighted to provide their staff with new cell phones and unlimited airtime in exchange for rate card controlled media credits that Nentel could schedule at their discretion.  This was in fact the case and I was given the challenge to connect with and sell to media managers en mass in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Kansas (and to a more limited extent, Wisconsin and Illinois). 

The Nentel project was rewarding for a number of reasons.  Even though the MCC contract proposals were for trade, the media companies were willing to pay 15% cash commissions to MCC.  It was an opportunity for media companies to eliminate a large spectrum of cash expenses (the cost of cell phones and airtime).  There was an easy justification to pay cash commissions to MCC, even though the commodity I was dealing was trade.                                       

Another plus from my standpoint was the fact that in order to succeed I had to connect with the primary decision makers and persuade them to meet with me.  This again, was difficult work and an opportunity to make a lot of money quickly while at the same time scoping out new markets and generating new connections with media managers who were, after all, MCC’s stock and trade.  I was pleased to create new relationships for both Nentel and MCC and was well compensated for my work.