Call it dumb luck . . . His reaction was to try to sell the domain name, but bids fell short of his expectations. By the time the conversation ended, Morken had agreed to channel sales leads to MCI in return for their standard referral commissions, and a real, living, breathing business had been born. Within a matter of weeks, Morken had boned up on telecom jargon and cut similar deals with most of the top-tier bandwidth suppliers. Morken then filters these leads and forwards them to sales executives at participating suppliers, who then produce bids.
Buyers then negotiate deals with bidders off-line.
This telescopes the initial phase of the bandwidth acquisition process from a period of months down to as little as 24 hours. If anything, Gardner was expecting to find a bandwidth provider, but the agent or referral idea made immediate sense, and he filled out the web form. Prices were better than we've ever gotten before. We had the opportunity to take advantage of premiums and promotions. In one case, we brought the job in for about 50 percent of what we'd have expected to pay in the past.