At the time we were brainstorming sessions to apply this approach, they were charging for documentation, which was generating a very nice steady revenue stream of $27,000 per month. The solution to the choke point was to give away the documentation for free and use it as an incentive for them to give us their email address. Since this was a huge revenue hit, it took a while to get everyone on board, but once implemented, the process generated 10,000 leads per month, growing to 16,000 over time.
The second company I started in 1986 was called International australia mobile database Software, which later became the European arm of Corporate Software. 1986 was a time when personal computers were just beginning to be adopted by businesses. Prior to International Software, the typical way you bought a PC and the associated software was through a store like ComputerLand or BusinessLand. However, the problem with these stores was that they focused primarily on hardware and didn't have more than 5-6 pieces of software and certainly didn't know how to demo or support them. We saw an opportunity to create a new channel that would sell only software and focus on the needs of corporate buyers. We would stock a large number of products and provide excellent consulting advice on which products to use, as well as great support.