For startups in early stages, hosting software applications on cloud computing services makes all the sense in the world. The most popular businesses to offer cloud hosting, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, can free up a company to focus more on products and customers than server space and processing power.
In navigating that software-as-a-service (SaaS) space, Seattle-based startup Mason is bringing a new delivery model to the table: mobile infrastructure as a service (MIaaS). Helping enterprise companies to build and scale smart hardware products, Mason aims to deploy and manage software applications across custom Android devices. This vision, in effect, enables customers to leverage a tech ecosystem tailor-made to meet their needs, giving them turn-key control over mobile infrastructure — and with it, a competitive edge.
“Mason provides the best solution for building, managing and scaling dedicated mobile products,” explains Jeremy Rise, an account executive at the company. “This is great news for any sales rep.“
Selling this unique product requires deep knowledge of MIaaS as a hybrid hardware-software delivery model, but that’s not all. Rise sat down with Built In to discuss his approach to growing Mason’s customer base.
Mason is a mobile infrastructure as a service company that provides clients with custom-built hardware and software for single-purpose Android devices.
What about Mason’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
While I’ve worked at an array of great software companies throughout my career, none of them had a product that was truly the best and only real solution to the problem at hand. Many of them were “nice to have” solutions that solved potential problems — but nothing compares to what Mason does for the industries we work with.
Analyzing all of the problems that innovative tech companies face while trying to build their products on consumer hardware, we created an all-in-one solution to help enable their new product lines. Our goal has been to make it as easy as possible for the next generation of technology to be made, instead of having to jump through all the hoops caused by the consumer hardware and fragmented mobile infrastructure available today. There’s nothing quite like getting on a call and finding that every single pain point your prospect is sharing with you is something that part of your solution was built to solve — then being the only company who can do so all in one.
Our goal has been to make it as easy as possible for the next generation of technology to be made.’’
What are the most important skills required for selling Mason’s service?
While the reward potential is high, so is the difficulty of the sales process. However, that’s where the fun is. I don’t know about everyone else but, before Mason, I was tired of doing the same demos and selling to the same type of prospect every day.
Much is required to successfully sell Mason. It helps to have knowledge of mobile apps, android, smartphone manufacturing, telecom and logistics. All this experience isn’t required, but having some of it will make navigating a deal much easier. Mason as an offering usually needs to be approved by multiple departments of a company. For this reason, it is important to be able to strategically maneuver through an organization and discuss value propositions with multiple touch points. For instance, a sale usually requires the approval of product, engineering, operations, finance and sometimes sales and marketing before it closes. Each of these departments has a different problem that Mason can solve for, so when you get the chance you will need to be able to discuss how we can show return-on-investment for their department and all the others. In the end, it’s the decreased total cost of ownership Mason provides that leads to a partnership.
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