What prompted Pulte Homes to seek national marketing agreements?
We realized that we were a large enough company to put a management-level person in charge of telecommunications relationships, centralizing the negotiations and contract process with phone companies that wanted to serve our master planned communities. Q: How did Pulte nail down these relationships? A: We started working with the corporate offices to see if there was interest in discussing national and centralized relationships and to determine what type of strategic alliances could be put in place that could benefit both parties. At the time, there were no marketing agreements between builders and phone companies. We were covering new ground. We started working with SBC Communications (now AT&T), and it took us a considerable amount of time to show them that this was the type of partnership they could benefit from. SBC was the first national deal that we signed, and once it was executed, the other phone companies were interested in pursuing agreements. Q: How do the agreements work? A
