If duo can sort out problem of landing clients, it's a wrap

Shortly after his college graduation, a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome cut short Andrew Becker's foray into mechanical engineering, and he redirected his career toward sales.

Becker's job search led him to collaborate with a 40-year veteran of oil and gas industries, Lloyd ''Pat" Patterson, 70, to sell a high-tech fabric designed to repair damaged pipelines. Repair workers can drive into an oil or gas field, take out a ''paper towel roll" of the wrap, ''add water to it, and it hardens to the strength of steel," Becker said.

Since January the two, under the name Bullfrog Pipe Wrap, have been reaching out to potential customers, from water company employees in Hong Kong to industry service companies in Canada to military contractors in Iraq who are receptive to alternatives that are cheaper, more flexible, and as reliable as welding, the traditional fix.

Becker pursues sales but also takes care of running the website and other operations. Patterson, meanwhile, mines his extensive network for leads to sell the wrap, made by a California engineering company and distributed through a Texas ''master distributor."

In mid-February Becker, 26, met with graduate students at Babson College's business school in a discussion arranged with the Globe. They talked about how to build his small business, including how to build up his customer base, how to sort out roles with a partner who prefers to not travel, and how to distinguish themselves in selling a product where the barrier to entry is low.

After initial positive comments about the wrap's effectiveness and value and the potential of selling to international customers, students turned to analyzing potential problems.

The fact that Becker and Patterson have different sales strategies -- Becker advocates focusing on individual customers' needs and Patterson thinks that the price and qualities of the product allow it to speak for itself -- ''needs to be addressed early on," said Mairin Brzica. But their different qualities ''could be good," she said. ''Patterson has a lot of contacts" in the oil and gas industry.

Students questioned what kind of value Becker and Patterson would add for customers.

''What's to say the customer can't go to the manufacturer directly?" asked the professor, Julian Lange. ''Like the real estate market, one thing customers agree on" is that they'd like to cut out the middle man, Lange speculated.

Becker said he wasn't worried because big pipeline companies are typically already burdened with managing lots of heavy equipment and many employees.

''They're big bureaucracies. They wouldn't just buy a company to save a little bit of money," he said.

He and Patterson were hoping to establish ''customer exclusivity," he said.

Talk turned toward broadening his market and finding more customers.

''He needs to go out and say, 'Here's a better alternative for you.' He needs to go to direct marketing," said Guruprasad Samaga.

''Have you gone to trade shows?" asked Satish Mohakar.

Overall, students worried that Bullfrog didn't do enough to distinguish itself from potential competitors, and thus showed ''good short-term viability, possibly poor long-term viability," as student Eric Karr put it.

After listening to Becker describe his company, Lange, the professor, suggested that Becker work on his ''elevator pitch."

''I think you should focus it more, because people's attention wanes in the first five to 10 seconds."

If Becker and Patterson wanted to ''just do sales commissions for a time, that's fine," Lange said.

But he urged them to think seriously about what they would do to stand out from potential competitors and make their business attractive to potential buyers.

Lange asked: ''If a company were to acquire you, why should they acquire you rather than the manufacturer?"