You probably do not recognize the names of businessmen William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell but you have heard of their solution to a common business problem: speed of delivery. The three men were part of a logistics company, moving equipment and supplies between Kansas City and Santa Fe by wagon in the 1850s. Among their customers was the U.S. Army. In fact, their company set a record for a round trip delivery between the two cities - 92 days! Can you imagine waiting that long on a package to get to you?

Russell, Majors and Waddell realized that if they could shorten the time it took to make a delivery, they could gain huge government contracts. They devised a plan to do just that. They set up 150 posts, approximately 12 miles apart, between Missouri and California. At each post they set up a livery for horses and a boarding house for a rider to get food and a good night's sleep. 4,000 riders were hired to carry a 20 lb pack and race across the west, changing out horses at each post and handing off their pack every 75-100 miles. On their initial run, they delivered a package between Sacramento, California and St. Joseph, Missouri in only ten days, eclipsing the speed of any competing delivery service. Russell, Majors and Waddell called their new logistics company the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company. The general public called it the Pony Express.

The time it takes to deliver a product or service is often identified as a key performance indicator, along with quality and cost, which leads to customer satisfaction. Quality, cost and delivery have been expressed as the QCD analysis. They are the three primary areas that customers use to judge your business and its products. The components of QCD have a unique relationship to each other. You typically need two of the three to be able to market them well. For instance, any time you can shorten the time it takes to do a business task without compromising the quality, it is a grand opportunity for marketing. Likewise, if you have great quality and a low cost, you can find someone who will be forgiving if it takes a little longer to deliver than normal. They can be placated by the thought that quality at a great price takes a little longer. However, if you have fast service, but you deliver junk at a high price, no one will buy from you. They also will not purchase your inexpensive, poor quality products that take forever to deliver.

The Pony Express was a great idea. Russell, Majors and Waddell solved a delivery problem. However, within a year and a half the Pony Express went out of business. Why? For one, they were terribly expensive, even by today's standards. Packages were charged $5 per half ounce! That is $160 per pound! Did the overall quality of the service expand over delivery by wagon or seafaring vessel? No, in fact there were size and weight restrictions on your package that did not exist in the other delivery methods. It had to fit into a saddlebag and weigh under 20 lbs. Many have blamed the technologically advanced telegraph and intercontinental railway system for the demise of the Pony Express. In reality, the Pony Express never became solvent before these factors came into play. Russel, Majors and Waddell only had the D of the equation, and it just was not enough to make a successful marketing pitch.

What was true in the middle of the 19^th century is still true today. The marketing of time will give you an edge over your competition only if you can couple it with either great quality or low cost. If you gain all three, you have reached marketing heaven. Corner the market while you can.