Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Board Shops - Selling, Marketing

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...I was at PCB West a few weeks ago and was surprised and delighted to see that out of the 45 exhibitors there, 27 were board shops. Twenty-seven board shops were looking for business, doing some selling, and even doing some marketing. This is a good thing--a very good thing--because it shows that times are finally changing and that board fabricators are coming to realize they have to do some marketing if they expect sales to grow.

Personally, I find this very encouraging. It was not that long ago these same companies thought if they just built it, the customers would come. Many of them had told me they did not need to do anything but “be there” and customers would call them up. It used to be that, when I asked fabricators how they got their business, they would shrug their shoulders and say, “Word of mouth.”

Obviously, this is no longer the case. The competition has heated up to the point where shops now realize they are going to have to pay attention to their overall sales effort if they intend to grow or, in many cases, if they intend to stay even and not lose ground.

With that in mind, I thought it would be appropriate to give you three things you need to do to make sure your company’s sales effort is successful:

1. Have a sales plan. You must have a blueprint of what your sales and marketing strategy is. This has to include what your company is good at and the kind of customers you do well with. You should develop this plan with the rest of your management team to make sure you are all on the same page. The plan includes your product (what it is your selling), your target accounts (who you are going to sell it to), and your tactics (how you are going to sell it).
2. Have to have a marketing plan: This is all about getting the message out. If you don’t tell people about your company and your product, how will they know? You have to have a fully well-thought-out and organized plan on how you are going to get your message out. This plan must have your special value proposition (what you do better than anyone else, why people should buy from you and not your competitors) and methods of getting that word out, including advertising, articles, press releases, white papers, newsletters, trade shows, webinars and seminars, and, of course, social media marketing. Make sure you have plenty of testimonials and success stories. No one does a better job of saying how good you are than your satisfied customers.
3. Have a great sales team. You must have good, qualified, experienced, and passionate salespeople who love your product and can’t wait to sell it to the rest of the world. Your salespeople are only as good as your product, so you must make sure you have the best product on the market today. Then, spend a great deal of time and effort finding, hiring, managing, motivating, and measuring your salespeople. They are your army, your apostles; they are the face of your company and they are going to make your sales effort successful. If you do not invest in the best people available today, the rest of your effort will be completely wasted. Hire the very best salespeople you can get your hands on and then do everything possible to make them successful.

Oh, and there is a fourth thing: Make sure you have a vision for your company. Know where you want your company to be not only today, tomorrow, or next week, but next year and the year after that. Develop and continually hone a great vision for you company and make sure everyone on your team--from the vice president of sales to the person answering the phone to the person shipping the boards--knows what that vision is.

And if that vision has to be about being the best, the very best at what you do--the best flex and rigid flex supplier, the best quick-turn prototype shop on the market today, or the best military aerospace supplier in the world--strive to do it better than anyone else and create a vision based on that. Work on that vision every single day and night and you will succeed. It’s only common sense.