@BeechBaby I never set out to be a salesman, but I was put in the position, and finally relented when I saw that there were a lot of professionals out there like me who needed good info from industry insiders like myself. (I was on the services side before I joined a manufacturer).
In that line of work, the product was exceptionally expensive, and the potential clients really wanted to work with someone they could trust.
Marketing gimmicks wouldn’t sell the product, only good people would.
@Peter – I’d recommend posting short posts on LinkedIn that outline what makes a bespoke product from your company more valuable than the knockoff alternatives.
Simple case studies showing a failure of Product B and how that affected the TCO and ROI downstream is enough.
The really cool thing about these social media avenues is that the content is ‘forever’.
So posting relevant topics like why engineered products are greater TCO/ROI than Product B knockoffs is something that won’t likely change, and you can easily post and repost the same videos in response to questions people ask or comments people make on that medium.
Perhaps this is obvious, so forgive me if it is, but also making case study videos of satisfied customers is a big help too.
Just a 30 second blurb showing a nicely recorded customer (you’ll have to ask them the right questions) about their problem and the schedule/development/risk ROI they achieved with your product/solution and how they will turn to you again does make a massive impact on people.
Just record one every couple of months, and you’ll have a portfolio in no time. It’s far more impressive to see customers talking about you than you talking about your products… no-one likes a sales pitch, but we all like real customer reviews.
These are all great points.
One of many challenges is that when you start a manufacturing business you have to decide whether to sell direct to end users (which can be B2B e.g. industrial users) or whether to sell via middlemen.
This is an absolutely key decision, because the middlemen will want a cut. If say this is 1/3 of their selling price, you have to jack up your “list price” by 1.5x, so when you give the middleman the 1/3 discount off list, you still make enough money. This is regardless of whether you actually sell anything at the “list” price.
And, in many sectors, jacking up the price by 1.5x will kill the business.
And 1.5x is just one scenario. Many sectors work on 2x i.e. the middleman makes a 50% gross margin. I have a customer who buys for 30, sells it to his 1st tier distribution for 60, they sell it to 2nd tier distribution for 100, and the end user (who is industrial, not Joe Public!) pays 200. It works because that particular case is a captive market and the end users are really lazy, but this is not all that common.
And there is a big danger with middlemen. You don’t ever get to know the actual users so when the middleman dumps you, you are left with nothing. No contacts, nothing. With some research you can locate some of the users and go direct, perhaps…
A fairly common pattern in manufacturing is that you start by going direct to end users (good for cash flow, and product feature input) but you have built in the margin for the above heavy discounts. As time goes by, you get noticed by various resellers who start contacting you, and obviously ask what is your discount.
In my business we have almost never done middlemen in the UK. We did a bit via RS Components but they want 50% off and we didn’t have that much to chuck away. We always had agents abroad, however; for cultural reasons one makes almost no progress in Europe – especially the major countries – without an agent. Of course you then have no customer contact or feedback because – again for cultural reasons – virtually no customer from these countries will have contacted us direct. A problem in the field tends to result in the permanent loss of an end user and with no feedback on why.
LinkedIn appears to be a two-pronged thing: you can buy advertising, or you can plug away in various forums on it to get your name known. I am getting this looked at.
Peter wrote:
LinkedIn appears to be a two-pronged thing: you can buy advertising, or you can plug away in various forums on it to get your name known. I am getting this looked at.
I do not find it, LinkedIn, that easy to work with and navigate through. At first I thought I was just a bit thick, but my 19 year old who knows I am a bit thick agreed with me that it was not that straightforward. I see it currently as a work in progress.
I have always done things myself, Started from scratch with no money, and built business. I did it many times but as I got older I started preaching the word collaborative. It gets very lonely on your own. By its nature working for yourself is an isolationist position. In my view business post 2010 required minds to come together. So over the years when I came across individuals that worked on my wavelength I teamed up. They get the usual Mr 10% and a stake in the company if we do well. Some worked well, others did not. The failed ones for a variety of different reasons.
This has kind of worked and I can go around genuinely telling folks I have an International Business Development Manager. I highly experienced one at that.
Good luck with the LinkedIn and if I come across any shortcuts or good ideas on it I will let you know.
The key to linked in is slow build.
Create a post every week or so with quality content.
There isn’t much in the way of cutting to the end that I know of, and promoting your posts isn’t worth it because everyone sees “promoted” on there.
So, its a long haul. don’t look for it to be turnkey.
Its something you build, like a reputation.
The longer you’re at it, the more it snowballs, and LinkedIn gives you some kind of status or score which grows with your engagement and influence.
My experience is that I only used it informally for years and would simply use it as my long-term roladex.
Then, three years ago, I grew tired of some of the BS ignorant arrogant posts, so I started calling them out, which everyone is afraid to do online.
I also wrote an article on LinkedIn shortly after, primarily to be able to equip my peers against such insanity.
It was a late night, frustration fueled thing, and not intended for marketing.
But the opposite of my expectations happened.
A leading industry publication asked me if they could publish it in their magazine, as did several professional organizations …
I had tried to get into one of these trade magazines, but wansnt successful previously.
Thereafter, things started snowballing, and now I think my account is recommended to others to be linked to because I receive requests daily, completely unsolicited.
The lesson learned was that my peers were watching and reading and waiting for someone to say these things, and the bar of entry was really low… just write an article without any editing or review process, and if it is topical, people will promote it.
I rarely post, but engage and comment a lot, and this gets my name out there.
It is more like speaking at conferences in my opinion. You do it to build name/brand recognition, not for direct revenue.
If you have a useful website, LinkedIn just becomes a marketing funnel…
No bells or whistles on LinkedIn, just reputation and recognition, with a publishing medium that has marketing built in.
Long post, if it was too much, let me know.
All great stuff – many thanks 
Well, we tried to create an account for my company on LinkedIn and it is refusing it, with a useless error message.
Some googling suggests you have to have a personal network of 30 people before you can set up a company account.
What a totally useless piece of S this is. The absolute last thing I want is a personal a/c on LinkedIn; I am not looking for work and one just gets vast amounts of spam. I used to have an account there and deleted it after a day.
Peter wrote:
The absolute last thing I want is a personal a/c on LinkedIn;
Well I passed the project to my wife last week. As I read your post I asked her how she got on.
Pretty similar Peter I am afraid. She is as bemused as the rest of us…..glad I am not thick though 
Great to know that human stupidity has not been appreciably degraded by the computer revolution in general, and the internet in particular. We do need a decent amount of genetic diversity, otherwise a Masters would come in a corn flake packet (currently they do but only at Waitrose and only with pesto) and a PhD could be bought from the Univ of Upper Warlingham by mail order for a tenner, with Gavin Williamson being their first customer. Who designs these websites?
So (it is gramatically correct to start a sentence with “so” in this case) we have created a personal profile for myself, and have embarked on collecting the 30 connections. Maybe I need to learn PHP – that would give me 1000000 right away?
Peter, just put a link to your profile in here and you’ll have 100 connections in a day
