Material Insights

A simple, 3-step plan to achieve goals—a design for coatings professionals

Free your coatings company to ramp-up in 2012 without fear of failure. Help yourself, and the people around you enjoy a happier journey in the process. You’re good at what you do because you know the traps and you can paint a fast, straight, red line past them all. Where projects are concerned you know where you stand and where you’re going—you easily visualize the finished product. The troubl...
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New rules offer a real “Material” benefit

If you’ve missed the last few posts, here’s a Cliff’s Notes version to get you caught up and in the know. Cutting-edge sales and marketing insight condensed to spoon-sized portions and pushed out in a “new rules” format. Your head will be spinning. New Rule #1 Want more productivity and happier employees at the same time? Match the personality to the task. Each position in your small bus...
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Create the strategic relationship—not the sale

Good sales people are constantly building relationships and looking for new ones—all at the same time. And since most of the work you do for a current relationship is backing up promises—and doing what you said you were going to do—there’s little time left to create new ones. That is unless you’re efficient or “strategic.” To think I used to believe the phrase “strategic sales” was an oxymoron...
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New rules offer a real “Material” benefit

If you’ve missed the last few posts, here’s a Cliff’s Notes version to get you caught up and in the know. Cutting-edge sales and marketing insight condensed to spoon-sized portions and pushed out in a “new rules” format. Your head will be spinning. New Rule #1 Want more productivity and happier employees at the same time? Match the personality to the task. Each position in your small bus...
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Buyer’s expectations are changing. Know the first rule before updating your finishings website

Websites tend to be put up and forgotten. I would bet that it’s the pattern and the norm for most supply chain players. There’s a brief moment of uncomfortable intensity to get it done and then, that’s it. It’s back to business as usual and the website is left to fend for itself. Besides, changes and updates to most websites can be very painful and are often expensive. Meanwhile, buyers you do...
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Three types of employees fill the most important seats

  You may not be hiring right now but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give some thought to how precisely you’ve deployed staff to critical areas of your company. In the legendary business book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins proclaimed, “People are not your most important asset, the RIGHT people are. Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the r...
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2 Ways to avoid defending the status quo

It’s hard to be different. Even if new business development depends upon it at times. We tend to fall into the path of least resistance while we’re not paying attention. Why? Because it’s so easy to keep doing what we’re doing—business as usual—like everybody else. Trouble is, we lose a certain connection to reality because in reality, everything’s changing. On the other hand, if you’re not ha...
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Join the gang on LinkedIn; they’ve waited, patiently

Any coatings professional would do well to consider the potential of LinkedIn to secure a spot in the marketplace of an unpredictable future. The critical word here is “potential” because LinkedIn seems to conceal plenty of it. The all-business-social-network hasn’t caught on fire yet but I think it will, and that’s my point. You need not feel left behind because you haven’t joined LinkedIn; a...
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Why customers secretly expect more

We’re all being conditioned to expect more and more—whether we realize it or not. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ordered a sandwich or your next curing oven; we want a better one than the last. What was “great” yesterday is only “good” today, and very likely mediocre tomorrow. 
The effects of heightened expectations can be problematic if you’re not aware. They spill over into the workspace and ca...
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Two reasons why “change” will force you to get connected

In my last post I talked about the ever-increasing complexity that seems to creep into our lives and our businesses. But there’s one common thread that runs thru all of it. Take note of it if you haven’t already. Most of the “change” is due to the increase in the flow of information we now have at our disposal. I am here to tell you that the flip side of the increasing volume and complexity of...
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