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3 New industry agenda items for progressive metalworkers

Here’s the on-ramp for 2015. There are 3 lanes, choose yours carefully. The HIT boys voted to bring back six of the Bastard’s more critical stories of the few past months. I’ve organized them into the 3 topics most likely to make your next general operations agenda. Six beefy short summaries follow; which themselves offer conversational takeaways. Click the link to the published story and hit th...
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Collaboration—critical, but attractive choices

Call it what you like but relationships where collaboration thrive is a one-plus-one equals-three proposition. Task by task, you can achieve shared goals that are more meaningful within your company, more valuable to your customers and more strategic within the supply chain. Companies that want to grow seek the competitive advantage gained from collaborative efforts. They see the disruptive comple...
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Wanted: small niche players. Space available

Consider your options well As a small business, are you alone, doing your thing, providing a great product in the metalworking or surface treatment industries? Do you think anyone else in the whole world shares some of the same challenges? Are they also trying to keep “clean” (let alone “green”) while using advanced chemical lubricants, cleaners and strippers? Small industrial niche businesses ...
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Use these 6 tools to tap in and listen to the social media marketplace.

Plot your objectives and strategy. You didn’t become successful in the metal business by jumping into it with some vague notion of how the business works. I’d advise you to handle the topic of Social Media (SM) the same way. It could be hazardous to jump in without some knowledge of the medium; it’s tools and the marketplace. After all we don’t want to embarrass ourselves. But I also urge you t...
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Name an irreversible trend that your business cannot ignore.

What technology offers expression, stickiness and competitive advantage? Many of my clients still ask me, why is Social Media so important? Is it really relevant for business to business? And, how did we get here so fast? These questions come from people on both sides of the fence and most have dabbled with at least some of the available Social Media (SM) tools. I had planned for this posting to c...
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Plan social media strategies like any other major initiative

More than your reputation is at stake, take it a step at a time Social media is a revolutionary means for connecting with customers, prospects, vendors, partners, even co-workers and recruits. This is important because it means you are now connected in ways never before seen. Your company is becoming more and more transparent, whether you want it or not. With blogs, chat rooms, email, text, and to...
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Business purchasers are using more social media channels

Learn how to be strategic, creative and the wiser By any reasonable measure, business-to-consumer (B2C) companies spend more time and resources on marketing than any of us in business-to-business (B2B). As a group B2C is also arguably better at it as well. So what can we learn from B2C marketers? I can tell you it is not the size of the “spend” but rather the choices you make to ultimately buil...
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How well do you attract and keep customers?

Efficiency is key to sustainability. Avoid common mistakes. If you haven’t thought about where your next customer is coming from you may be risking your business on out-dated hunches. The only assumption a small business needs to make is that its audience knows what its options are and you need to be keeping them happy like there’s no tomorrow. When battles are fought just keeping your head above ...
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Move prospects to preference—a best practice for conversion

Focus your limited sales and marketing resources on the primary objective Do you know where your next customer will come from? By understanding what stage in the buying process your audience occupies at any given time you can convert more of them to customers more efficiently. This is market segmentation 101. A primer for any industrial business offering niche products and services including meta...
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Big innovation idea creates more of less

Profits could be attainable from unimaginable volumes Thinking small in large volumes—the essence of “sachet marketing”—yet never losing brand focus, could open up entirely new markets for many of the worlds B2B (and B2C) manufacturers and service providers. If you can identify customers who are willing but perhaps cash strapped, think micro-loans and contracts, think mini-sizes, mini-volumes, thi...
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