Sell to succeed

As editor of Canadian Metalworking I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to visit mold, tool and die shops across the country. It’s a rare opportunity; like many industries metalworking tends to be compartmentalized, like silos, with each subsector understanding its own market but rarely dealing with others in the industry.

I’m lucky, in that I get to visit shops across the spectrum. As different as they are, successful shops seem to share several common attributes. The obvious ones are cleanliness, organization, modern technology, and high employee morale.

A much less visible factor, but one which is vital, is the one which is least visible to shop floor personnel: a dedicated sales team. If you’re a mold, tool or die shop, who markets and sells your services? For many shops, including historically successful ones, it’s the owner or manager that pitches the business and asks for the order.

“I know my customers” is something I hear everywhere, and although a close working relationship with your customer base is essential, I can’t help but wonder what we as an industry are leaving on the table.

This came to mind while preparing the mold, tool and die market analysis that’s featured on page 20. Historically, automotive is the major consumer of mold tool and die products and there is a profound shift going on.

Assembly plants are moving south, not to Detroit but to the deep south of the U.S. Tennessee, Alabama and the Carolinas are replacing Michigan as the centres of US auto production, and Canada is not keeping up. Only Toyota and Ford are expanding production and heavyweight Tier Ones are lining up for government handouts to keep production in this country. Tier Ones and Tier Twos that locate within a couple of hours drive from their customers’ assembly plants have a clear advantage, as do their local tooling suppliers.

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On the surface this would seem to be bad news for the Canadian industry, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We are simply going to have to reach down south of the border and win the business by building new relationships from scratch. There are tools to help the sector deal with the problem, especially from Export Development Canada, who offer a range of services and advice.

Many, perhaps most, Canadian mold, tool and die shops are not used to exporting. While their products are often shipped out of the country, the deal making is usually based on long-standing working relationships. While this is great for vendor customer communications, it can blind us to the potential for a wider market in the US.

To crack a new market that’s 1000 or 2000 kilometres away, shops will have to adopt modern sales and marketing techniques. For most operations it doesn’t make sense for the owner/manager to go on the road, so this translates to dedicated technical sales personnel.

Can’t afford to hire a dedicated technical salesman or woman? If you intend to properly serve a Tier One and Tier Two client base that’s 12 hours by truck from your shop, you have to. It’s expensive, yes, but there are other advantages to a dedicated sales force.

Perhaps the most important is market intelligence. There are many ways to find out what’s going on in the industry, from Canadian Metalworking magazine to expensive consultants, but nothing beats direct feedback from people speaking directly to the customer base. A salesperson with “boots on the ground” can help a shop build a profile not just of the size and location of potential customers, but what kind of equipment they use and who supplies their current tooling.

Is that press shop intending to switch to larger, higher volume stampings? Their current tooling supplier may not have the capability or capacity to supply them, a natural opportunity. And a dedicated sales force also gives the distant customer a sense that there is local accountability and a familiar representative of your shop to stand behind the product.

Simply put, if you are an owner/manager, you need to be a quarterback ... if you need to make a “Hail Mary” pass, you’ll need a good receiver downfield.