© Small Business Marketing Solutions ~ White Paper Number 0003 ~ Dave Duncan ~ 2008

Strengthening your position...

Manufacturing is getting more and more costly for companies. They are constantly re-evaluating buy or build decisions. Your marketing effort should be directed to both current customers and prospects. You need to look closely at your customer's products and see what you might be able to add to your side of the wall by taking on higher level assembly or even full turnkey building. The less number of parts a customer has to inventory or control, the less their cost is for the sub assembly. Buying a single sub-assembly versus numerous parts and managing the assembly is an option for the manufacturer. You need to offer that service before someone else offers it. The more complex the assembly, the more a buyer does not want to move the assembly to another contractor, so you also gain a higher level of security in keeping the business against competition.

 

When you begin to offer to do more complex sub-assemblies or turnkey, you also open the door to asking for that type business from new prospects. The market today looks clearly at outsourcing more. Most manufacturer's will even work out a program to train potential vendors to do work that they have been doing internally. You also for the most part move to negotiated pricing rather than the low bid process.

 

Being Familiar with your Customers Products
Most of the time, you are very familiar with your customer's products, if you are not, you should become familiar. You can see where you can offer other value-added services that will bring you to a closer relationship to your customer and in most cases enhance your profitability at the higher assembly level.

 

Go for the whole thing, NOW
You need to look at what you would have to do to increase your value added services. What skills, equipment and logistics do you have in place and what would you need for the next step. When you have decided what the next level to achieve, then market it.

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