The Thomas Blog

12 Tips For Growing Your CNC Machining Business

Starting a new business can be a challenging endeavor, especially for entrepreneurs entering a crowded market with large, well-established competitors already in place. As the manufacturing industry experiences shifts in how it operates, how can CNC machining businesses secure contracts and grow within the industry despite today's challenging obstacles?

Here are some tips and suggestions for small CNC machine shops to continue growing their businesses.

Get Selected In The B2B Buying Process: 26 Items To Check Off

As you know, industrial/B2B buyers and procurement managers looking to establish a long-term relationship with your business may vet you quite thoroughly. 

And today, they prefer to evaluate suppliers anonymously online, then create a shortlist of potential partners before contacting you for further vetting. 

Are you losing out to potential new customers? Here's how you can make sure your online presence doesn’t have any holes that leave you short of gaining new business.

What Risks Concern Manufacturing Industry Leaders Today?

The manufacturing industry is largely comprised of small businesses. Within these smaller organizations, financial decisions always loom incredibly large. Every dollar counts, and one misstep can lead to a loss of a key customer or another negative consequence. That's why it's important to steer clear of these common risks and challenges.

Information Technology Challenges In The Manufacturing Industry

The current business climate is driving manufacturing companies to build a more digital and data-driven workforce. As the industry adopts more technologies and influences the future of American manufacturing, what challenges are they continuing to face and how can they guide their organizations strategically?

How To Find Customers For Your CNC Machine Shop Using Digital Marketing

You may have heard it plenty of times: You should be online; people are searching for your company online; if you are not online, you miss out on opportunities.

These statements aren't wrong, but they're incomplete. Being online is one thing, but the real goal should be to have a strong online presence — this gets you results. A strong online presence can supplement your traditional growth methods and bring you one step closer to your goal of finding new customers.

If you're looking to grow your customer base, search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and BING are where you want to appear. Why? According to research 4 out of 5 buyers research products online before contacting a sales rep. Industrial buyers know how to find exactly what they want quickly — and they're using long-tail (3-4 keyword) search terms online. And 53% of industrial buyers make their decision in less than one month.

How To Grow Your Textiles Manufacturing Company (With Digital Marketing Examples)

It’s an active period of growth for some textile manufacturers. If you're looking to increase orders or you may have a five-year plan to double your business and expand your facility, here are ways textiles manufacturers can get more customers and stay ahead of the competition.

How To Meet The Needs Of B2B & Industrial Buyers In 2021

No matter your role — sales, marketing, operations, or leadership — you have a lot to accomplish.

So do the buyers of your company's products or services. 

By understanding what your buyers have on their plates, you can more easily accomplish one of the most important things on yours — generating more leads and contributing to your bottom line. Here’s what you should know to meet their needs and create more meaningful connections to win more business.

How To Improve Your Supplier-Distributor Relationship

A prospect that you’ve been chasing for months has been researching you as well, checking out your product catalog on a distributor’s website and downloading your CAD models. They’ve narrowed down their shortlist to you and a couple of your competitors, and now they’re visiting your website to gather additional details.

But when they arrive on your site, what they see doesn’t quite match what they saw on the distributor’s site. Part numbers are off, and specs aren’t aligning 100%. Plus, basic company information doesn’t match with what they read before and content looks outdated.

Reconciling the differences would take way too long, so instead they just cross you off their list. And you never even knew they were interested in the first place.

Unfortunately, this scenario plays out all too frequently and prevents the supplier and distributor from meeting their goals. In some cases, the scenario results in a dropped key customer and the existing customer base begins to diminish.

What Manufacturers Should Do After Losing A Key Customer

Customer retention can often mean the difference between your company thriving or dying. This makes the loss of major customers one of the greatest risk factors for manufacturing businesses. Your consistent goal should be to go to any lengths necessary to retain these keystone clients. However, throughout even a vastly successful company’s lifespan, this kind of paradigm-shifting customer loss can — and will — occur.