The Thomas Blog

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 Plus, basic company information doesn’t match with what they read before and content looks outdated.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 To Do If You Lose 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, over the course of even a vastly successful company’s lifespan, this kind of paradigm-shifting customer loss can — and will — occur. 

Green Manufacturing: The Business Benefits Of Sustainability

A few years ago, terms like “going green” and “eco-friendly” were all the rage for businesses. And while those words aren’t quite as buzzworthy today, they are still worth quite a lot to the people that really matter to manufacturers — B2B buyers.

More major players are driving toward a sustainability goal, like McDonald's who plans to use 100% recycled fiber-plastic packaging at every one of its locations worldwide by 2020. What this means for you is the increase of product options in demand and opportunities to tap into a new market and modernize your business.

The Last Phase Of Inbound Marketing: Keeping Your Customers Happy

Buyers often encounter different challenges every day, and each phase of the buying process has opportunities (using inbound marketing!) for suppliers like you to position yourself as the best partner. 

Inbound marketing is defined as the data-driven approach to marketing that attracts people to your brand, engages them, and converts them to lasting customers. The approach is multi-channel and accounts for where people are, and how they want to interact with you using the main driver of quality content. It allows you to bring visitors into your site through various forms of channels like blogs, email marketing, and social media.

Unfortunately, a lot of marketers don’t even consider this last element of inbound marketing after the sale is made. That phase — customer delight — is perhaps one of the most important of all.

Opportunities For Business Growth During The Summer Slowdown

Every year, thousands of manufacturers around the country shut down their plants and facilities for a few weeks in the summer. They do so for a variety of reasons — to allow for vacation time, to take care of deferred maintenance, or to retool for the second half of the year.

While these activities are certainly important, too many manufacturing companies let the summer slowdown distract them from one of the most important activities of all — generating new business.

How To Make It On Your Industrial Buyer's Shortlist

As you know, industrial/B2B buyers looking to establish a long-term relationship with your business may vet you quite thoroughly. This could include visiting your facility, checking your finances, talking to customers and more.

However, before they get to that point, today’s buyers prefer to evaluate suppliers anonymously, then create a shortlist of potential partners before contacting them for further vetting.

Of course, evaluating you anonymously as they create their shortlists means learning as much as they can about you online. This blog post will help you make sure your online presence doesn’t have any holes that leave you short of making those shortlists.

Priceless Advice: Buyers Weigh In On How You Can Win More Business

The internet is chock full of "experts" — marketing executives, consultants, sales people — with advice for boosting your industrial sales. But wouldn't it be better if you could hear from the real experts — the people who are actually buying your products — and get their advice?

4 Annoying Things Your Buyers Want You To Stop Doing

The industrial buying cycle can be a long and complicated process. As an industrial marketer, it’s your job to guide your prospective buyers at every step of their search.

Using Video Calling To Enhance Industrial Sales, Operations, & Hiring

Today, more people are working remotely than ever before. This means that collaboration, which once happened in a conference room, an office, or over lunch, must now occur over greater distances.

There are lots of tools and solutions designed to help bridge the gap and enhance communications in this new paradigm. But, by far, one of the best solutions to emerge has been video calling. That’s because people retain 95% of content they watch via video compared to only 10% of contact read by text.

However, video calling isn’t just a great tool for internal communications; it can be used to convert prospects, recruit new talent, and enhance efficiency on your shop floor.