The Thomas Blog

6 Steps To Transforming Your Sales Organization

It’s no secret that the sales landscape has changed in recent years. The general B2C space adapted fairly quickly to new technologies and tools, but for B2B businesses, and particularly industrial companies, the adoption has been slow moving. Keeping our reliance on the old rolodex and trade show lists in mind, it’s time to re-evaluate how we can keep up with the broader trends and modern tactics. 

We’ve had tremendous success using inbound selling principles — essentially, this is the process of aligning your sales process with your customer’s buyer journey. By asking the right questions and showing how you can solve a problem, you’re that much closer to onboarding your next client. 

5 Scary Marketing Stats

This Halloween, more than $2 billion worth of candy will be given out across the United States.

What can be more frightening than the thought of millions of kids hopped up on $2 billion worth of sugar? These soberingly scary stats about marketing.

The ABC's Of Making The 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.

How To Pitch Inbound Marketing To A CFO

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably implemented pieces of inbound marketing, but have realized that pieces here and there aren’t enough anymore. You need to shift resources around (or get more of them) to make the changes needed to increase lead generation, reduce costs, and grow new markets. (But between you and your vision for more effective marketing is your C-suite — especially your CFO, and in many cases, your CEO...)

Steel Scandal Will Shake Up The Supply Chain

Some of the biggest names in manufacturing — Boeing, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, and many others — have seen their supply chains thrown into turmoil after a major Japanese steel supplier admitted fabricating quality control data.

5 Ways To Capture Marketing ROI

You probably have several different goals in mind for your marketing plan: increasing traffic, getting more leads, building your brand. But at the end of the day, what matters most to you? The answer has to be your Return on Investment (ROI). All of your marketing efforts should be based on clear, goal-oriented metrics, and how they relate to your bottom line.

With so many marketing tools at your disposal today — and a shift in buyer responsiveness from outbound to inbound marketing — it’s not always easy to lay out a plan to capture the ROI of a given campaign or program.

These five tips will help you focus your strategy on a metrics-driven marketing program – one that can deliver tangible, measureable results based on sales goals and objectives. Knowing how to measure and capture ROI helps you gauge your program’s success – and more importantly, gives you an organized, ready-to-present package for your CEO and executive team.

Lessons Learned At INBOUND 2017

I had the pleasure of attending the HubSpot INBOUND 2017 conference, which was held at theBoston Convention & Exhibition Center from September 25-28.

This was my first time back at INBOUND since 2012 and wow, how it has grown!

Boost Your Industrial Marketing Efforts With Evaluation Driven Retargeting

Do your new customers choose you on impulse? Of course they don’t. By the time you hear from a prospect, they’ve typically gone through a significant supplier discovery and evaluation process. We understand, and that’s why we created Evaluation Driven Retargeting.

In an industry in which supplier evaluation and selection can take weeks or longer, this can be the competitive advantage you’ve been looking for.

6 Mistakes That Doom Job Shops

Thomas has relationships with thousands of successful job shop owners from coast to coast, many going back to our days as the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers — the “big green books.”

This blog post contains some of the anecdotal insights on job shop success and failure we’ve heard over the years.