CircuiTree - February 2009 - (Page 24)

The Strategist By Dan Beaulieu A Strategy for Hard Times Strategist: One skilled in strategy. Strategy: The art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal. From MerriamWebster Dictionary. one buyer who handles several fairly large commodities, PCBs being just one of them. There is no way this person has the skills, experience, or even the time to do a thorough job of buying PCBs. This is why you have to do it for him or her. You have to provide this person with a complete PCB solution. You have to act as this person’s company’s PCB expert. By acting as the buyer’s PCB expert, you are also acting as the company’s PCB expert. This means you have to be an expert when it comes to: 1. Technology: You should know more about the PCB technology present than your customer, so keep him or her informed of what is going on in the industry. New developments, new products, and services. inventory. Keep track of their ordering history patterns and make sure you let them know when they need to order more. I know this might sound somewhat presumptuous but once a buyer gets to know and trust you he or she will come to rely on your help with this. Once the buyer realizes how easy and helpful you are to deal with, he or she will be thankful to be working with you. This is what we call value, ladies and gentlemen; 4. Working with the technical team. Work with the engineers and the designers. Help them design their PCBs so they will be the most economically producible. Inform the engineers of the latest technological advances and developments so that they will be in tune with what is going on in our industry. As I stated earlier, in times like these, people are wearing many hats so they are not as focused or well informed as you are on your speciﬁc commodity; and 5. Always putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Find out what their pressure points are. Learn as much as you can about their industry, about their customers. Make it your business to know what their customers want and need and then help them to exceed those needs. It is pretty logical, isn’t it, that if you help your customers succeed with their customers they will value your relationship and treat it more as a partnership in the end. There you have it: If you look out for your customers, if you take care of their needs, if you make their interests your interests, if you help them service their customers—everybody wins. Your customers will come to understand just how valuable you are and how life for them would be near impossible without you. You will have become invaluable. ■ Dan Beaulieu is completely focused on helping companies achieve their sales goals. One of the PCB industry’s foremost strategic sales and marketing experts, he has helped many companies successfully grow their sales. Email: danbbeaulieu@aol.com T imes are hard for everyone right now. Most markets are down, the economy is down, unemployment is up, and the world is one dangerous place to do business. You own a board shop you are trying to keep aﬂoat, never an easy task even in the best of times, but now of course the challenges are much greater than they have ever been. So what do you do? How do you make sure that you not only stay in business—that you hold your own— but that you develop a strategy that will make you succeed in these times of trouble? This is what you do. This is the strategy for hard times. You ﬁnd a way to be invaluable to your customers. You ﬁnd a way to be such an integral part of your customers’ supply chain system that you create a solid position for yourself. This is certainly easier said than done, but it can be done, and if you follow my ﬁve tactics you will be successful. You will get your customers to the point where they feel they cannot live without you; a very good place to be in both good times and bad. These tactics all have to do with becoming your customers’ PCB expert. Providing them with everything they need when it comes to PCBs. There was a time when companies had their own board shops, when even smaller- to medium-sized companies had a team of professionals devoted exclusively to managing their PCB vendor bases. For most of your customers, those days are gone. Now many of these same companies have 24 February 2009 • circuitree.com Make sure you understand the customer’s PCB needs both today and in the future and then make it your business to exceed those needs; 2. Providing your customers with PCBs, whatever they need. It is up to you to ﬁnd them the boards they need. They have the relationship with you and they have come to trust you, I hope. This means that you have to partner with other PCB companies whose capabilities complement your own. If you do not build ﬂex boards then ﬁnd yourself a good partner who does. The same goes for an offshore volume supplier, a military supplier, an HDI supplier—whatever your company does not do, ﬁnd a partner who does. By doing this, you will be a truly complete PCB solution supplier, providing your customers with whatever they need, when they need it; 3. Taking responsibility for your customers’ http://www.circuitree.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CircuiTree - February 2009

CircuiTree - February 2009 Contents Lead Wire The Wire Tech Talk Flexible Thinking Are Better PCB Design Tools and Manufacturing Enough to Stay Competitive? The Strategist Fein-Lines The Big Deal Over Fine Pitch Assembly Asian Section View From the Middle Market Outlook Technical Product Spotlights Classified Ads Upcoming Events Ad Index

CircuiTree - February 2009

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