The Manufacturing Executive

What comes to mind when you think of a great business leader?  Someone with all the answers? Someone who grinds away working long hours? Someone with such deep experience and expertise that you don't need to question his or her guidance? Or is a great leader someone who leads by empowering the people around them? On this episode of the podcast, I invited Kevin Snook, CEO of both Saxagon and LUCIDi...

From Industry 4.0 to 3D printing to wearable technology, there are so many advancements happening in manufacturing. But it's easy to get sidetracked by these shiny objects. We need to focus on the problem or goal at hand first. And then APPLY the right-fit technology accordingly. On this episode of the podcast, I invited Jonathan Hensley, co-founder and CEO of Emerge Interactive, a digital product...

After I go, what happens to my company?  Every successful business owner eventually faces that question. In some cases, the succession plan seems obvious. In others, it's not at all clear.  On this episode of the podcast, I invited Nick Jackson, Principal of the Mendota Group, which acquires small to medium-sized manufacturing, distribution and service businesses. Nick and I talked about: The diff...

Many manufacturers rely on events to generate pipeline. What do you do when events shut down? On this episode of the podcast, I share three tangible ideas for reallocating your marketing budget to keep a steady flow of leads coming while trade shows can't help you do it. Make the shift from brochure marketing that's all about you to genuinely helpful content marketing that's about your prospect. M...

We hear grumblings about automation taking away job opportunities. But inside the manufacturing sector, companies are struggling to find high quality, consistent human laborers. The real challenge facing the industry is this: Baby Boomers are exiting the workforce, and there aren't enough people in the skilled trades to replace them. Gary Konarska, Executive Director & CEO at American Welding Soci...

What happens when your competitors are talking about themselves but you are producing resourceful content? You win!  So how can you write helpful technical content for manufacturers? First, it needs to come from the brains of subject matter experts. Second, you need to extract that knowledge from their brains and use their insights to fuel your marketing strategy.  Toby Wall, thinker and senior wr...

It's 2010. Apple has just released a new product called the iPad. The Lakers just won their fifth championship under Phil Jackson. And the BP oil spill was all over the news. In the marketing world, a trending movement started to take hold. It was called inbound marketing. Today, inbound marketing has exploded, and B2B businesses are taking the next logical step to inbound selling. Brian Signorell...

You can market your products just about any way you want to. You can pour money into trade shows, pay-per-click campaigns, or print ads. Personally, I'm a big advocate of inbound marketing, but inbound means playing a very long game. Because of that, I advocate supplementing inbound with identifying the right people from the right companies for a special sales-plus-marketing solution. I'm talking...

Back in May, I wrote an article entitled Summer Reading 12 lessons from 12 books for 12 weeks. The author of one of those 12 books, Ian Altman, is my guest on this episode of The Manufacturing Executive! A bestselling author and B2B growth expert, Ian started, sold, and grew his prior companies from zero to over $1 billion in value. He has since spent years researching how executives make decision...

A few years ago, we at Gorilla 76 took a close look at the common components among our most successful manufacturing clients. Then, we boiled these down to seven specific elements. Once we put them together, we built a model we call the seven core elements of an industrial marketing strategy.  On this episode of The Manufacturing Executive, we discuss these seven key elements of manufacturing mark...

Automation cannot replace human labor. Rather, the key is to augment the workforce by equipping humans with the technology they need to be more effective, more efficient, and safer. Tracy Hansen, president of North America and global CMO for ProGlove, a German maker of wearable digital interfaces and operations analytics for industry, joined this episode of The Manufacturing Executive Show. She ta...

Something's not going well, and it's your job to fix it. Where do you start?  You can't rely on your charm and good looks to make a change happen. Instead, you have to work through proven processes that alleviate distress at companies.  On this episode of The Manufacturing Executive Show, Rob Tracy, consultant and author of How to Fix a Factory, talked about specific processes that can solve probl...

By 2022 online videos will make up more than 82% of consumer internet traffic. That's 15 times more than in 2017, according to a recent study by Cisco.   Video is how your buyers want to consume information, so it's exactly how you need to deliver it to them.  On this episode of The Manufacturing Executive Show, Danny Gonzales, CEO of both Industrial Sage and Optimum Productions, talked about driv...

I did something a little different in this episode. As opposed to bringing in an outside guest and interviewing them, I did a solocast. It's just you and me talking about things I've learned while serving the industrial sector for the last eight-plus years as a sales and marketing consultant. Today, I discuss how to stop giving away engineering and consulting services for free. Here are some of my...

Are you really doing content marketing if you don't create white papers, write blog posts, and deliver long speeches about the benefits of your product? Can a CAD model help educate your prospective buyers just as effectively as a nice, fat e-book can? On this episode of The Manufacturing Executive Show, Adam Beck, Director of Marketing at CADENAS PARTsolutions, talked about educating your audienc...

When a lot of industrial companies start out, they're lean. Nimble. Close to their customers. But as business scales and becomes more complex, they lose the opportunity to be in constant contact with the market. Often, when you go into an industrial company as a new marketing hire, you have to rebuild strategic marketing as a core competency. Know what your customers care about, how the industry i...

Try describing a mechanical thing with a blog post. It's not easy. It's not the right format. But try taking a 3-D model, making it photorealistic, and then doing animations of how it works. Now, you're on to something. So when you think about content marketing, do you think blogs, social media, and podcasts? Or do you think, "What's going to help my audience?" On this episode of The Manufacturing...

I like working with people who get dirty building stuff. That's why I'm committed to serving the industrial sector by producing resourceful, helpful, and objective content. In the past two years, I've written 50,000 words of content, or about a whole business book, to help manufacturers figure out how to grow their businesses. (That was just my writing; my team of 18 people in St. Louis produced a...