Welcome to the seventh annual State of Inbound report. We’re glad you’re here.
Whether this is your first time reading this report, your seventh time, or you just arrived here on a whim, you’re bound to have some questions.
At that time conventional 3 ft. x 5 ft. rectangular screens were in operation. Two different models of the SWECO Vibrating Screen Separator are now in operation at the California Plant.
Using a 48” diameter SWECO Separator the company now screens barite ore weighing approximately 180 pounds per cubic foot at the rate of 10 tons per hour output at minus 10 mesh fraction. The separation is performed on a 6 mesh stainless steel wire cloth (opening of .1318 inches, 3360 microns) and a 10 mesh stainless steel cloth (opening of .0742 inches, 2000 microns). The desired product is taken at minus 10 mesh.
Barium oxide grinding material is fed through a SWECO single-deck unit at the rate of 2 tons per hour. The separation is made on a 40 mesh stainless steel cloth (opening of .0185 inches, 400 microns). The plus 40 mesh fraction is desired.
A single deck unit with dust cover is used to screen lamp black for consumption within the California Plant. A single deck SWECO Unit with 20 mesh stainless steel cloth (opening of .0340 inches, 841 microns) is used and the minus 20 mesh is the desired product used in a closed circuit with mill.
The SWECO Vibrating Screens Separator are gyratory in principle in that the material is tumbled around, across and vertically on a horizontal screen cloth. More than one cloth can be “decked” one above the other. The cloth is mounted especially on tension rings which in turn can be rotated 45 to 90 degrees at intervals. The company thus extends screen cloth life considerably.
See SWECO at the 2016 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE), http://ippexpo.com/. January 26-28, 2016, Atlanta, GA, Booth 7948.
This post was originally posted in SWECO’s LinkedIn Group, SWECO Screeners, Sifters and Separators, strictly an application forum for industrial screeners, sifters and separators. It has over fifty members from around the world. We promote membership with inexpensive LinkedIn ads directed to the over 8,000 LinkedIn members with job titles that fit our audience. Visit the group to learn more.
Article snippit from April 2016 VALVE Magazine. By Kate Kunkel, Senior Editor. Greg Johnson president of United Valve also contributed.
The U.S. food industry is forecast to grow at a steady rate of 2.9 percent compound annual growth rate through the year 2022, according to a recent report from PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. The fastest growing two segments are meat and snack foods.
The 2016 Food Packaging Trends and Advances also reported that the U.S. trails the global market-global growth is forecast at almost twice the U.S. rate. The report says overall growth of the food industry, including food packaging, is driven by emerging markets such as Argentina, Brazil, China and India. It also says that the most innovative food industry segments (snack food, meat, fruits and vegetables, and pet food) are using tools such as films that keep products fresher longer, recycled or biodegradable materials for packaging and single-service portioning.
(Lohre & Associates specializes in marketing food processing equipment, this new product release for our client Roto-Disc is appropriate for this topic so we added it to this post. Currently we are researching economic predictions for future posts on the food, chemical, primary metals and warehousing industries. They will be posted during the Powder Bulk Solids Conference in Chicago next week.)
New Process Transitions Solve Dry Processing Equipment Installation Problems
Roto-Disc, Inc., now offers a full-range of process transitions that make the task of mating equipment and piping with non-matching dimensions easier and quicker. Now the dry process industry has a selection of piping, flange and duct transitions available from stock, eliminating the time, expense and hassle of specifying, designing and fabricating transitions from scratch.
Among the many options available are round-to-square pipe transitions, square and conical reducers, flexible stub adaptors and sanitary pipe/tube extenders with clamp ferrules. Transitions are available with flanges on one or both ends as are flangeless/weld stub transitions. The entire line can easily be adapted to meet custom take-out space requirements and flanges can be drilled to suit. Custom shapes such as offset/oblique, rectangular and double-cone types can also be provided upon request.
Typical materials of construction include type 304 & 316 stainless steel, abrasion resistant steel (AR400), mild steel and Hastelloy but many other materials are also available. Various finishing options are also available including mechanical & electro polish, nickel, chrome & tungsten hardfacing, polymer coatings & glass-bead blast.
Roto-Disc, Inc., www.rotodisc.com, 513-871-2600
From Chemical Engineering Magazine, Webinar June 14, 2 p.m. EDT, $95
This webinar examines the current status of the U.S. chemical industry as well as its outlook over the next several years. We will start with examination of the economic environment, with further emphasis on housing, light vehicles and other important end-use markets. We will then focus on: 1) basic chemicals and synthetic materials; and 2) specialty chemicals.
Our premise is that fortunes of the former segment represent a supply driven gain in output, the result of the shale gas revolution and the renewed competitiveness of the U.S. industry. Changing energy dynamics are playing a role and we will analyze the effects of low oil prices are having on competitiveness, uncertainty and the wave of announced investments. Our premise is that fortunes of the latter segment represent a demand driven gain in output, the result of the manufacturing renaissance currently underway.
We will analyze the effects of the current soft patch in manufacturing and how it affects the various specialty chemical segments. Of particular interest to those in process engineering and chemical company capital programs we will assess the unprecedented wave of capital spending (and capacity expansion) by segment, by asset, and by geography.
HEAR FROM THIS EXPERT
Kevin Swift, Chief Economist, American Chemistry Council
Dr. Swift is the chief economist at the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in Arlington, VA where he is responsible for economic and other analyses dealing with markets, energy, trade, tax, and innovation, as well as monitoring business conditions, identifying emerging trends, and assessing the economic and societal contributions of the business of chemistry. Prior to joining the ACC, Dr. Swift held executive and senior level positions at several business information/database companies. He started his career at Dow Chemical USA.
Dr. Swift is a member of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), the Harvard Discussion Group of Industrial Economists, and the National Business Economics Issues Council (NBEIC). He is a member of The Wall Street Journal Forecasters’ Survey panel, NABE’s panel of forecasters, and a participant in the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s forecasters’ survey. He chairs the NABE Education Committee and for his service as a professional economist and contributions to the profession, he was elected a NABE Fellow. He was also one of the first to achieve NABE’s Certified Business Economist (CBE) designation.
Dr. Swift is a graduate of Ashland College with a BA degree and a graduate of Case Western Reserve University with an MA degree in Economics. He is also a graduate of Anglia Polytechnic University with a doctorate in business administration (DBA) degree and has completed studies at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. Dr. Swift is an adjunct professor of business economics for the MBA program at the University of Mary Washington. He is also a member of the Heritage Council of the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
VIEWERS WILL LEARN
The current status and outlook for the U.S. economy
The current status and outlook for the U.S. chemical industry and where opportunities lie within specialty chemicals and basic chemicals and synthetic materials
The current status of the wave of U.S. chemical industry capital spending
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Process engineers
Plant manager
Product managers and decision-makers
Market, planning and other analysts
About Lohre & Associates, Inc., Marketing Communications
Mission: To continually put in front of our clients the most cost effective methods of marketing communication.
Company Overview: Agency has provided clients with marketing strategy and execution since 1935. Whether it is through media and publicity, print media and advertising, trade show execution, photography, video or web site design, Lohre & Associates successfully integrates client needs and results.
Description: Full service advertising agency specializing in mechanical, chemical, food, electrical and sustainable building technologies. On May 5, 2011 Lohre & Associates’ offices was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum Certification. The office is in the top 4% in the world in their category and included in a GreenBiz post on the top ten Green Building projects in the world. The certification represents the company’s commitment to be a leader in advanced and sustainable building materials and services marketing. Learn more at http://www.gbig.org/activities/LEED-1000001850
I was very touched by this tribute of Vac-Con’s about of the loss of their dealer, Dave Berube.
Those of us that grind out as relevant content as we can, day in and day out, need to take a step back and realize that industries are made up of people. People that have families, friends and business associates. I feel that way about my clients and it’s a privilage to have their sincere interest in my family and interests.
My most recent revelation about marketing is that all those digital clicks and links are real people so treat them like real people. Sure the analytics make it all seem like a bunch of robots but you need to filter that out and pay attention to what matters.
I’m lucky to have some great employees and my wife who polishes my copy and keeps me from being silly. I might be over stepping my bounds now but thank you sincerely Vac-Con, your message shows you’re a great company and care deeply for your associates. Thanks for helping keep all of us grounded and reminding us to take pride in our communities and thank them for what they mean to you.
Here are some pointers for preparing a Food Engineering Field Report—also known as an application story, success story or an application brief for our Dry Processing Technology section.
A Dry Processing Technology Field Report describes a problem and its solution. It may involve any product used in the food processing industry; for example, feeders, screening equipment, size reduction equipment, mixing/blending, bulk bag filling & discharging, mechanical conveying, pneumatic conveying, dust control, weighing systems, storage systems, micro and macro ingredient handling systems, thermal processing equipment (ovens, dryers) packaging equipment, metal detection/magnetic separation, process control system hardware and software, and so on. If you’re not sure whether your product, application or service applies, please call and we’ll brainstorm it. See sample Dry Processing Technology Field Reports attached.
Absolute requirements for publication
A submittal must contain the following or it will not be used.
Quotes from supplier companies will not be used, and will be turned into straight text when appropriate.
product shot! Photograph must be print quality; that is high resolution jpg at 300 pixels per inch (ppi). Recommended physical size is at least 5×7 inches. Do not send Web quality. Don’t forget a suggested caption and photo credit. You may send more than one photo. Do not save screen dumps as jpg files! Use a non-destructive format (tif). Call for instructions!
(sales contact)—no web addresses or [email protected] addresses!
Please advise as to where this story may have already been published. If it has been used on a
competing publication’s website or in a printed magazine, we won’t be able to use it. If it’s been
published on a supplier’s website, we can use it as long as it’s not more than a year old. Obviously, if exclusive rights to use the story have already been given to someone else, please don’t send it to us. Please make sure of this first. Also, be sure you have cleared the story with the processor.
Please note: These stories are used on a FIFO basis (first in, first out). Publishing dates cannot be guaranteed, but complete submissions, of course, will be published before incomplete submissions.
Contact Debra Schug for more information: Debra Schug, Features Editor, Food Engineering,
[email protected], 847-405-4068.
(Great article in the recent issue of POWDER BULK ENGINEERING by Dwight Rider, SWECO Global Product Manager for round separation. Every good process equipment marketer knows that if you take the time to educate a person new to the industry, they will remember you when they are looking for solutions to their problems.)
There is more to providing a solution for your application than simply purchasing new equipment. Purchasing a piece of equipment is easy: all you need is money and someone to sell it to you. However, the cost of purchasing the wrong equipment can exceed the money you spend on the equipment itself. Before you go and tens of thousands of dollars on capital equipment, there are many factors that need to be considered.
Testimonials alway tell the best story about your process equipment marketing and the editors can’t get enough of them!
In the case of separation equipment, some types of machinery can last decades. Buying the wrong equipment can have long-term consequences in the cost of consumables, lack of production, downtime, and other factors. For example, the amount of money spent on consumables alone could exceed more than half the cost of the unit. Separation equipment is typically integrated into a large system. By choosing the wrong separation equipment, you could be inadvertently creating a bottleneck that affects the productivity of the overall system. Quite often, the low-cost equipment option may be the costliest in the long run.
Round separators are one of the more common types of separation equipment. Aside from the obvious influences of equipment quality and performance, two of the more important attributes when considering an equipment manufacturer are application experience and local support.
Every separation application is different even if you are screening the same product. Application experience cannot be overlooked when determining which manufacturer you choose. If you expect to get optimum performance from your equipment, there are factors that must be considered, such as machine diameter, screen mesh type, number of screen decks, types of self-cleaning devices, proper surface finish, spout heights and sizes, and many more.
Unit selection and sizing for a particular application can be both science and art, and experience is critical to achieving satisfactory results. The manufacturer should come to your facility, review the application in person, and provide services such as on-site testing with a small demo unit if needed. If larger scale testing is required the manufacturer should be able to provide lab testing and detailed test reports to aid in equipment selection.
For applications similar to an existing one, the manufacturer should be expected to review the process on-site to ensure optimum efficiency of the separation process. New applications should be sourced from existing reference data for similar applications that can be used as guidelines. The equipment needs to be customized to be optimized for both performance and integration into the larger system. Finally, engineering drawings, structural loading information, 3D CAD models, and detailed customized operating manuals need to be available to the customer.
Installation, start-up, commissioning, and on-going support are major factors to consider when choosing a manufacturer. If these elements are not available to the customer, complications could arise from the start. It is extremely important to have an expert readily available in case problems arise not only in the beginning stages, but also through the life of the equipment.
The manufacturer’s local support can also provide equipment training for operators and maintenance personnel. Dynamics such as motor lubrication and change-out, screen changing techniques, electrical interface, start up and shutdown procedures, emergency shutdown, and proper separator clearances and just a few items that the users will need to know. Another function provided by local support is recommending spare parts and how to care for those parts. Spare screens are critical to the process, as they will have a big impact on minimizing downtime.
There are plenty of round separator manufacturers from which to choose, and there are a lot of factors to consider when making the choice. Simply buying the equipment based upon a selling price alone may cost you more in the long term. You need to be sure to consider the factors discussed, so you are finding an application solution rather than simply buying equipment. When you need aftermarket parts, technical service, or assistance with the next application, be sure to choose equipment from a practiced manufacturer who has the knowledge, experience, and support you will need to get the job done right.
Doug Rider is the global product manager for round separation for SWECO, Florence, Kentucky, USA. He has been with SWECO for 15 years in various roles, including manufacturing engineer, product engineer, and design engineering manager.
Learn more at the SWECO Technical Library, http://www.sweco.com/technical-library.aspx
(We love educational material. It’s getting rarer and rarer for universities to offer classes on industrial processes. They are usually left to teach theory and let the greenhorn learn on the job. We’re writing a size reduction systems article for ROCK PRODUCTS. If you have any resources we can use, please send them on.)
From the Bulk Inside newsletter Dec 7, 2015
CHATHAM, KENT – A range of very popular and useful short courses designed specifically for the powder and bulk materials handling industry.
Our range of short courses is designed to equip delegates with the means to identify and overcome difficulties that may arise, saving time and increasing productivity.
Our experts’ in-depth knowledge as specialists in powders and bulk solids is complemented by their experience across all industries including, but not limited to, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, process and chemical engineering, recycling, food processing and mining.
In order to meet Industry’s changing needs, we continually update the range of courses to reflect current trends, hence the introduction of 3 new courses this year.
The courses are all held at our site in Kent, on the University of Greenwich campus.
2016 Course calendar
2 – 3 Feb: Advanced Course: Pneumatic Conveying System Design
4 Feb: Rotary Valves; Design Selection and Operational Issues
10 Feb: Electrostatics in Powder Handling
24 Feb: Powder and Dust Containment in the Process Industry
9 March: Network Security of Industrial Control Systems in the Process Industry – ** new course
15 – 17 March: Storage and Discharge of Powders and Bulk Materials; includes optional practical session
6 April: Dust Explosions – How to Demonstrate DSEAR/ATEX Compliance
13 April: Caking and Lump Formation in Powders and Bulk Solids
26 – 27 April: Advanced Course: Design of Equipment for Storing and Discharging Bulk Materials
10 – 12 May: Pneumatic Conveying of Bulk Materials; includes optional practical session
24 May: Undesired De-blending and Separation in Processes and Equipment
7 – 8 June: Introduction to the Processing of Dry Solid Materials – **new course
28 – 29 June: Measurement of the Properties and Bulk Behaviour of Particulate Materials
5 July: Handling and Storage of Waste and Recycled Bulk Materials – **new course
11 – 13 Oct: Overview of Particulate Handling Technology; includes optional practical session
22 – 24 Nov: Pneumatic Conveying of Bulk Materials; includes optional practical session
13 – 14 Dec: Biomass Handling, Feeding and Storage
For full course details, course fees and terms and conditions, please visit www.bulksolids.com Discounts are available for group bookings and repeat attendances.
Enquiries and Bookings
© The Wolfson Centre for Bulk Solids Handling Technology
This article is published by The Wolfson Centre for Bulk Solids Handling Technology
“Providing Cost-Effective Solutions to Industrial Problems”
The Wolfson Centre for Bulk Solids Handling Technology is part of the School of Engineering at The University of Greenwich at Medway, Kent, UK and has specialised in solving materials handling problems since 1973.
With responsibilities expanding, resources declining, and margins narrowing, companies today must scrutinize every dollar spent. Bad decisions are often based on bad data. An informed decision, on the other hand, can be defended in the light of the facts. In this article, we examine three misconceptions – misconceptions which too often lead to poor decisions about training.
In today’s companies where people change positions frequently, training is seen as a risky investment. The correct perspective is seeing the risk involved in NOT training your people. Do you really want your people making costly mistakes by the trial-and-error method of on-the-job training? Lack of training does not just affect the untrained person. Those that have been trained and are doing the job correctly often get pulled aside to explain procedures to the untrained. The bottom line is that people are going to be trained one way or another. What is the most efficient way to do this?
Tools need to be sharpened. This means they can’t be “productive” 100% of the time. “Productivity” needs to be seen as a totally different thing from being “busy.” Once a tool is sharpened, it is far more productive. A dull tool can be “busy” 100 % of the time accomplishing nothing of value. The correct perspective then is that you can’t afford the loss of productivity caused by a lack of training.
Training is not a one-way dump of information. Training means that a change has taken place in a cognitive domain, an affective domain, or a psychomotor domain. For automation companies, these three domains are intricately linked. For example, it is not enough to just sit through a safety presentation: you need to know the safety regulations (cognitive), you need to be passionate about why these are important (affective), and you need the skill necessary to implement these regulations by specifying, configuring, and integrating systems (psychomotor).
The best way to train in the psychomotor domain is through hands-on training. Students learn skills best by practicing those skills. For many companies who offer training, training is just a presentation of ideas without the necessary opportunity for participants to try anything for themselves. At Balluff, we have made a substantial investment in equipment, an investment in writing courseware properly, and an investment in training those who conduct the training with platform skills, adult learning skills, and teaching skills. These investments make world-class, performance-based training available to our customers.
To see all that Balluff has to offer in Automation Training, click on our training web page link: http://www.balluff.com/balluff/MUS/en/service/standard-training.jsp
Process Equipment Marketing is more like high level consulting rather than selling a simple industrial product like a fork lift or truck. The cost is usually higher and an ongoing partnership between the customer and the manufacturer needs to be part of the relationship.
One of the challenges I often hear from companies is this: “We know what new business activities we should be doing. We just don’t do them consistently.” Many times a company that knows it’s ideal customer doesn’t have the resources to make the cold calls needed to get through to the manufacturing engineer. This is where the internet can go to work. The internet can be your 24/7 technical sales person.
And that makes a lot of sense. New business involves lots of unglamorous and, frankly, unenjoyable activities. Stuff like: sales meetings, staying in touch with prospects, and applying just the right “nudge” to prospects who are making a buying decision.
In addition to being not a lot of fun, many new business programs are pretty disorganized: leads falling through the cracks, missed hand offs between sales team members and details from prior conversations lost or incomplete. But even if you did have it, trying to touch base exactly when needed (when the chief engineer goes back to researching esoteric keyword phrases to find a solution to a value added problem).
So if new business is unenjoyable and disorganized, is it any surprise that companies aren’t executing their plans consistently?
This post lays out a few ways that companies can build a process for new sales that’s organized and consistent. We can promise that this will make new business your favorite thing to do, it will help you execute and get better results. And that’s pretty fun.
1. Create a Plan
First things first: you need an overarching plan for new business. Before you invest in tactics, content, technology or anything else, create a plan. New business strategy and planning is a blog post all its own and there are lots of great resources out there to help you on this front, so I’m not going to dig into the details on this topic. Typically a plan is, “We need customers we can partner with, ones we can add value to the equation. We don’t want to compete on price.”
When you work with your customers, you help them build a manufacturing strategy and a plan before you start going into system plan and equipment. Your marketing plan is very similar.
In the internet world you need to do new business activities each week, several times per week. The purpose of this is to consciously choose your highest priority leads, opportunities and activities for the week and execute those.
2. Get a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system (and Use It)
Leads: In an average month you probably come across a handful of new potential prospects. For instance, you come across an interesting company when reading an article, or a colleague at a networking event mentions a thought leader who you should get in touch with, or you discover a promising organization while doing a Google search. You need a place to park these leads while you research or reach out to them. Your CRM process should have a central place where you can store new leads while you’re in process of qualifying them.
Contacts: Once you’ve qualified a lead as a good prospect or partner, you need an organized way to keep in touch with them. That may involve “one-to-many” communication like newsletters or nurture campaigns, or “one-to-one” communication like personalized emails or phone calls. For each contact that you’ve qualified it’s important to have them categorized (or “segmented”) based on criteria like their industry, and their quality/potential. You probably have hundreds or thousands of contacts in your database: to create a personalized outreach plan for each is impossible. So we identify a few segments and then create an outreach plan for each. This allows for efficiency and organization.
Opportunities: Opportunities are the active deals that you’re working on. An Opportunity involves a specific piece of work: a project or a concept, and generally goes through a standard set of steps (for instance: initial meeting, proposal, negotiation, and close). A CRM can give you an overview of all the potential business on the table to ensure you’re proactively moving all of them towards wins, and to find trends in process after the fact.
Clients: Do you have a plan for keeping in touch with existing and former customers, and cultivating new business opportunities? Remember, new business doesn’t just mean new customers. A good start for your wear or replacement parts business list but those influencers in the company might not be the new process systems engineer.
Activities: Your CRM should provide you a dashboard of all your current activities. All your new business TODO’s in a single place.
Before you worry about automation, advanced metrics or new technology, get the fundamentals right: a simple system for managing your leads, contacts, opportunities, clients and new business activities.
3. Translate Your Goals Into Simple Metrics
What’s your primary goal for the year?
When you create your new business plan, you’ll of course spend time defining or refining your goals. Another smart technique is to define some simple business metrics to make sure your new business activities are on track to reach those goals.
For example, let’s say your goal is to grow revenue by 5% this year and start working with new OEMs.
The next step would be to answer these questions: How many new customers would you need to increase revenue by 5%? And how many well-qualified prospects do you need to land a new customer?
Let’s say the answer to those two questions are 2 and 10, respectively. Assuming you don’t lose any existing customers, you’ll need about 20 new well-qualified leads to reach your goal. Obviously this isn’t an exact science, but it’s extremely valuable to give you a general benchmark for the number of new prospects (or leads, or opportunities, or whatever) that your new business activities need to be generating.
If your analysis says you need 20 qualified leads to hit your goal, but you’re currently only generating 1 or 2 a year, you’ll need to adjust your new business efforts to achieve your objectives.
4. There’s marketing and there’s customer relationships
There are a few truths about new business: relationships are king, timing is everything, consistency is important, deals don’t close themselves/selling is required. Another key point about new business is this: You can’t keep in touch with everyone.
Sure, you can add as many resources as you like to media, trade shows and internet marketing, but when it comes to the One-to-One high-touch, personalized communications that are critical for new business, there’s a limited number of prospects you can keep in touch with.
Every company should have their “Top-20″ (or Top-12, 15, 18, whatever) list of ideal prospects that they proactively keep in touch with on a monthly (or more frequent) basis. We want to stress the importance of breaking down your overarching priorities into weekly priorities. If your goal is to keep in touch with everyone your Top-20 list once a month, that’s about 5 personalized contacts per week (or one per day). When you build that into your weekly or daily game plan that’s how you develop consistency.
5. Let the odds work in your favor
This decade is about marketing automation.
The purpose of marketing automation is to take work off the plate of the leadership so they can do the new business work that only they can do: building relationships and closing business. It’s a big topic that deserves more space than we can provide here, but there are a few questions you could ask to start thinking about the sales enablement process that you need:
What Is the Work That only I Can Do?: What are the new business activities that only I – the owner – can do effectively? What other new business activities am I doing that marketing automation could do (e.g. assigning tasks, integrating systems, recording notes/ entering data, searching through Sent mail, sending boilerplate emails, etc.)?
What Can I Delegate?: Who else in the company (or outside of the company) could take over the non-required tasks listed above? Is there someone in the company who can be responsible for marketing automation (i.e. a single person who is responsible for making sure the systems work, the data is up to date, the activities are getting done, the process is being followed)? This doesn’t need to be someone’s full time job, and it doesn’t need to be a senior person in the company. For instance, there could a junior sales person who has an interest and aptitude for process/systems work who would be great for the role of managing the CRM and sales enablement.
What Are The Handoffs Between Me and My Team?: Once you know the roles and responsibilities, it’s important to define the process for how people will execute their tasks and communicate. How will lead/prospect/opportunity ownership be assigned among the team? How will tasks be passed between team members? What are the criteria for qualifying a lead? What happens when the lead is qualified? What are the stages of your sales process and how are opportunities moved from one stage to the next? An effective new business process doesn’t just get the company more new business, it also takes work off the company executive’s plate.
New business efforts often fall short because of lack of consistency. It’s the classic story: Company A diligently keeps in touch with a Prospect for a few months, Company A loses track of Prospect for 6 months, Company A gets back in touch with Prospect only to find that Prospect just hired Company B. That’s no fun.
The companies that are able execute their new business program consistently over time have built processes to ensure that activities are planned out, prioritized, organized, delegated and measured. The process doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be clear and followed by everyone at the company. 2016 is just around the corner. Make it the year that you achieve the new business results you know you can.
Inspired by a post in RSW/US, Agency Client Relationship Experts, Agency New Business Insights guest post by Brian Shea, founder of Shea Consulting, Advertising agency new business development is very similar to expensive process equipment purchases.
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