How A Manufacturer Can Grow In A Flat Market
As a manufacturer, you can no longer bet on a rising economic tide to lift your boat to acquire new customers and grow profitably.
But your shareholders, board members and management want profitable revenue growth.
So what can your company do?
The authors explain that in such an economic scenario, companies have two broad alternatives — cutting costs and restrategizing.
Cutting costs as a response to declining demand usually has a cascading effect of cost cutting and layoffs all the way down the supply chain. This usually goes from bad to worse. And while it can lead to lower prices, customers become hesitant to buy because they expect to gain more by waiting for prices that might fall even further.
Restrategizing involves addressing issues such as if there are certain products, customer segments or geographic areas that are no longer profitable or that represent an opportunity.
Answering questions like these allow a company to restrategize and exploit a crisis, rather than becoming a victim of it.
The book outlines eight pathways to profitable and sustainable growth, the first of which is to grow by building your market share.
To do this in a flat market, you need to steal market share from competitors.
And the key to stealing market share is to focus more on customers than competitors:
"Every company should work hard to outperform its competitors by delivering a better offer. The ability to learn and change faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.
What should ultimately have your attention is not only new technologies emerging, but what is happening to your customers. Customers keep changing. Too many marketers are obsessed with the competition— the enemy— instead of focusing on the customers.
If you could choose only between planning to defeat your competitors or trying to do an outstanding job for your customers, choose the latter…"
“...in manufacturing, effective marketing may be the difference between flat sales and accelerated growth.”
For manufacturers, the subject of marketing is often maligned and misunderstood.
From Andrea Belk Olson's book, No Disruptions: The New Future For Mid-Market Manufacturing, Chapter 8: "Why Marketing Matters"
"Marketing is a polarizing subject. Some organizations will swear by its value, while others define marketing by the tactics used: tradeshows, brochures, websites, etc. Manufacturing has limited utility for embracing marketing.
Often perceived as an unavoidable cost, marketing is often undervalued and underutilized.
Sales are the king of cash flow and yet in manufacturing, effective marketing may be the difference between flat sales and accelerated growth."
Chapter 3 — Why Traditional Sales and Marketing Is Less Effective for Manufacturers
- Executive Summary — Are you a manufacturer looking for more qualified leads?
- Chapter 1 — The World Is Flat — Worldwide Manufacturing Trends
- Chapter 2 — How A Manufacturer Can Grow in A Flat Market
- Chapter 3 — Why Traditional Sales and Marketing Is Less Effective for Manufacturers
- Chapter 4 — The New Rules of Sales and Marketing for Manufacturers
- Chapter 5 — How A Manufacturer Can Be Known, Liked, Trusted and Preferred
- Chapter 6 — Manufacturers Have a Product Problem
- Chapter 7 — Manufacturing: Selling Through A Distributor
- Chapter 8 — How Much Should A Manufacturer Invest in Marketing?
- Chapter 9 — Manufacturers: Getting Started with Modern Lead Generation
