IndustrialSage

Hey, so thank you for joining me today on IndustrialSage on our Executive Series. Today, I have Chris Beaudin, who is the Director of Marketing for ATLATL Software calling us from South Carolina, Charleston, Charleston area. How are you?

Good, how’s everyone over there?

Doing really well. Thank you so much for joining me today. So, today has been a great day. We’ve talked to a lot of companies. I’m excited to talk about you guys. You guys have actually a pretty cool product. For those who aren’t familiar with you, tell me a little bit about who you guys are and what you do.

Yeah sure. So at ATLATL what we try and do is help our customers bring their products to life on screen. You know, we no longer can fight through the retail battle of going to a store, shopping showrooms. We want to spend time where it’s convenient to us, which is on our devices or on our laptops. And, as we’re looking for products, we need to experience them digitally, and so what we help companies do is how do they present that product visually? Where you can visualize it in 3D. You can actually configure the options and really take that all the way to a purchase, or to a salesperson that can help you. So, we are the conduit for that. We are a visualization platform, and we help companies all the way from kind of consumer goods to more of your traditional manufacturers do that.

Excellent. So, very cool site. I definitely can see a lot of applications from that, especially now, as you mentioned, some of the digital assets. The way that we buy has completely changed. Whether it’s B2C or B2B, you’re starting to see those lines kind of converge or that expectation to buy a B2B product is the same, or as it should be, for B2C. But, we’ll get more on this later. So, before we completely go down there, I just want to get a sense of you, Chris, I want to get a sense of your journey from your career path. What does that look like for you?

Yeah, I like to say I had the perfect recipe for a marketer. I had a father who is very business-minded, a mom who is very creative, and the output of that is someone who looks forward strategically and loves marketing. And I use that after attending James Madison University, went to… did some consumer packaged goods, some ad sales, and for the last ten years, before I joined ATLATL, actually worked for a leading provider to the HomeGoods space. We were a manufacturer, so I experienced it first hand, working inside manufacturing: the challenges, but also the opportunities for those that create great experiences and sell it to the market. Even though we were B2B, I always felt like B2B2C was really who we were. And so that’s how we moved to market, and was all about how do we provide them with a brand they can be confident around and products they feel confident buying. And, so that’s kind of been my path. And that brought me to ATLATL, which is, okay now, cool, so I get to sit on the other side of the table and do that for a lot of companies and not just my own.

Excellent. So, when you’re working for the manufacturer that you’re doing HomeGoods manufacturing, what was your role there? Were you doing marketing, or was it other things?

A lot of roles. I started in inside sales, so literally talking with a number of Home Depot stores, and working with their in-store personnel seeing how we can help provide a better experience at selling our products. After some sales management, then really got back into where I was always aimed, which was marketing. And so with brand management, and eventually strategic marketing, which is really where I found my sweet spot and where I enjoyed my time there because it was really focused on all those things that I touched on. How do we create great experiences, what are the technologies to do that, how do we think innovatively about process? How do we put all of these things together that end up bettering, not only our position, but really providing the frictionless path to a purchase for a customer.

Absolutely. There’s been a lot of change, obviously, over the last several years on that as you’ve kind of progressed in your career path what are some of those milestone moments that you’ve had where obviously going from that manufacturer now, Director of Marketing for ATLATL, I will get it right, I promise you. Which, well, I want to find out the reasoning of the name behind, we’ll get into that here in a little bit. What were some of those milestone moments?

Yeah. You know, I think there’s probably three that I always, as I talk to people and try to mentor those coming up. There’s three things that I always carry with me. One is, I joined ATLATL coming off of one of the low points in the recession, too. So, what I take away from that is, even though I was successful at my previous role before American Woodmark, the downturn hit everyone. And so, how do you learn from that, how do you grow out of it? And so, understanding how you emerge from the troughs of life, I guess. Understanding what it takes to get out of that, what people respond to, but also how do you continue to find ways to progress. And so that was a key milestone for me, bouncing back from, I was a young man who was just married and owned a home, and all of a sudden I was part of a downsize. And then joining a company in the HomeGoods space in the middle of a downturn, right. But, what I was able to watch happen is our stock price in American Woodmark go up from $14 a share to $140 at one point. And, witnessing that growth, there’s two things. One, I wish I had more stock in those early days. Two, was also just, it really comes back to we were focused on the customer. Very early on, during the downturn we said what do we need to protect to emerge out of this better than everyone else. And, that wire, that mindset of being customer-focused. Certainly, we care a lot about it today. Ten years ago, you didn’t. And, so I think that is one major milestone is having that come into play and then, really the other was towards the end of my tenure with Woodmark, which was how do you find an innovative way to do something no one else is doing. And the project that I was able to kind of create and then lead was how do you sell direct to consumers through technology? How do you find new ways to go to market? How do you find things that no one else is doing and bring those to life? And, so that mindset of finding new ways certainly was something that I like to hang my hat on and challenge others to do as well.

Finding new ways, I’m going to write that down. I really like that. I think that’s, I love that. I love that mantra. All right, so let’s jump forward a little bit now. So, I’m curious, I’ve just got to ask. The name, what’s behind the name?

So, I didn’t pick it, but I do like what it stands for. So, an atlatl is actually a real tool. So our ancestors used it to hunt. So, an atlatl is essentially, think of the modern equivalent is the thing that launches a tennis ball for dogs. So, basically, it was a tool that would launch a spear when our ancestors were hunting. The story behind it though is, it was an innovation that created leverage for greater speed and accuracy. So, as we came to market, really that was the intuition behind it is we are a tool that uses visualization as leverage to create greater speed and accuracy in the buying experience. And, there’s a lot of ways that could talk about how we do that, but that’s kind of what the name stands for.

That’s awesome. That’s a great story, and now I understand the name, and it totally makes sense. That’s a great move. So, just getting an understanding of the business a little bit more, like, how long have you guys been around for? You guys been around for decades? What’s the history there?

ATLATL’s been around since about 2013, actually born out of the manufacturer. And, I think I mentioned earlier, really spent some time in the CPQ side. The CPQ is a technology for manufacturers, it’s about configuring pricing and quoting. We added a V to the front of that for Visualization, for visually configuring pricing and quoting. But I think as we’ve evolved, what we’ve seen in the market is really the need is who can provide that visual front-end. And so as a company, that’s what we’re really focused on. What we really provide is visual solutions. And so that visualization doesn’t just live inside the CPQ anymore, it stands alone. And so we provide visualization as a standalone visualizer, a visual configurator that you can put on a website, one that can be tied into a commerce platform, or one that can still be put into a CPQ platform, to an ERP, maybe into just a CRM. There’s a lot of opportunities where we can integrate, share the data, and create more of a holistic kind of total commerce experience.

That sounds super cool. So, obviously you’ve been in the space for a while. What are some of the big challenges that the industry is facing from your perspective?

Yeah. You know, we talk about these a lot, right? Because for us, it’s all about the speed of our sales process. It’s those roadblocks. And I lived this internally in my last role being inside the manufacturer. I think the biggest thing is, I think there’s two things kind of happening. One is some companies moved early, and they had this fatigue of software. What software didn’t work, and what legacy that has in future software purchases. And overcoming that, showing why we can be a great partner for them. But, I think much more of the challenge of many more companies is that they haven’t done this before. And so this new to them, and there’s that hesitation around innovation. Are we ready? Is this something we should be doing? We know we can only do this so much, where do we put our chips? And, at the end of the day, we always argue look, whether you’re fearful of the next recession, or downturn, or you think things are going great why should we spend this kind of money, the answer to us is if you can gain efficiency and improve your customer experience in either scenario, you’re going to win. And that’s what we help you do is a more efficient way to sell, but a better customer experience.

So, kind of circling back when you were talking about how you thought that in your previous role that when you guys were able to take that share-pricing, you said was like $14 a share and go up to hundred, it was really focusing on that customer, and at that point that was just not really a big thing. Yes, you’re hearing about that a ton, and I keep hearing about, not just customer experience, or customer-focused rather, but being customer-obsessed, you know. Hearing that a lot. How are you guys, I mean, obviously it seems like the big focus around the product behind there, talk to me a little more about that.

I think, to be truly customer-focused and customer-obsessed it is holistic. I think where we come into it is you don’t have a customer if you don’t sell effectively. And to sell effectively, really you need to stop selling. It’s a bold statement I’ve tried to make for this year which is if you can stop selling, but empower your customers to buy, you will win. And I think that’s a key that people, they have to kind of mentally wrap their brain a little bit ’cause it’s so different. But, really, it’s kind of common sense. People want to buy. If you give them the tools, and are there when they need you, You’re going to win. And so I think that’s what it’s about. If we can help them do that, everyone’s in a better position. When it comes to experience as a whole, I’ve been writing a lot about visual commerce and the experience economy, and how all these things tie together. At the end of the day, to me, I mentioned earlier, there’s always a better way, right?

Yeah.

I think, getting a bit macro for a minute, but once the web came about and kind of this democratization of information, then you added social media, and now, all of a sudden, we have this network at scale to balance things off of. It changed the paradigm where the real kind of social currency is experience. It’s not just about the product I have, it’s about oh I bought it in this really cool way. Or I did this really cool thing with it. It’s about the experience, about the way we use things, the journey we take. And so, when it comes to visualization, the way we play with that is this is part of it. People can buy a foam mattress anywhere. They want to tell you how they bought it from a Casper. Because it’s different, it’s new, it’s something many other people haven’t done yet. So that’s that paradigm shift that we all have to kind of, okay well I’m B2B, yeah it still relates ’cause we’re all consumers, and people want to buy this way now.

That’s awesome. So, all right. I really like the phrase you said, and I hope I wrote it down right ’cause I’m going to steal it, I’m just letting you know. You said, “In order to sell better, stop selling.” Was that the, you probably said it a little better.

Absolutely, yeah. It’s all about buying. How do you empower customers to buy? If you can stop selling to them, they’re going to appreciate it. They’re not going away. You’re not going to lose them, but give them an opportunity to buy in a way that they want to buy and they’ll surprise you.

Now, that’s so true. I mean, yeah. And that’s a hard shift, because, I mean, for years that was the, “We’re the better one,” “Here’s the feature,” “Come on, man, I’m just going to show you.” No! And you mention we’re inundated with the information age, we’re absolutely inundated with it. I think it’s super interesting there were stats talking about the average consumer is interrupted with two thousand interruptions a day or just disruptive marketing, what have you. “Oh we’re going to flip it around on its head.” Now, it’s like, when they’re ready they’re going to come looking for it. But, they don’t want you hounding, you know?

And what’s interesting, you actually will sell more by not selling because what happens is when people are sold to they feel like they’re being sold to so they don’t buy as much. They buy something that they feel like okay I didn’t get sold on that. Instead, when people are buying, and they choose what they want they end up buying more. They choose options that maybe they wouldn’t have been sold because maybe they weren’t even presented it ’cause they were too afraid, the salesperson was, that they would lose a sale. We used to talk about this a lot when I spent time in the HomeGoods space ’cause a lot of times people, when they’re doing a kitchen remodel for example, will always have remorse that they should have spent more during that project. And I should have added that, should have added that. Because they were so worried about the budget they were being sold, rather than the experience they were going to have of this remodel at the end.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Wow, very insightful. I love that. We’ll make a little thing out of that in order to sell better, stop selling. And then I love the whole, obviously, the social experience piece. That’s super valuable. I can see a lot of different applications there as a way to sort of unpack that experience piece and put it in digital forms, and whatnot.

Yeah.

That’s super, very cool. So, the last question I was going to ask you I think you kind of already answered it. And that was how are you guys positioning yourself to stay ahead of the pack. And it sounds like that’s really the whole mantra and the whole vision. That’s the vision from the beginning, that innovative piece saying hey, let’s do it differently.

Yeah, and I’d argue, look, everyone’s going to say they have a greater product, right? And I even heard this from a customer today on the phone. He said, “Look, I totally get it. If I don’t have a really well thought-out, well designed, sophisticated, buying experience that screams quality they’re going to judge my product in the same way, right?” So if your buying experience isn’t at least as great as your product quality, you’re going to lose. You have to put a lot of effort today into how you present your product, how you sell your product. But really, how are you creating a path to purchase? How are you creating a path to letting that person buy it? And that reflects on the quality of your product. The entire experience is reflective in there. So, that’s what we see coming up is how do we be a part of that, whether you’re trying to create a differentiation, or whether you’re a market leader. But you have to maintain because people are going to be coming. Upstarts, digital natives are coming in every industry. You need to be playing in that game or you’re going to be losing out to a streaming service when you used to sell DVDs.

Yeah, exactly, we’ve heard of those companies before.

Right.

You know, it’s interesting. It’s kind of funny. I liken it to traditional retail experience. Let’s say you go to a Wal-Mart, or pick whatever, your big-box retailer. You pull up, and there’s potholes in the pavement, and the lights are like, flickering, and the T on the Wal-Mart is like, falling off, you know, paint’s chipping. Just that experience, when you look at it you’re just kind of like, “Ehhh…” That’s exactly what you’re talking about there. One-hundred percent.

Yeah, experience is holistic. And obviously, we play in a significant part of that, but really, I think companies need to address okay, what does my start-to-finish experience look like for a customer, and how do I improve every element.

Yeah, that’s it. Simple.

Yeah, it really–

That’s awesome. So, I think that kind of wraps up our interview. There’s some, for me, a lot of great takeaways, and so for companies that would want to learn more about you guys, obviously, I’m sure you have a website, I’m guessing.

Of course.

Yeah, of course. What’s the domain? Where could people find you?

Yeah, come visit us at ATLATLsoftware.com, and we can chat directly with you there. I’ll probably be online. You can ask me questions, if you like.

Excellent. All about that customer experience. When people are ready, they want to ask questions, they can start chatting away, huh?

Perfect, yup.

Excellent, well, Chris, I really thank you for the time. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve really enjoyed our discussion. Again, a lot of fascinating takeaways. But, we’ll make sure we’re going to push this out, and everyone’s going to be all excited. They’re going to come flooding, wanting to learn more about you. And again, just thank you for the time.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

All right, excellent. So, great. Another great episode. Listen, I’m just going to, a really really simple recap on there. And I’m just going to read it, ’cause I don’t want to botch up the things. But, my big takeaway is in order to sell better, stop selling. It’s all this whole, the customer experience piece. And we’ve talked about it a lot here. It’s really how do you create a buying journey that is with the least amount of friction as possible? How do you present your content and your experience in a way that people want to buy? And if you’re hounding them and that traditional thing, it just doesn’t work anymore. And, as you know, we’re moving, everything is going all digital. Be thinking about how you can do this. Be sure to check out these guys at ATLATL. You can check them out online, we’ll put the link in the show notes. If you’re listening on the podcast there, the links are in the articles with the video, and you can check them out. So, that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for watching or listening. I’m Danny, and… yeah, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. And I’ll be back with you next week with another episode of IndustrialSage. Thanks for watching.

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Hey, you working remotely these days? Well, we’ve got some tools that we use internally that we wanted to share with you on how to make your life a little bit easier when you have to work virtually.

Okay, so remote work, working virtually, obviously a lot of companies doing it right now. So we’ve got a list of tools, things we want to be able to share.

Tools we use.

Tools we actually use ourselves. So this is a little bit… For these companies, yes they are paying us. They’re sending us checks in the mail. I’m just kidding.

I wish.

Totally kidding.

Do we have any affiliate links?

I don’t know if you have any–

To help support IndustrialSage.

You know what? We don’t have any affiliate links or anything on this. We’re doing this just because we want to be able to share with people, just share with us some of the tools that we’re using, see that you guys might be able to find them valuable, and to be able to help, particularly for those people that haven’t had to do this, and I’m sure there’s some tools in there, you’re like, “Oh, I’d never heard of that. That’s pretty cool.” So …

Yeah, exactly.

So I want to jump into that. Okay, so let’s talk about it. So one of the things that we use right out the gate, we’ll talk about email. Everybody has email obviously. So this isn’t going to be a big thing, but we’re big G Suite users, so Gmail, right?

Gmail. Makes it easy.

It makes it very easy and it’s tied into everything. So we’ll use Google Drive, we’ll use obviously the Gmail, we use the calendars, which is great. And that’s probably, I mean there’s a few… We use anything else there?

Yeah, we use Google Sheets.

Oh yeah. Well I consider that part–

Massive collaboration.

I guess I consider that part of Google Drive, but yeah, I guess you’re right. Sheets, slides…

Word.

Word. Yeah, that’s true.

Or actually, it’s Docs. Google Docs.

Google docs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s not Word, Microsoft Word.

We could do G Suite, but Office 365…

Yeah, that’s true. That would be a competitor…

It’s the equivalent.

Yeah, we would look at the equivalent. Yeah. So I mean, look, we lost… One of the things that I really love about G Suite, not that we’re in a love fest about all these things. It’s just the amount of integrations though that we’re able to connect with all kinds of different things. G Suite will connect into a lot of these other tools and I’m looking at that we have, if not all of them, most of them. I think actually all of them they connect–

Really well.

So that’s a nice thing. But yeah sure, like Office 365 probably does all that too.

It’s a lot of collaboration tools within the G Suite or Office 365. So being able to collaborate on the same document at the exact same time where normally maybe in a meeting someone has it pulled up on their laptop and you’re going through it and everybody sees it on the office screen. Well now in Zoom or whatever other tool are you using…

Actually, so, biggest pet peeve that I have– probably one of the biggest freaking pet peeves is version control. So what that means is when you’ve… And everyone’s gone through this. Let’s say you have a word document and you sent it out to like five people and like, “Oh I’m going to make changes.” And then everybody makes changes on the doc and then now you have five different versions. This is supposed to be version 1.5 but now it’s one version 0.5 point, point, point, point because you had all these other people and then you’ve got to like…

It’s the final.

Yeah, exactly.

As soon as you add final to the document name–

Then you have a million more changes.

Then you have final 1, 7, 22.

I, we literally ran into this the other day and it was driving me nuts. Still don’t understand why we weren’t able to do this, but somebody took it offline, started making changes, and now we have a million copies scattered in emails and all this stuff. It’s like, “Which one’s the latest one?” “I don’t know. Look at the title.” I hate that. Huge pet peeve.

Moral of the story.

What is it?

Use collaborative tools made for this.

Right, exactly. So you can make those changes. And so for those of you who do that, fine. You can see there’s a new way and you can use, I’m sure Office 365 has the word can do that now, but you’d be shocked. I’m still blown away as to how many organizations still do not use these tools.

Even for the handful of Mac users out there that are working on these documents. Keynote. Pages. Numbers.

That’s true.

They’re collaborative. I’d say they aren’t as extensive as Google sheets. But it’s across-platform so they’ll work on PC and Mac, all three of these that we’ve discussed. All PC and Mac.

So, great tool. Especially now with working on, if you have to work on one document, let’s say it’s slides or it’s a spreadsheet or it’s a–

PowerPoint.

…document, everyone can jump in, you can make comments. When one change is made, it’s a global change and it’s not like, “wait, what version?” It’s, no. And you can go back to that and look at that version history. Awesome. Love it. That’s probably one of my favorite things about G Suite.

Makes things much more efficient.

It’s awesome. Okay, so let’s move on. We’ll go to the next one. We’ve got Dropbox.

Well, right. So Dropbox, it’s going to handle a much wider variety of file types. So sure, it’s going to sync up your word documents, your excels, all of those things. So in a lot of cases you have offline files. You’re working with PDFs, a lot of different things. So you can’t necessarily collaborate or you don’t need to collaborate. But it’s a great way to share files and it keeps them safe in the cloud. Great backup option. They have this feature called Pack Rat, which will save all the different versions of it.

It’s like Time Machine, kind of.

Time Machine, yeah. It’s the cloud backup and it’ll save an indefinite amount of all those different changes, which I love. I love pack-rat.

So basically it’s… okay to lay it out, it’s like your online file storage. So it’s like taking your documents folder if you’re a PC user… Is that, is that PC or is that Mac? I can’t remember.

Both.

Okay. Both of them. They both have the same document?

Pretty sure.

Your files or whatever. Files and folders. I actually used to use Explorer. I haven’t used a PC in forever.

What’s Explorer?

That was like how you would search and stuff. File Explorer. Isn’t that it?

I have no idea.

All right. It’s been such a long time since I was on a PC, sorry. I’m very PC illiterate. I’m politically correct illiterate as well as I am a personal computer illiterate. Anyways, basically they give your documents, you can have it online in the cloud and then you can share that too which is great. So people can have access to it and you have a big storage up there.

Also it integrates with your Microsoft suite. So Office 365, so it’ll help provide that collaboration and version control. Because a lot of the challenge is when you edit a document there people are sharing at the same time, it will create those duplicates. Well if you have it integrated then it won’t, you can have that real time collaboration.

I wonder why, because we have Google Drive, which is kind of the same thing as Dropbox. I kind of feel like that the tools that Dropbox has are actually a little… a lot better. Whereas Google Drive just kind of seems like you can upload files and you can start here. I feel like what you’re able to use with Dropbox a lot more versatile.

So whether it’s Dropbox or even–

OneDrive.

Or OneDrive from Microsoft or Box.net is another enterprise solution, SharePoint. So the way I use Dropbox is I have a desktop computer at the office and I have my laptop at home.

And all of my files live in Dropbox so when I’m working on my laptop at home, it’s automatically updating my office computer. So literally when I show up to the office, it’s the same thing. Same files.

So it’s not like you’ve got local copies on one computer. Two different, like what I typically do, which is bad.

Right. It’s okay, we’re going to convert you over.

I want to be converted. I just, I’m cheap because I know I need to pay more.

It’s $9 a month.

Is it nine bucks? I think I pay 100 bucks a year, which is cheaper than…

So yeah, if you do the annual pricing. Maybe I’m grandfathered in because I’ve been using it since it really came out. I think it’s $11.99.

Actually where I get really cheap is–

I was really upset about that.

They do have Dropbox Teams, which is awesome.

Teams is fascinating.

But it’s a lot more expensive. That’s the cheapness of me coming in.

But you can have a business account without going enterprise. That’s what I do.

Yeah but the pricing is still like, I thought it was like $50. I don’t know.

Enterprise Dropbox is much more expensive than their pro-level drop Dropbox.

Dropbox, if you’re listening and you’re watching, let us know what the real… I don’t know.

We’ll try and get some more–

We’ll move on to the next one. This one is a great tool.

You either love it or you hate it.

That’s true. And actually I’m a convert because I hated it and now I love it.

I’ve always loved it. I always looked at people that hated it like you guys have no idea what you’re missing.

Well, okay, so to really dispel the mystery–

We haven’t even told them what it is.

What is it? What is it, the love or hate?

Well, let’s see if anybody can guess.

Oh, play a game.

So we’ll play a game and the question is, or maybe not really question, but the clue. Here’s the clue.

I know the clue.

They went IPO, they filed their IPO. They went public.

When?

This year.

I was just going to say, weren’t they the ones that they did a logo rebrand and they had to change it immediately because they thought they found there was an object in there that was not good.

Oh, I didn’t hear about that. No, their branding has always been great.

I thought… it might have been somebody else there. Maybe somebody else.

Who knows.

I’m going to start getting into, yeah. I don’t want to get sued.

Either way, this great piece of software that either love it or you hate it is–

Slack.

Slack. Yes. I love it.

So what is Slack? What is it, for those who don’t know?

Slack? It’s a messaging system. It can integrate with a lot of tools.

Integrations are key for us because we’re dorks like that.

We’re dorks, but what it’s doing is when you’re working remotely and you don’t have the access to your teams where you can be like, knock, knock, “Hey, can you answer this question?” and email. Typically, it’s like you send an email, it has a subject line that has nothing to do with the question you’re asking on the inside and it doesn’t get answered for two hours. Well this is where Slack comes in. So it basically allows your teams to collaborate in an open forum and have that conversation available for everyone and then, say you hire someone three months from now, well now they can go back–

That’s a good point.

…and see that conversation versus what happens right now or pre Slack, you have group text messages on here. And what did people do? They delete them. Or how do you add somebody? How do you keep it safe from… we’re not doing enterprise security on all of our phones. You know what has enterprise security? Slack.

That’s a very compelling argument there.

Safe and secure messaging. It’s hierarchy archived for onboarding. You can follow that. You can tag team members, you can have private messages. It even, for organizations that need to track conversations from a legal perspective, they have that oversight functionality and capability to be able to track that. You can add outside team members to different channels.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool. So if you’ve got contractors or whatever.

Yeah, contractors, customers can collaborate. All of that. It’s a beautiful system. I’ve been using it for years and I’m glad we’re starting to use it too. It gets things out of email that don’t need to be in email. We already have 750 unread messages in our inbox.

No, there’s zero for me. But anyways, yeah. I think for me, we’ve used it in the past and I just felt, at least to me anyways, I just feel like it was one more thing that I have to keep track of and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m getting text messages, I’m getting emails, I’m getting Slack messages, I’m getting LinkedIn messages, I’m getting all this stuff.” But the key differentiator for me at least when we were actually working virtually, because when we did it, we were still in the office or whatever, which is kind of meh, and then people are not still coming in.

Then working remotely or virtually that was a big, “Oh my gosh, I love this tool. It’s awesome.” And I think one of the best things is the organization aspect. So you can create a channel for this particular project and it can integrate with a lot of other tools that we’re using so we can keep that communication specific to, here’s a specific project that we’re working on. It goes and lives there and, like you mentioned, you can go reference it later.

Now have you ever experienced this?

No, I have not.

You send an email out to five different people all on the same email thread. And what happens? Well it’s about this particular topic and then within that thread, the subject line stays the same and the topic changes a dozen times.

Yeah and it could jump to another project or another whatever that’s completely unrelated.

So trying to go back and be like, “Well Danny told us to do X, Y, Z with this project.” It’s really difficult, whereas with Slack you can either be channel specific or within that channel you can type something and then you type something and then three more team members have their questions, question question question that follow. Well you can create something called a thread, which is basically you just click into it and it creates a secondary conversation within that channel. So now I’m able to communicate directly back to your question, not impede or interrupt the three other questions that team members are asking all related to that particular channel. Fascinating.

Actually one of the best things with it too is actually it’s very affordable. I mean they’ve got free versions that are awesome. Love it a lot.

So all right, let’s move on to the next one. I love this one.

This one is skyrocketing on the stock market charts. This one is Zoom. Zoom video conferencing. You can throw out there maybe UberConference, RingCentral.

Actually I think RingCentral licenses Zoom because it’s the same interface. It’s the exact same interface. But yeah, either way.

Awesome tool.

I would imagine most people are familiar with it.

Or GoToMeeting.

GoToMeeting or WebEx, we’ve used all those. Zoom, hands down, my favorite. The biggest reason is because of the ability to be able to play back… The way that it handles video. They came up with an update the other day… Or the other day. It was like couple of months ago where the big, big, big struggle, we had to have hardware solutions to be able to do this. Be able to actually play a video through Zoom. Let’s say you’re going over something, “Hey, watch this quick video’ and you’re screen-sharing or whatever.

It’s always awkward,

Oh, and it was horrible. In order to play back the… You could never play the audio back.

They would be like, “Here, let me take my phone and put it next to the computer screen.”

It would play back through the speaker which sounded horribly.

With feedback.

So there was a work around. Matter of fact, we have a couple of articles on IndustrialSage about it. One was how to fake a live webinar. Actually we talk about using this tool. It’s actually one of the highest tracked or read articles. But you literally had to buy this thing. It was just this technical reason why it was doing it, right? Well they finally wrote a patch and updated the software so that any audio that is on my laptop, I can play so everyone can hear it and it’s beautiful and it’s amazing. I think one of the reasons why they did that is because they were concerned about piracy issues because you could actually record. You’d go to YouTube, play a video, record it through there and I think that was, I’m guessing, was a little bit of a challenge, but I love it. It’s such a great tool.

Especially now we’re using it for daily check-ins with everybody on our team and the ability to be able to just pop in the video camera. I mean A, just to be able to “Hey, what’s going on?” And to have that connection, especially now in these days if you have to do any selling or whatever, that ability of just having that connection–

Visual connection.

That visual connection, being able to communicate through body language is, what 80% of communication?

I thought it was 70 but 80 sounds good too.

80, 70, somewhere in that window. I don’t know.

You know 99% of statistics are false anyway, including that one.

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, just love that tool. It’s awesome.

I digress. I know from the video perspective, Zoom, hands down the best, but I really enjoy UberConference functionality because if you’re on a paid plan, there’s no pin number. You literally dial the number and everyone can join.

The only problem I’ve had with UberConference and we ran into this, I’ve actually heard of this with clients, where we were on the… It was ours and we also had somewhere with our clients and they were kicking us off because they shared that number and so somebody else can be starting something and then they’re jumping into your–

If you’re sharing it for sure.

There’s a bunch actually and they’re great and they work really well, I just have an affinity for Zoom because it handles videos really, really well.

It’s a must-have.

That was kind of the nature of it.

Love it or hate it. Project management.

I love Project Management. All right, so there’s a lot of tools.

Here’s what we use. What do we use?

We use Wrike. I think some of the team have a love hate relationship with it.

Are you talking about me?

Maybe.

There’s some people on our team–

There’s some people on our team that have a love hate relationship with it. Bottom line, is you’ve got to have a project management system. Wrike gives us a lot of a project overview. It’s able to bring all the different projects… Because at any given moment there’s two dozen projects in motion, whether it’s client side or internal, and being able to roll that all up and be able to have insights into where are we at with things? What is the budget with things? You’ve got to have a project management system. Wrike is a great solution, and it all has that collaboration functionality. So, and I think across the board, whether it’s Monday or Mavenlink or–

Basecamp.

Basecamp, or heaven forbid, Zoho, what is it?

There’s a bunch of toys. Zoho’s one.

Please don’t use that one.

I’ve heard good things.

No.

Did you know in our insight survey that was actually like the number five CRM tool that manufacturers use? Which is very interesting.

Well, it’s free. It has an extensive free version.

Well, not only that, but you can also build out applications and other things with it. So it’s more, it was more than just that. But I digress.

It’s cool.

I don’t know. The thing with Wrike… Here’s the thing, it’s a Cadillac. There’s so many things that you can do that I think sometimes we get lost in that and just because you can have a task for something doesn’t mean you should. I think my love hate relationship with it is… Well, okay. We moved from Basecamp. We did have Basecamp for years and Basecamp is awesome. It really is, but we needed some more functionality because as we move into more than just one really big video, we’re doing a bunch of videos in there, and then there may be a bunch of videos, plus blog articles, plus landing pages, plus email campaigns plus plus plus plus, and it’s really trying to manage that gets very difficult with Basecamp. Maybe we weren’t running it right.

But you end up needing spreadsheets, and then it kind of defeats the purpose of your project management software. So I think like you said, it depends on your organization which is the right one for you. Whether you’re implementing correctly, because we’ve had some implementation speed bumps, but the bottom line is you need something.

Especially now. Especially in a virtual environment. You have to have a central source of truth and that helps.

Okay. Next one. Oh, we’ve talked about this quite a bit. HubSpot.

So we won’t go into super great detail on this one. But HubSpot, CRM, marketing automation–

It’s great.

So you’re either using your HubSpot or using Pardot or Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce.

Or there’s a bunch of other ones. From a CRM standpoint.

Harvest.

Harvest, I think it was more for invoicing, well I can’t remember, but we used Nutshell for a while. I think it was a great tool. Nimble. I use Nimble CRM for a little bit. The guy who designed… Was it goldmine?… designed that. They actually have a really cool prospecting tool in there where you can go and… I can’t remember who’s using it, but anyways.

GDRP nightmare on that.

Well yeah, but whatever. It’s a really great tool. You can hover somebody’s name on LinkedIn and it’ll pull up any contact data and information. You can say, “add this to my CRM right now.”

Beautiful.

Really cool. There’s a million tools out there. We just happen to be using HubSpot. HubSpot, is it expensive? Yes, but there’s a lot of functionality that you can do with it and we talk about it ad nauseum, so if you want to hear us, there’s probably a bunch of other episodes–

Just search HubSpot on IndustrialSage and you’ll get a plethora of content.

It’s a great tool. It’s easy to use, tons of functionality. We love it. It’s great. It’s really great.

All right, last but not least, this is the one–

This is a new addition.

I’ve never used this before–

This is a new addition.

…That is rare. Usually I am all about the software, but this one here, Danny discovered it and it is fascinating. This one here, Danny, please explain.

It is called Dubb.

Dubb?

Dubb Dubb Dubb Dubb. D-U-B-B. Video email. We’ve talked about this a lot.

Video email.

Video email, really the ability to be able to create video messages and then send them out through email. So Vidyard has got a tool, Wistia has a tool. BombBomb is another one you heard about a while ago and there’s a few others. You’re starting to see a lot more of them, but I checked out Dubb. I really love it. It’s really great. There was some really, really, really, neat tools in there. You like you can create videos and be able to send them out through LinkedIn.

Wow, okay. I thought this was just video in email, but it’s actually video in email and in social, and there’s what, some crazy automation stuff behind it?

There’s some automation and some workflows and things that you can create. You can create these mini landing pages and if somebody follows through with a call to action, it can trigger another. It’s kind of like light marketing automation, light video marketing automation and there’s some other tools in there.

Would you more consider it sales automation versus marketing?

Yes, actually. Sales automation much more than marketing.

From what you’ve shown me, it seems like it’s less of the complicated, cumbersome things that marketers like to get into the weeds with.

Get this into the hands of a sales guy that’s like, “Hey, we just came back from this trade show and I want to send a quick video message to everyone that I met.” Perfect opportunity to do that.

Boom, I’m going to send a Dubb. So are sales team’s going like, “Hey, I’m going to send you a Dubb video?”

Yep.

That’s dope.

So yeah, somebody’s waving and I just think, especially now when we’re talking about that interaction piece, it’s big. It’s different. When you get an email, when you receive that email, there’s a thumbnail of that person waving at you–

Like a GIF or something.

I don’t know if they can do animated GIFs, but you can upload videos. Even if you just want to say, “Hey look, I want to send you this product video or this demo or this case study video or whatever,” you can just pull it… It actually integrates with HubSpot. Again, we’re all about the integrations. Any way that these tools can integrate so we can reduce double entry or triple entry data entry the better. And this does that.

So the sales activity shows up into their HubSpot feed?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. So I imagine it would do the same if you had Salesforce or some of the other integrations?

Probably, it’s got a lot of integrations and so that’s why we can send that and then I can see inside my contact instance inside our HubSpot CRM if somebody watched that video and how much of that video watched.

Beautiful.

It’s awesome that we’re very much going down that road.

So Dubb is helping sales teams basically create scalable, unique, personalized video content within the sales process.

Yes.

Holy cow.

So I mean think about a great use case for right now. I just want to send a personalized message that’s like, “Hey man, how are you doing? I know things are going crazy. I’ve been reading this stuff about you guys, but I was just thinking about you. Let me know if I can help you with anything.” Or, ” I just wanted to say hey.” That’s it. Instead of… Phone’s cool, but imagine getting a video message that’s like, “Hey David, I just hope you’re doing well. It’s been a minute.”

Because we think through a phone call we usually interrupt someone, where you don’t know where they’re at at that moment. Whereas if it’s an email or a LinkedIn message… If they’re on LinkedIn, they’re in a different state of mind than if they’re like, “Oh man, I just got this phone call. Like I’ve got to finish this report or whatever it is I’m working on and Danny sales guy calling me.” Well now I see a video show up, I can consume it when it’s good for me and it’s easy.

Right, and it’s different. It’s different. And then you know if they watched it later. From a sales standpoint, you’re like, “sweet, they got my message.” You leave a voicemail. I don’t know. Did they get my message? I’m not sure. email. Did they get it? Did they look at it? Did they open it? I guess we get open rates and stuff like that, right?

You get opens, you can see if they clicked.

But imagine now they watched it. I know now that my message came across, it’s very important.

Now I’m seeing that engagement.

So when they don’t get back to me, I’m not freaking out. Anyway, cool stuff. I don’t know. There’s a bunch of other things. I’m sure there’s some things that I left off the list, but I think these are the big ones.

Yeah, these are awesome.

We have a big affinity for the tech stack and we love all the really cool technology and the tools, but I think these are some really, really good ones that I’m sure a lot of people are using some of them in some form or fashion.

I think especially when working remote, especially if you haven’t had to work remote, this is a great stack. On a lot of there’s free options or what I’ll call very low barrier to entry options with each one of these platforms where it’s not a massive expense that you’re suddenly needing to undertake just because you’re working remote. I think there’s even some carryover when you don’t have to work remote anymore, you can leverage the same workflow.

Exactly. Yep.

Cool.

That’s it. That’s what we’ve got. How many tools did we drop? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Actually just have like three more pop in my head, but we’ll save that for another video for another day.

We mentioned probably 15 different tools or more.

The other ones, I’m not even going to get into it because I can go on another 20 minutes and that’d be exciting. But we can talk about that later.

It’s awesome. Well, thanks everybody.

We can talk about how to integrate all that stuff. Maybe that’s another episode, how to integrate all this stuff. There’s some really good tools to be able to do that.

All right, well that’s it.

Awesome.

All right. Thanks for watching.

Thanks for watching.

This is awesome, we’ll be back next week.

Share this.

Yeah, you should.

Share this with your boss, with your team. This is valuable information that people need to see, people need to hear. You’re going to bring innovation to your organization when you share and watch these videos.

Absolutely. And if there’s something that we missed and you’re like, “Oh guys, you totally missed this.” Put a comment, put it on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Join the conversation. Add in the tools that you love using and that you’ve discovered that are really valuable for you.

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Well, welcome to this episode of IndustrialSage on our Executive Series. I have Mr. Nimit Patel, who is the CEO of Hydraulic Manifolds USA. Nimit, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

I’m super excited to jump into today’s topic, hear about you and your story. So, for those who aren’t familiar with Hydraulic Manifolds USA, what exactly do you guys do?

What, we are the manufacturing engineering assembly for one of the critical components in the hydraulic industry, called hydraulic manifolds. To simplify it, relating it to, similar to electronics, there are circuit boards, we actually lay out the hydraulic integrated circuits, inside a piece of metal.

Excellent, that sounds fun. What are some of the top applications that you, or use cases, that you guys, that your product fits?

Where, actually where there’s hydraulics, there is, our product would most likely be there. Some of the fun places, from Disney World to NASA, there’s simulations from small tow trucks to large industrial farming equipment. Basically, we also have… we make big manifolds for the high-end bridge applications, and also for the oil and gas industry. So, pretty much it’s a very, what should I call it? A widespread application. It’s something which is usually customized, made to order, and based off the designs, and based off the needs of the customer.

Excellent, so let’s jump into your story. Tell me, I want to hear a little bit of your career journey. How, take me back to, what was that first job? Or how did you get into the industry? What did that look like?

Well, I kind of jumped into this industry from a totally, from a different segment of the industry where I was, but, means it was challenging. So I basically graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology as a computer engineer. From there, my journey went into, I graduated around 9/11. So, from there, there was very much, it was hard to find jobs. I was actually looking for a job at the time. I worked part-time on my sales up in various retails, T-Mobile, trying to develop my communication skills. From there, I went into the government, where I had a mentor, essentially, part of my journey. I think I have a, at every single milestone, I had a mentor that basically helped me shape my journey, to essentially what I am today.

So, in spite of changes with equipment, from what I learned, to what I did in the industry as a job, to where I am as an entrepreneur, it’s been different, but essentially, I was able to relate one part of the discipline to another, and was able to take lessons learned. So, as much as some may find it that it was a 180-degree turn, but there’s always, people, process and technology is what I consider is what each and every organization is made out of. And to where I am, with my background, I’ve been working for the government, working as a government consultant, working as a project manager, too, as I went up the career path, and to the entrepreneurship today. It means, essentially, it’s those three variables, people, process, and technology, are what you need to have a handle on to be able to, what I consider every organization has.

People, process, and technology, I’m going to write that down. I mean, yeah 100%, that makes a lot of sense. But you mentioned, I think I heard you say the word entrepreneur, or entrepreneurship. Is that, did you say that? All right, so what I am very curious about is, what did that jump look like? How did, what was that moment where you said, hey, I want, this is the direction change that I want to make? What did that look like?

Well, there was a whole bunch of mixed feelings, anxiousness, I guess, all sorts of, there was excitement, and there was nervousness. There was a kind of a, like, okay, I want to do it, but there was that, okay, what I am not successful? So it’s, I think that was more of a, and people call it, it’s all normal.

So you’ve, Hydraulic Manifolds USA, I mean, you founded that company?

Negative, I actually purchased this business three years ago.

Okay.

The old organization was known as Selling Precision, which has been in existence since 1971.

Okay.

So, essentially, the manufacturing and the making of the manifolds was there, but it wasn’t really highlighted into the industry, and adding more to the technology aspect. And then defining the process and getting ISO certification has been my contribution to this place.

Okay, all right. Okay, so Nimit, you mentioned a very dangerous word that begins with an e, and it was entrepreneurship. So, this gets a lot of people in trouble, I’m joking. But you mentioned, what did that look like for you? What was that thought that crossed your mind, that said, hey, I think I want to go do this?

So, before I became an entrepreneur, I was doing project management for a government consulting company, Booz Allen Hamilton. It was, essentially, at the time, I had, means, I guess it was more like my genes, I do have entrepreneurial genes. So I wanted to do something, basically push the limits, test myself to the maximum potential that I can deliver. And, essentially, that’s kind of, was the, probably, the seed for all this. Means I wanted to do something, and then, basically, trying to pick this industry was more like, it wasn’t circumstantial. Well, kind of, it was circumstantial, but also, I wanted to get something that is engineering discipline, I wanted to get something which is Monday to Friday, don’t do anything like retail, but wanted to apply my skills, my talent. So that’s basically where I picked up manufacturing, of course, three, four years ago, at one of the key busts, and realizing that very many people are coming, going out of manufacturing. And I wanted to jump in, and, essentially for those same reasons, is to say, okay, nobody else wants to do it, and realizing it’s the challenge, means, let me test myself and see if I can make it happen.

That’s awesome, I love that, so, can you tell me, I mean, those first, after you made a decision to do that, and you started going down the road, what was that like?

Well, I was looking, at the time, I was doing government consulting. I wanted to see if I can start something on my own. I went through browsing around, something that has a legacy, and something that has a potential for growth, something that I can give a new makeover.

Yeah.

And then, essentially, excel. So, basically, this is the place where there was a legacy, there was a history, there was something about this place, which basically magically clicked, and it’s essentially, in the manufacturing world, there is, a lot of the stuff is, they’re like commodity-type products. There’s also, some of the stuff is like a standard item, and there’s also more like a very custom item.

Yeah.

So, this is kind of a blend right up on that crossover, where we have a product, which is called the hydraulic manifolds. It’s also somewhat customized, so essentially, it does have its own set of challenges. But at the end of the day, it’s also not a shelved item, means like regular coat hangers or pick anything which is a, that would be of, basically be very much competitive. So we can somewhat put a flavor to our own, to how we cater the customers and how we deliver the product to the customers, and essentially, create that niche space: it’s what I have been working towards.

That’s awesome. And so, when did you acquire the company? You said it was three years ago?

Correct.

So, 2016, 2017? Okay, yeah, I guess we’re in 2020 now, so I’ve got to do… I can do math, sometimes, no.

February 2017.

February 2017, that’s awesome, so, obviously, that’s– three years is great, obviously, still, I’m sure you have a lot more that you plan on, you wanted to do, and growing it. Now that you’ve got some pretty good experience with it, what are some of the challenges that you see with the industries that you serve?

Well, kind of going back to people, process, and technology, so, in my first year of journey, as an entrepreneur, of course, this is, as I said, it’s a new domain for me, and it’s a new business for me. Means, I was basically, so initially, I started, I was observing what’s happening, what’s going on, and then, essentially, I kind of listed down risks and issues that are defined within the people, process, and technology. Every manufacturing has, what should I call it? A drain, where, that’s why we talk more about improvements, and continuous improvements, within manufacturing more so than anywhere else. There is a lot of waste. We talk about lean processing, we talk about 5S, we talk about all of these things, about Kanbans, and it’s all about, to help, how to efficiently work in between the people, process, and applying the technology to help bind the people and the process.

So, my first year, again, was all about collecting data, all about observing, identifying the weaknesses, putting the circles around, what are the biggest weaknesses? And then coming up with a plan of action. So, at the end of the year is, realized it, where some of the biggest weaknesses were, as part of the core production, and as part of processing, as a start-to-end. With that, start evolving the technology side and the process side. And that is, in these last two years, we have evolved, not to, again, where I want to be, but evolved quite a bit, where we have some of the high-end production equipment to the process that goes with it. Because, of course, having the right hands, but also having the right process is important. And I think that is an enabling factor.

Because, right now, in the industry, where the talent pool is becoming less and less available, and then we are challenged with the minimum wage increasing, the talent is going down, the skills are going down, and then we are at the highest in the challenge of productivity, where there is external entities, like Third World countries are trying to compete, and they are challenging us. On the other part of it, the strength of the U.S. manufacturing has been that we are the home of Apple and Microsoft, we are the home of the technology monsters, and Google, of course. So we, my background of computer engineering, my background of project management, I have enabled a lot of data analysis, data collection, in trying to leverage technology and creating a robust process, not just at where we are right now, at ISO 9001, 2015. But also trying to have a more intense continuous improvement plan, and try to attain the highest level of productivity and continue to improve.

Excellent, that’s the name of the game, so, just as a final question here, and you kind of answered here a little bit, but, as far as those challenges in the industry, how are you helping, or, how, within your organization, are you staying ahead of your competitors? I think you’ve mentioned that, I think you said that this was a relatively commoditized, I mean, it’s a bit of a commodity, so obviously, the people and the technology, and creating that that innovation through lean process, making things better, faster, cheaper, for lack of better words, how are you guys staying ahead of the pack? And what are those innovations that you, are you concretely bringing to your customers?

Well, there’s three things. When a customer goes out, or even we, ourselves, when we are going out as a customer, three things that they always, are the criteria. One is, they want the quality, second is, they want the price, and they want the fastest delivery that they can. So, between these three variables, I’ve often realized that, although every customer wants all three, to the best that they can, means they usually have two that is more of a, should I say that, basically, is something that they crave for. Sometimes one, sometimes two. The third element is usually with the vendor. So, if you, as a customer, would like to get something for the least amount of price, and for the best quality, then you would say, okay, I’ll wait for it.

Yeah, exactly.

Or, if you say, okay, I would like to get this today, or early morning tomorrow, or in the fastest amount of time frame, and, of course, quality is something that you cannot compromise.

Yeah, you’re going to pay for it.

As customers, we’re going to pay for it. So, essentially, means, from the customer’s standpoint of view, these are how they gauge every vendor. So, for me, as a, trying to look at the customers, what are their needs? How they see us as a value vendor. Between those three variables, where we have to play around and essentially ensure that the relationship with the customer is of more importance than the actual one product that you’re delivering to them. So, essentially having that faith, that confidence, because we are, again, as I said, custom made to order type of products, the engineer or the product customer comes up with the very core concept designs, and we help them see the shape and the size, and how it’s going to work. Then they would say, okay, yes, it will work, it won’t work, this is what they need, a few changes to make it happen, then we actually manufacture it. And then we also provide the complete assembly.

So, in that whole journey process, oftentimes, to what I’ve seen, is customer craves for the quality, customer craves for, they’re reasonable in their deliveries, and they are reasonable in their pricing. So, depending on the applications, depending on the type of a product, we make some manifolds which are hardly 10 bucks, to also, manifolds which are more than $10,000 per piece. So, it’s a very big spectrum of applications, as I said, and then a very big spectrum of industry. We have some OEMs to some distributors, and some product integrators. So, essentially, our product is not the complete machinery, but then we are more of a product that integrates to a bigger product.

Yeah, absolutely. So just, so from what I took there is really that that customer experience piece is really, you mentioned the triangle that everyone talks about, I want, customers want things better, faster, cheaper, pick two. You can’t have all three, you’ve got to pick two. And and it sounds like, just really looking at that whole customer experience, that buying experience, and making it good for them, listening to them, and being a solution provider, versus just like, yeah, I’ll take one of those and five of these. That’s what I heard.

Exactly.

So, excellent, well, so, Nimit, I really appreciate the time here with IndustrialSage. If anybody would love to learn more about you, what’s the best place? I presume, go to your website, or some social media? What’s your URL?

So, hydraulicmanifolds.com is our web domain. Means you can follow us on Twitter, handle, Hydraulic Manifolds, HManifolds. Those are, of course, we’re on the higher end. We are trying to also publish a lot of our products on LinkedIn, that you can also follow me up on, and, of course, we still work with traditional technologies, with faxes, phones and emails. So, if anybody out there wants a value partner, where they want to find somebody on their side to help them solve their issues, help them design a manifold, having some experiences, not just some, but years of experiences that we have to bring on the table.

Means we are there to help, and we are not just kind of a machine shop that just drills holes and makes you a manifold, but we are somebody who would basically follow the industry guidelines, and we will help you critique your circuit and designs to identify if you’re going to try to run into issues down the road. We have specialized tool sets that help us design manifolds that are very popular up in Parker and Rexroth. It’s called the MDTools, that we have engineers just sitting on those tool sets, designing manifolds, all day long, every day. That not just helps us design manifolds, but also helps ensure the products that will be ready for manufacturing would come out right. We have enhanced capabilities to offer in terms of manufacturing, high end machining centers. And of course, we offer assemblies and functional testing before anybody sees the product in front of them.

Excellent. Well, sounds like there’s a lot of areas, and a lot of ways they can, companies can get to know you, learn more about your products and services. Nimit, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day today to spend some time with us, so we could learn a little bit more about you. And if anyone would like to learn more about you, they can go check you guys out on your website. We’ll make sure we have all those links on the show notes for the, under the video and the podcast.

Awesome, appreciate it, thank you for having me.

Thank you. All right, so another great episode here, rounding out our IndustrialSage Experts Series. Again, I’m really enjoying these interviews, just learning, a big thing, actually– it’s been coming out as we interview more executives – is this entrepreneurship piece, I think is very cool. Whether it’s somebody who has acquired a company, like Nimit has, or someone who’s in, a CEO coming up through the corporate world, there’s this entrepreneurial spirit that I think, that is very interesting, and I think it’s, sort of, that that common thread. I think Nimit mentioned it well, he said that there was, he had the entrepreneur genes.

So anyways, if you would like to check out more about them, you can take a look at their website, Hydraulic Manifolds USA, we’ll make sure we have all the information in the show notes, you can check them out there. So that’s all I’ve got for you today, thank you so much for listening or watching this episode of IndustrialSage. I’m Danny Gonzales, we’ll be back next week with another episode of IndustrialSage.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

Hey, so for today we are going to talk about five ways you can speed up the industrial sales process. Alright, okay I’m ready for today’s episode, David. What are we talking about?

Speeding up that sales process.

Sales process, speeding it up. Alright, how do you do it?

Well, there’s five ways you can speed it up.

Okay.

Well, I’d start with standardizing it.

Okay, what does that mean?

What do you think it means!?

I don’t know. Standardizing the process.

Yeah, yeah.

Who’s asking the questions here?

I don’t know!

Sorry. Let’s just keep going.

No I think- okay.

Unscripted.

Very unscripted.

That’s fine.

That’s fine.

It’s okay.

So speeding up the sales process: one thing we hear about all over the place is the typical sales process: which, in a lot of regards, takes a long time. You’re looking at nine months, 12 months, 18 months.

Yeah, it could be super long.

So if you were to be able to reduce that say by a couple months, well, what does that mean to your cash flow? What does that mean to your organization’s state? That’s where it’s important. It’s not just, “Yeah I want to speed it up because I want to close the deal faster,” but that overall impact to your organization: and that’s why it’s really mission critical. So when we’re looking at speeding up our sales process, it’s creating that repeatable process. Things you can do a thousand times versus a thousand things you can do one time.

Yeah, well that’s a good way of putting it.

Let’s standardize that follow-up process. Follow-up is huge. So you can have your very interested lead or prospect come in, and they get that first phone call, and then they drop off the face of the Earth. Well, you’ve experienced it. Life happens, things get busy.

Totally.

Priorities within your organization change. So it doesn’t mean they still don’t need to find the solution to their problem, but now you just need to remind them that “Hey I’m still here, I’m still here.”

Yeah, exactly. Well there’s a stat in the real estate space that talks about, and don’t quote me on it, but it’s something like there’s an 80% chance that the first person to get back to you, if you’re looking for a realtor, you’re likely to go with that person just because they’re providing that information to you quickly, and it kind of helps to T-up the relationship.

Yeah, exactly. I mean we can list off some great stats, so I want to include some in the show notes because the data is there and available. But like you said if you’re going to be the fastest, the first person, people have things to do and when you’re the top of mind when they’re reaching out to you, that’s when the person is going to be most receptive.

Actually, that’s a great point. To that point too, if you think about it, it was fast before. We wanted our information before, but now we are so predisposed to having it instantaneously. It’s super critical that you have to be on top of your game and have to be getting back like clockwork.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I’m going to look up the stats right now while you keep talking, ’cause I want to know the answer.

Well, not really.

I want to know it now. Can we not wait until.. nevermind.

We’ll do it afterwards, but let’s dive into the first one. So: video, video content. Everybody loves video. It’s the most engaging form of media. It’s why we use video, use audio, creating graphics, it’s all the above. But video, by far, is most engaging. So it’s not just a video about, “Hey we’re so great. We’re amazing this is why everybody loves us”.

Right, yeah.

It’s educational. It’s content that’s providing value or educating them on how your product or service can provide that solution to the problem.

So those are the types of video that you want to send in that email follow-up. Next, case studies,

Got to love those case studies.

So, it’s one thing, like we said, we have those videos where people are just talking about their product or service. How great it is. Well, proof is in the pudding.

Exactly.

Is there a customer of yours that has seen that realization within the organization of your solution, and have implemented it and it’s working? Showcase that. I mean…

It’s because it’s a million times better from somebody else coming in and saying, “These guys are awesome,” versus, “We’re awesome.” That’s just their positioning.

Right. Yeah. It’s that third-party type of element where, you know, the customer of yours that’s in that case study doesn’t really get anything out of it per se. You know, they might be mentioned and get a free video out of it, which is great, but at the same time it’s not like they’re thinking, “What’s in it for me?”

“This is going to help us,” yes.

It’s kind of a thank you. Like, “Hey you guys did a great job. We appreciate it.”

I kind of like it too when, I don’t know if you use TripAdvisor a lot or whatever, sometimes I can get into a little bit of paralysis analysis when I’m looking for restaurants to go to. But I think a lot of people, you go and you look at those reviews and it’s kind of that experience from that B2B piece. It’s like, “Let’s see reviews: how did this work for other people, and if they had success with it.”

Yeah and especially, if it’s exactly the same solution that they’re trying to purchase. So, if it’s directly related, then it’s like this organization had that problem and you solved it. Whoa, Wonderful!

I mean, it’s kind of, you’d be foolish not to choose that option.

Or at least to evaluate it strongly and shortlist it. Yeah.

Shortlisting is great. So, next is sending blog articles. So, maybe you can’t do a video. That’s okay. You typically have some very, what do you want to call it? Experts in your industry about the solution that you guys are providing. They’re the experts.

Yeah, yeah. Interview them. Get them, ask them a question, have them answer it, turn it into, you know, human-speak versus engineer-speak, or something. And get that on your website! Because that’s going to be providing information and value and education and it works 24/7, 365. But yeah, then you can- when your sales team can listen to a prospect, and they say, “Oh I’m having this problem.” That’s a great follow-up.

Absolutely.

Like, “Here, read this article. This is going to help walk you through these different steps,” and within that content, you’re able to logically lead them on that progression, you know, where they’re going to say, “Oh, your product makes sense.”

So note for the sales and marketing teams, get together, figure what that content is, talk to your sales people: say, “What are those frequently asked questions? What comes up all the time?” That’s your content. And the sales people will be like, “Oh, this is awesome! And now I can reference this. Boom! It’s in my back pocket.”

Exactly. And then in our study, okay? In our Industrial Insights that we published recently. 70% of manufacturers are not publishing at least one article a week. So, when you look at, think of all the different questions your sales team has been asked. Probably more than 52, right? Well that’s 52 missed opportunities. It also means that your competitors probably aren’t publishing content either.

It’s an opportunity.

Exactly!

Absolutely! No, that’s great. So, it’s kind of like a, you know, you were able to multi-purpose it. So to be able to help from an SEO to search standpoint, but then also be able to use it in the sales process. So, it makes a lot of sense. A lot of sense.

Next, is sending third party articles. So maybe you’ve been featured in a trade magazine or something, or featured on IndustrialSage…

Hey!

Hey, here we go. Send that to them, ’cause it’s that third party where it’s less self-serving maybe coming from a more objective perspective. Giving that to them is another touch point, another piece of value you were able to give them.

You just gave me an idea, and I like it. It has a catchy name. I’m not going to say it, ’cause I don’t want YOU to know what it is! Just kidding. It’ll come out later. Alright, cool. So what’s the fifth one?

Fifth one, have your marketing team connect with those prospecting, those organizations you’re prospecting on social.

Why?

Why? Well, I’d say for the majority of organizations, they’ve built a social presence. So they have LinkedIn, they might have YouTube. They’re on Facebook. They’re on Instagram or Twitter. Most likely, they’re not getting a lot of engagement. And so when they see YOU engaging with them, and maybe providing some value, not, “Hey come look at how great we are,” but true value to that problem they’re having or just engaging with them… You’re going to show up on the radar. They’re literally going to get calls from the CEO in, you know, in Africa on his vacation. “What in the world is going on with our social!?” You know. It’s going to happen.

True story, by the way.

True story.

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense because, share the love! Even just help them solve their problem like you said, they want attention. They’re on social media: go share their stuff. Like, comment, don’t be self-serving. You know, add, contribute to it.

So, it’s being self-serving without being self-serving. If that makes any sense.

That makes a lot of sense. Provide value first, right? That’s really what I think it comes down to. So, this is great. So alright, to recap. You’ve got the five different ways. One was using video. So, send video– Oh! First, standardize your process.

Yes! Do one thing a thousand times.

Yeah.

Okay? I’m going to remember who said it. I don’t know if it was Jackie Chan? No it was the other guy. Jet Li.

Jet Li? Okay. All right.

Jet Li.

All right, so it’s almost like, what’s the stat that says you have to do something like 10,000 times before you.. There’s a book on that, too. I’m blanking on it.

I’m pretty sure you have to do something 10,000 times.

10,000? Oh, to remember it. You should be able to master it or something like that.

21 times?

No. It’s the 10,000 hour rule! That’s what it was.

Oh!

Something like that. I don’t know.

Either way, standardize it.

Standard. Yes. Then the next piece is videos. Use videos to, and share those and send those out because they’re engaging. Number two.

Case studies.

Case- oh yeah, those are good. And those could be like white-paper documents or video content or, you know, what have you. Number three, blog articles.

Blog articles.

Third party articles from other media companies. And last one is, have your marketing team connect with them on social and be helpful.

Yeah.

All right, that’s it. Those are some great ways, those are some really great ways of being able to do that so.

You’re going to engage, you’re going to shorten that cycle. You’re going to be helpful, you’re going to help them solve their problem faster. I mean that can have a significant impact on their organization. So, we had Cory Flemings from JBT, and he was talking about, sure, trying to sell in a solution, but usually they’re just looking at, “Well, how long is it going to take for us to get the ROI from when implementation starts?” But think about all that time that’s being spent making that decision

The decision, right.

And that monetary impact.

Well it’s huge. It’s not like, “Let me go scroll on the list and check the box and hit ‘buy’.” It’s, you have a whole process and specs, you have to do all that stuff, yeah.

Great insights.

Awesome. Well, cool. All right, well thanks again.

Yeah, lovin’ it.

Good episode, alright. Okay so, another great episode here with IndustrialSage. These five tactics. Five things you could do to really help to shorten that sales cycle with your industrial sales. So, hey listen. I hope you liked it. If you’ve got another one that we missed, and you said, “Oh man, you guys have got to put this one!” Hey, comment, you know, put a note there, send us a note, and we’ll include it. Jump on the conversation on social media. Listen if you’re not on our email list, you need to get on it, post haste: Industrialsage.com, and you can subscribe ’cause we’ve got really cool stuff coming down the pipes continuously. We have manufacturing news, we’ve got the executive series, we’ve got the podcast, the Agency Success podcast. I probably butchered that but it’s okay it’s there. Just go to the website, you can check it all out and we’ve got more coming. So, that’s it. That’s all I’ve got for you today. I’ll be back next week. Thanks. I’m Danny, and goodbye.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

Okay well, welcome today’s episode of IndustrialSage with our Executive Series. I have the distinct pleasure of being here with Mr. Tim Vargo, who is the CEO of Exide Technologies. Tim, thank you so much for joining me today.

Yeah, thankful to be here. Thank you, appreciate it.

Well, we’re excited to have you here. So, for those who aren’t familiar with Exide, can you just tell a little bit from a thirty thousand foot view, who you guys are?

Sure, one of the oldest and largest battery manufacturers in the world. We began manufacturing batteries in 1888–

1888!?

One of the very first companies to manufacture batteries and have served a variety of different markets. Over the last 130 plus years. So it’s pretty amazing. We have our main emphasis in manufacturing in Europe, which is about two thirds of our revenue and then North America. So we ship products generally all over the world from either North America or Europe.

Excellent. I’m excited to kind of dive into that a little bit more.

Sure.

Especially what batteries looked like back in 1888. But before we do that I just kind of want to get a little sense of Tim.

Sure.

Of you, your story, how you got to where you are, take me back, where did you go to school? What was that first job, what did that look like?

Sure. Well I’m a boomer, so my father served in World War Two. My family is from Eastern Europe, Hungarian. So I grew up in the rust belt in manufacturing. So family farmers came over from Europe, got manufacturing jobs in North America to build a better life for them and their family. So my aunts, uncles, and cousins all worked in factories generally up in the Cleveland, Ohio area: from Detroit down through Pennsylvania. So I grew up in a just a good old-fashioned rust belt town, a lot of manufacturing jobs, and so having a good work ethic was expected.

Hmm. Yeah.

I watched my dad come home from work every day, not really having a good time at work, but it was a job, he got it done, and he just never really had a whole lot of fun. And I was determined that whatever I did with my life, I was going to try to come home from work with a smile on my face. Man, I just love what I do, so aspirationally that’s what I wanted to do versus what I saw my father and some of my uncles, and some of my aunts who worked in long, long day manufacturing jobs, just didn’t really appeal to me.

What were they doing?

Assembly work.

Okay.

Punching outfits and parts. Assembly at Ford Motor Company, GM, building engines, building pumps. You know, all the little things that the rust belt is known for. Real, great industrial manufacturing.

Okay.

So, you know, I was a pretty industrious young guy. I started raking leaves early, shoveled snow. When I got old enough, our family did hunting and fishing, and so my brother was older than I was and had a trap route. So I was trapping muskrat and mink…

Awesome!

…when I was probably 11 years old.

That’s pretty cool.

Yeah, walking into a creek, setting traps, doing that, bringing the game home, skinning them, and selling the pelts.

That’s awesome.

So that was my winter job since I couldn’t rake leaves and there wasn’t really that much snow to shovel. Had a job in a kennel, cleaning kennels as a young guy, maybe 13 years old. Had an office cleaning job, you know. So I learned to work hard, I learned to be responsible for showing up to work on time at a young age. I got that from my dad, you know. My dad was up every morning at five, left the house at six, came home at 5:00, 5:30 so you know, that’s what you do.

Yeah.

So anyway I did those things and graduated from high school, had aspirations to go to college. My dad said “Great, you go ahead, but you can pay for it, ’cause we don’t go to college here, we go to the factory and work.” I said “Okay,” so I attended Kent State University in the fall of ’69, not a good time to go to college.

Yeah.

Spent my first semester there of my good hard-earned money not meeting one professor; they were all out protesting the war. So I quit college, put a backpack on my back and hitchhiked to Florida.

To Florida!? Oh, okay. The story plot thickens!

Worked on construction and made a pretty good living down there for about six months, got really lonely, kind of missed my home, missed my family. Drove in my 1950 Cadillac from Florida to Ohio, and my dad said, “Welcome back son. Get a haircut tomorrow, and get a job.” So I said, “Thanks dad, good seeing you after six months,” and so by golly I got a haircut and got a job as a manager trainee at an auto parts chain. Now my father loved cars. And much like any kid, male or female: what your parents like, you’re usually kind of attracted to. So I loved cars and so boy, here’s an opportunity to go to work for an auto parts company at age 19 years old, as a manager trainee.

Wow.

And so boy I really loved it, got paid $56 a week for 56 hours of work after tax.

All right.

My dad said, “You’re crazy, come to the factory and work with me.” I said, “You know what? I come home smiling. You don’t.” And so one thing led to another. I made the assistant manager’s job, got to manage my own store. Took the worst store to the best store, really found a way to get work done, through other people in an enthusiastic way. Made sure I had the right butts in the right seat.

Yeah.

Ended up getting multi unit responsibility, did pretty good there. Then kept growing, eventually became the Executive Vice President of a family-owned business. Not mine, somebody else’s, learned from some great mentors and how to purchase product and how to serve customers and just really learned a lot. Then I had an opportunity to join a company by the name of Auto Shack, which became AutoZone in 1984. So I joined them as an Executive at age 34.

Wow.

Running half the stores. Within a couple years I was running all of supply chain, eventually became the President, Chief Operating Officer. And watched the company grow from virtually nothing to 3,000 stores and five billion in revenue. That was over 84 to 2001 and today that company has 80,000 employees, 6000 stores and does about 11 billion in revenues. So, my heart’s in retail and my heart’s in distribution. I believe in being a servant leader and like to surround myself with people who share that passion to do that. Took a couple years off. You know, when you’re running that hard, a little vacation is good now and then. Don’t get a chance for much of that, with that go-go of a company.

Right.

Served on a couple of boards of directors when I was fairly young, in my 40’s, wasn’t really a good fit for me. I wanted to actually get stuff done.

Ha. Yeah.

So I ended up getting back in the workforce, I ran a heavy duty truck parts distributor for a couple of years and real downturn years of eight, nine, and ten. So I learned, I’d been used to this kind of growth. I hadn’t been used to ever running a business that declined. We declined 30% in one year, in the downturn. Managed to turn that around. It was a private equity owned business. They had another business they wanted me to run, so I then ran a commercial HVAC parts distribution company. So more distribution just a different segment.

Yeah.

Retired again at age 60, pick a number four, five something like that, six, and served on a couple of boards, Exide being one of them.

All right.

And lo and behold they said, “Listen we need a little help. Here, would you consider running this company?” and I went, “Absolutely, let’s go.”

Awesome.

So I’ve learned I don’t do retirement well. And I really like working with people who want to be successful and are driven and are passionate about the work that they do and the customers they serve.

That’s awesome, what a great story! There’s a lot of things there that I love. You know, obviously a strong work ethic. And I think that story of smiling, coming home and smiling. I’ll get into that in a little bit. It gives me a great follow up question later. Throughout your journey, where were some people who helped to really influence that, that created some of those milestone moments or mentors? What did that look like?

You know, my first store manager had just come out of the army in 1970, which is when I started working at the auto parts company. And he was a guy a few years older than me, but he had a passion for customer service. I don’t know where he got it from, but he shared it with me. He taught me how to embrace solving customer problems, how to do it with a smile on my face, how to be inquisitive, how to always try to learn. And so I was very blessed to have a mentor like that for my first few years in business. And so that’s how I thought you were supposed to do it.

And so I learned how to do that and that worked pretty well for me through the years. I would say that Bill is the guy’s name, still a friend today, and had a really strong influence on me, and I was blessed to have other leaders along the way, who in that family business shared the family principals: and so that’s how we kind of ran our business. And so through the years I’ve certainly been involved in businesses who I could see weren’t led like that, and the results that they got. And rarely are they ever as good as a business kind of run the other way. So, had a strong influence on me.

So today now, you mention this story or this idea of going to work and coming back with a smile on your face.

Yep.

Today what is that, what motivates you, get out of bed super excited and come home with that smile on your face?

Well you know, Exide is a great company: it’s been run 130 years, it has grown, it was the largest battery manufacturer in the world back at the turn of the latest century 2000. Fell into some hard times, had some leadership issues, some financial issues, kind of over-extended their reach and growing too fast. And then a downturn and then maybe some mismanagement, so we’ve had a pretty bumpy road since kind of 2006, seven, eight, nine. And so the company’s gone through a lot of turmoil, shrunk in size, which is not as unusual for a company that’s having problems.

And so joining the board of the company, seeing the enthusiasm that the people had, in spite of the challenges. I felt like this was going to be one of those ones where you just needed to harvest the energy of the people, who were there and make sure we directed in the right way, in order to solve our own problems, while solving the customers’ problems. So it was pretty easy for me to come to work kind of being myself. And then motivating the people around me to come in with that same kind of attitude, even though many of them had been through some really tough times.

Yeah.

We had hired some really good people, from other industries, to kind of fill some slots based on the fact that we lost some really good people in the downturn of our business. And so we had a really nice blend of people who had been in successful businesses and knew how to do that, trying to motivate and encourage our folks who have gone through some tough times. To kind of pick themselves up by the bootstraps and look at the glass half full instead of half empty.

So it sounds like what I’m hearing is, culture.

Absolutely, culture.

Big emphasis on culture.

Yeah– and speak the truth. We, our company I think for several years really kind of hid from the truth. We didn’t face up to the fact, to our employees, “Yeah we’ve had tough times, but here’s our path to success.” And with the help of our communications team and our leadership team, we were able to jump in there and as a leadership team talk about where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how we’re going to get there. Kind of paint a picture of what success looks like.

Right.

And then put the cornerstones in place to get there. So that’s been the path we’ve been on now for almost a year and half. And we’ve had some really good successes and I think now our employees around the globe can see where we’re going and can see where we’re making progress in getting there and our customers have been very welcoming and very supportive. So that’s helpful too. Very loyal customer base.

That’s awesome. So let’s pivot a little bit now, let’s talk about things that don’t necessarily… might not put a smile on your face, maybe they do– and that’s some of the challenges the industry is facing.

Yeah.

That maybe goes beyond Exide, just the industry in general. What are some of those challenges that you’re seeing in the industry?

Well, you know, obviously we’re in the battery manufacturing business, so we’re manufacturing batteries for cars, for trucks, for any kind of transportation piece. We also do standby power, which is how we got in the business in the first place back in 1888. Standby power today would be harvesting solar energy and storing it in a battery, for example. Doing backup power for data centers and that sort of thing and then, of course, what we call motive power, which is forklifts.

And then we have a variety of different solutions for the military. Almost all include things that aren’t necessarily environmentally friendly that for years, and years, and years people didn’t recognize as environmentally, as not environmentally friendly. So lead and acid are things that make a battery click and if you don’t take care of the leftovers, you’re going to have a problem. And for years our industry did not do that and I mean for years. So if you went back into the early first century, in England, they were mining lead, they were pounding lead out with open kettles and they were making roofs and utensils and all kinds of things out of lead and then eating out of it. And so consequently, people were dying of lead poisoning, but they didn’t know.

Yeah.

You really had to go to the middle of the 20th century before we finally realized that lead was a problem. And so unfortunately our industry has a lot of baggage around lead.

Sure.

Listen, it’s…our industry’s done a great job. We recycle in the transportation space. If there are roughly 70 or 80 thousand batteries manufactured in North America. We recycle all the lead, all the acid, all the chemicals and the plastic from those at almost 100%.

Wow.

So it’s a fantastic story to tell.

Yeah.

It’s not told often enough. Same thing in Europe. Europe has a great recycling history as well. So the challenge in our business is that you know, everybody’s always looking for the easy solution. So then lithium has come on board here over the last decade or so. People are saying, “Lead acid is dead, Lithium is the solution,” but kind of forgot lithium’s got a lot of stuff in it that people don’t like either and isn’t good for the environment. And oh, by the way, it’s not something that’s completely recyclable yet. And may never be.

Really.

And so we’re dealing with a couple of things. We do lithium today, we buy lithium cells, we assemble them. Provide solutions for a variety of different energy needs, from backup power to motive power for forklifts and that sort of thing. But it’s a complicated problem, because the industry isn’t old enough yet to have developed the full recyclability. So we’ve got to be good stewards of that product as well. And that’s exciting. So we’ve got the old technology, which people are investing in and trying to make it better, cheaper, continue the sustainability, while providing better solutions, for what people are using lithium for today. They can let acid be a substitute for that in the future.

So even though it’s a 130-140 year old technology, new solutions are being developed today out of this old mineral called lead. It comes out of the ground and provides great energy storage. Energy storage is going to be in everybody’s lifetime who’s watching this. And we just have to figure out how to provide the most efficient solution at the best cost and have it be sustainable at the same time. How could you not be more excited about that? Doesn’t matter whether it’s car batteries, truck batteries, stationary power whatever it is.

Yeah, you know it’s so interesting to see. And I imagine, obviously, you’ve seen just a huge shift. And just looking in the automotive space, for example, this big push: the Teslas of the world going more electric, which has a big battery. The power is kind of a big deal with that. Or you look at-

It is a big deal.

…talking about drones and Amazon, talking about how now we want to, having operated a few drones in the past… We’ve seen over the past several years like the efficiency, just, it’s getting pretty amazing, but as I imagine, as you mentioned a lot of hurdles there. We’ve got to make this better, faster, cheaper and, by the way, we need to be nice to the environment.

Yep, that’s right, yep.

Yep, so you have a big challenge on your hands.

Of course. You know, the fun part about business from my perspective, is no matter what business I’ve been in, there are always challenges. It’s how you embrace them, in my opinion, that’s how you are going to be successful or not. You can’t walk around and say, “Woe is me. Oh, we’ve got this really tough time. Our sales are down, so battery sales are down, what are we going to do?” Get over that. Find the solutions, generate the business. Have deep relationships with your customers, provide better solutions then your competitors do.

Yeah.

You know, that’s one of the things that drives American business so well: we’re very competitive around the world. And we set the standards for efficiency, productivity, return on invested capital… that’s why the US markets are so hot today. The US manufacturing is outstanding.

Well competition helps drive innovation.

Absolutely.

You don’t have competitors, you won’t have innovation.

Well, lithium is helping the lead acid battery manufacturers become more innovative. And so we know for a fact that we’re going to be providing solutions, in the future, that we weren’t able to do today, because, like most businesses, you go through investment cycles. And the lead acid battery business has been kind of stagnant in the investment cycle for a long time. Now there’s a lot of enthusiasm around it, because the challenges of lithium are now coming to the forefront. And so it’s forcing more investment in that tried and true power storage of lead acid, to take that next jump in technology too, so real exciting to be a part of that.

Absolutely. So we’ve got a large show coming up. We’ve got MODEX, and I think you guys are going to be a part of that. Do you have a new technology, innovations that you’re rolling out that you can share?

Well, obviously this is for the forklift power business- and we’re a key supplier in that industry and have been for a long long time with our GNB brand. And so we did a really key acquisition a few years ago. A small company in South Carolina, called Aker Wade, and they provide some outstanding charging systems that actually monitor the battery usage for large users of forklifts And it’s a very intelligent system. So we’ve been able to integrate that into our battery technology and so we’ll be demonstrating there at MODEX.

The technology that we’re bringing to the marketplace and how we can study the usage of our customers’ products and where they’re actually in use, monitor their performance, let them know when they can be charged and all that is available in the Cloud so they can look at real time. So we’re pretty excited about that and I think we’ve got a number of things that are leading the way in our industry. Which is pretty good for, you know, a 130-year-old company to be innovative and leading the way in certain things.

I’d say so. You have to be. That’s the big story right now: making, to dumb it down, ‘smart products,’ or leveraging IOT. To take more data and see what the story tells. Somebody was telling me that, I was reading a report, they were saying that actually manufacturing, and we can lump in logistics and supply chain and all that. Is actually one of the most data prolific, if not the most data prolific, industry out there at all.

Absolutely.

So it’s, I thought that was interesting. I thought about it for two seconds. Think about all the processes and everything that’s going on, that’s very exciting. So that’s kind of it, that’s what I’ve got for today. I really, really enjoyed hearing your story. I really enjoyed hearing your background. I think one of the big takeaways that I have is just this concept of, A, your work ethic; interjecting that into the culture and this notion of coming home smiling. Making sure that there’s a passion and that you are plugging yourself in, and you come back and not all days. I’m sure you’ve got your non-smiling days, right?

Yeah well, not too many, but yeah. You know what’s interesting to me is, now that I’m old enough to remember people saying that when I was young, the work ethic had gone down the drain, and we didn’t have the same work ethic. I’ve been around long enough to hear that from my kids and now my grandkids. And what I would tell you, we find a great workforce out there today. They’re easily motivated, provided you are giving them reasons to work, from where they like to work and how they like to work. And so, the challenge for old guys like me, is to try to figure out how you can make sure you’re providing a work environment for today’s employees, differently then we’ve had in the past. And I think our company’s doing a really good job of that.

That’s awesome.

Happy to be a part of that, too.

Excellent, no lack of challenges.

No, none.

But that sounds like you’re tackling them head on. In a great way.

Great.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Appreciate it. Thank you, my pleasure.

If anyone would like to check out more about you guys, I’m sure they can check you out online?

Exide.com.

Perfect.

We’re there.

Excellent, thank you Tim.

Thank you.

All right, well that wraps up our interview with Tim Vargo, the CEO of Exide Technologies. Listen we’ve been rolling out with these stories. The Executive Series, fairly new, and I tell you what I’m really, really enjoying this, hearing all the different stories and the background. Just to getting an understanding of how the influence of your background and these different stories are influencing today’s executives and going into the different companies. It’s been, I’m excited about it. Get really excited, we can have more coming down the tracks. A lot more executives are going to be coming and hearing their stories.

If there’s something particular you’d love to hear about, reach out to us. You can submit a question to us at industrialsage.com/questions. We’ll take that feedback in and put it into the show, so that’s all I’ve got for today. Thanks so much for watching or listening if you’re on any of the podcasting stations. I’m Danny Gonzales, thanks for watching, and I’ll catch you next week here at IndustrialSage.

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