Manufacturing Happy Hour

Welcome back to another episode of our Sales & Marketing Game Changers mini-series! The third edition of our 4-part panel discussion features Chris and 5 other sales & marketing gurus sharing their thoughts on the most pressing topics for B2B business leaders in 2020 and beyond.

Are there things getting in the way for you and your organization to make sales? Part three is all about identifying and eliminating those roadblocks impacting sales and marketing. We share our perspectives on the top roadblocks, how to detect them, and wrap up with pointed tactics on how to reduce them.

After you listen, forward this podcast to your company’s sales and marketing leaders. Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com/GameChangers for a full list of resources from these episodes and to connect with the other panelists. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

We’re moving right along in our Sales & Marketing Game Changers mini-series! In the second edition of our 4-part panel discussion, Chris is once again joined by 5 other sales & marketing experts to take on some of the most pressing topics for B2B business leaders in 2020.

In part two, we’re shifting the focus from marketing to sales as we discuss the importance of listening, tracking outcomes, and creating a marketing strategy that is all about the customer. Said another way, it’s not about you! We’ll all share 1 thing that leaders can change to not only impact sales, but gain a ton of authentic customer feedback in the process. Finally, we’ll wrap up with a conversation about leveraging data so that you never have to “sell naked” ever again.

After you listen, forward this podcast to your company’s sales and marketing leaders. Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com/GameChangers for a full list of resources from these episodes and to connect with the other panelists. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Jason Ray is the CEO of Paperless Parts, a company on a mission to make manufacturing more accessible. After spending 8 years in the Navy in leadership roles ranging from Supply Corps Officer to Additive Manufacturing Lead, Jason co-founded Paperless Parts, and through their cloud-based sales and quoting software solutions, he's helping job shop manufacturers quote faster, win new customers, and increase revenues.

In this episode, Jason takes us through his story as a military leader and how it ultimately led to the creation of his current company. On the surface, this episode is about Paperless Parts’ software solution that’s streamlining the quoting and sales process for job shop manufacturers. But beyond the ins-and-outs of their software, we’ll cover bigger topics like customer experience, digital transformation, and the workforce skills gap. Whether you’re in a job shop or not, this one is jammed with lessons for leaders across the manufacturing sector.

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Welcome to the Sales & Marketing Game Changers mini-series, a 4-part bonus edition of Manufacturing Happy Hour where we’ll be tackling the most pressing topics facing B2B business leaders through weekly panel discussions. Your host Chris Luecke is joined by 5 other B2B sales & marketing experts to take on some of the most pressing topics for business leaders in 2020.

In our first edition of the Game Changers, we’ll be focusing on authentic, modern marketing. We start by debunking some of the biggest misconceptions about marketing before hearing multiple perspectives on what effective marketing looks like today. Finally, we share actions you can take right now to make your marketing more impactful.

After you listen, forward this podcast to your company’s sales and marketing leaders. Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com/GameChangers for a full list of resources from these episodes and to connect with the other panelists. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Wendy Covey from TREW Marketing rejoins us for a bonus episode where we get into the details of content marketing to a technical audience. In this short episode, we’ll cover the specifics of both publishing and promoting content. We start by focusing on a company’s website as the primary publishing platform and why it needs to be an effective marketing tool, from responsiveness to frequency of updates, even to the code behind it. We also cover why having a marketing automation platform and an integrated CRM is essential for measuring how marketing is performing. Finally, Wendy covers inbound and outbound strategies, including how to attract people to your site and move them through the buyer’s journey, as well as working with industry publications and LinkedIn strategies for pulling in new clients.

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Wendy Covey is a maven of technical marketing. She is the CEO & Founder of TREW Marketing, an agency that educates middle-market engineering companies on technical buyer behavior and how to utilize inbound marketing and sales methodologies to generate more demand. She is also the creator of Content Marketing, Engineered, a podcast, book, and now a digital training course focused on building trust and converting technical buyers with compelling content.

In this episode, Wendy shares plenty of tips for engaging a technical audience, but not before she shares her own story that got her to create a marketing agency of her own. We’ll discuss the type of content that technical buyers are looking for, as well as how to make technical content cool, interesting, and informative. Wendy has plenty of stories to share from her decades of experience, and we’ll even walk you through the steps companies should take to start creating better technical content.

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

Joe Sullivan has been making his mark on B2B marketing for well over a decade. He's the Founder of Gorilla76, an industrial marketing agency that helps mid-sized B2B manufacturers identify, attract, engage, and drive sales opportunities with ideal-fit customers. Most recently, he launched The Manufacturing Executive Podcast, a show focused on conversations with passionate manufacturing leaders who have compelling stories to share about their successes and struggles.

In this episode, Joe gives us a thorough crash course in marketing for industrial clients. We debunk some common misperceptions around marketing before Joe shares Gorilla76’s Industrial Marketing Roadmap strategy. The best content comes from the minds of your experts, and we’ll cover how to extract knowledge to create material that solves your customers’ problems and draws in new clients. From budgeting to pillar content to social media, we’ll cover plenty of strategies that will turn your marketing from an expense into a sales-generating machine.

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.

We’re back with the Q&A segment of our live fireside chat in this bonus episode on the brewing industry. This time, the attendees from one of our recent “virtual happy hours” with our Manufacturing Happy Hour Industry Community get to ask the questions. We discuss why people, process, and technology are so critical to digital transformation in brewing, while tackling recent events and their impact on brewers. From COVID-19 & remote work to flexibility in markets like Germany where purity law is king, there’s more great discussion amongst our panelists from the Canadian beer market.

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty. 

We invited a panel of industrial brewing experts onto one of our recent “virtual happy hours” with our Manufacturing Happy Hour Industry Community, and the conversation was too good not to turn it into a podcast! This episode features a fireside chat that we co-hosted with Steve Grundy, the Founder & CEO of Top 5 Solutions, who assembled a rockstar cast of beer industry leaders, including:

• Connor MacDonald, a Brewing Automation and Controls Expert at McRae Integration
• Stephen Rich, Brewmaster and Director of Innovation & Education at Cowbell Brewing
• Nicholas Chan, Owner of ICONICK Project Group

In this first episode of our 2-part deep-dive into the beer industry, our panelists cover:

• Smart manufacturing and brewing industry technology
• Trends impacting manufacturing and the associated need for flexibility in beer-making
• An in-depth discussion on sustainability, including examples of lowering your carbon footprint and reducing water usage

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty. 

Jim Quinn knows a thing or two about successfully scaling companies. Throughout his long career as an operations leader, Jim has optimized supply chains for profitable growth at companies like Apple, FitBit, and Applied Materials, just to name a few.

Jim is now the CEO at Plethora, a company that provides flexible Manufacturing as a Service options for making custom parts in as fast as 3 days. In this episode, we discuss how Plethora’s novel software automates the quoting, DFM, and CAM processes for manufacturers looking to bring their CAD files to life quickly and economically through precision CNC machining. Beyond Plethora, Jim shares some of his best operations & supply chain lessons with stories and strategies from all points of his career. From Buddhism to cucumber-basil gimlets, this episode has it all.

Make sure to visit ManufacturingHappyHour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.