Mechanical Engineering consultants and small business owners

[Racecardriver16]

Right now I personally do about 20hrs a week of engineering work for a defense contractor (basic machine design, drafting, some analysis etc) and have one full time employee on a specific program also for the same company.

I am thinking about putting more effort into expanding my business and marketing to other companies. My primary expertise is simple to medium complexity machine design, associated technical data packages and communicating design and process clearly. I don't do much Industrial Design (not that I couldn't) or high end analysis (creep, etc).

What is the first step to marketing this, other than cold calling? Or is that the best bet? Any suggestions on what type of companies to hit up? I see my potential customers being small/medium businesses that are not primarily Mechanical oriented (I do a lot of electrical packaging) but need mechanical assistance.

Thoughts/comments?

 

[Ron]

Identify your target markets and then go where they go...professional society meetings, technical meetings, association meetings...do mail-out or (heaven forbid) blanket emails (not for me, but some do it). Develop relationships with complementary consultants (not competing ones) and do so cold calling. After a few successes, word gets out.

We have been fortunate in our business. About 95 percent of our work comes from referrals. The remaining 5 percent is blind luck...someone contacts us from our website or just calling an engineering firm to see if they can solve their problem. We do essentially no marketing. That could change at any time, but for now we're enjoying it.

 

[Racecardriver16]

Thanks for the insight, obviously you have a fantastic "problem"

 

[Richard63]

Most of my customers have either found me or are referraled to me by others. Be "findable" when people are searching for your services, so have a website, get listed in directories, participate in any networking you can, attend trade shows and talk to people, echange business cards, let everyone know what you do, join trade groups, try networking sites like LinkedIn if you have not already. I've gotten some new contacts that way.

I've sent targeted emails to people I've identified as possibly using engineering services, but only get ~1%-2% response.

I have not tried the cold calling route yet. I need to at least try it, but have a lot of resistance to picking up the phone and calling strangers.

My customers are manufacturers, and manufacturing is slow right now. I'm curious how you go about getting your foot in the door with defense contractors. There are a lot of them in my geographic area, but so far I have only made one contact and they were referred to me through a machine shop. Are there any tips you can share?





Richard

http://www.led-inc.com

 

[Racecardriver16]

My contacts are solely based on previous employment. Large defense contractors are hard to get involved with if you don't know somebody directly.

However, my work with a smaller (15 person) company was a word of mouth thing. I later found out that they did find another guy via google/phonebook etc prior to hiring me but they had a terrible experience.

 

[vc66]

I've done cold-calling, and it's worked reasonably well. The trick, at least for me, is to let the person on the other end know that it's a cold call. They usually find it refreshing that you know it's a nuisance. Then, after you make a joke about it, get straight to the point. I've had about 40% success with it so far, which is above average from what I've read about it.

Word of mouth is by far the best way though. That's where I got most of the jobs in the beginning. Still have some because of it. You also tend to have a better* customer base via word of mouth.

*Better = Less likely to screw you over payment of services.

V

 

[ajack1]

In my experience finding new customers is the hardest part of running a small business, especially in the current economical climate.

I would agree with others that word of mouth is always best and also agree a good clean and simple website is a must have and attending conferences, trade shows etc is a good way to go.

Personal contacts have worked well and are always worth while. Cold calling, flyers, email shots all give some return but much nearer the 1% rather than the 40% mentioned above, in my experience.

We work in a fairly specialised area of automotive so sales reps have always worked well for us, the guys that sell the “nuts and bolts” to the industry have a very good knowledge of what projects are coming up and who is likely to get them. It is surprising what you can get from a next time you are out our way pop in followed by a freshly brewed coffee and Danish or a bite to eat down the local pub.

Personally I always call everyone we have worked for in the past (who we would like to work for again) about twice a year as I have found in the past that people leave and take your contact details with them so you can slip off the radar and sometimes just being in the right place at the right time works, however you need to balance this out against ringing every few days and being a pain in the rear.

All of the above work to some degree but to be honest none except word of mouth and previous contacts has a major impact on our sales figures, but you are only ever one order away from finding your next big customer.

I really wish we could get a 40% return on cold calls as all our problems would go away over night but sadly that is not the case. In automotive at least things remain extremely tight and competitive and you have to fight tooth and nail to win every contract and your competitors are doing exactly the same.

Any fool can win work when work is plentiful and suppliers are in short supply but in the current climate it remains a major headache.

 

[zdas04]

I must not be very good at cold calling. I've probably made over 70 cold calls and gotten zero work from them. Maybe if I made 30 more, I'd get up to the 1% that ajack1 mentions. I'm past the point where I could get 40% in the first 100.

When I started my business I had one client that was having me work almost 300 hour/month--no time to even think about finding new work. After a year, the group I was working for got reorganized and consulting suddenly required a VP's approval and no one wanted to ask so I went from 300 hours/month to zero. Having a single client is a really bad idea.

At that point I started cold-calling people from Don's Directory (it is a yellow-pages kind of thing for my industry). The nice thing about Don's is that it includes people's names and direct numbers. I was expecting a fair number of hang ups, and a fair bit of abuse, but what I got was great people who were ever so sorry that they couldn't use yet another Engineering Consultant, and I should call back in the next year or two to see if things had changed.

Finally I started calling people I knew from when I worked for a living. That got me hooked-up with a bunch of people's new companies. It worked well to find a Production Manager at company XYZ who used to work in the office next to mine when we both worked at company BBB. He didn't use Engineering Consultants much, but his Engineering Manager used them all the time and "had a project much like the one you did in ...". Human Networks really can't be over emphasised.

David

 

[Richard63]

VC66,
Could you post an example script that you use to get the 40% success? It would be very useful to some of us to learn. I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine that works in sales and marketing for a company that performs an industrial service. He is able to get an appointment with 10% of his targeted calls, which I thought was good.

Richard

http://www.led-inc.com

 

[vc66]

Richard-

I don't know if what I do would be considered true cold-calling.

I don't use a script. I do a lot of research before calling the companies. Then, I have all that information with me when I'm calling, so I can target my audience.

First, I research the company itself (whether they're cutting costs, looking to expand, etc.). Then, if I believe I can net a decent amount of work (read profit) from them, I start to research the people in the organization. Pretty much anyone I think I'm going to have to speak with, I try to know a little about. It's amazing the things you can find on the interwebs. When I call, I usually open with the fact that this is a cold call, and apologize for it--then I get straight to my point in calling. If I get as far as the engineering manager, it works wonders that I know if he/she likes golf, baking, cooking, sports, etc.

I don't call very many private companies, as they tend to be less willing (in my experience) to entertain the idea of a contract designer. Plus, it's very difficult to research small private companies.

So, I would say that I do "targeted" cold calling.

I imagine if I just blindly cold called the phone book, the success rate would probably be a lot lower.

Hope this helps.

V

 

[zdas04]

One thing I didn't mention above is that I get a fair bit of work from my signature line in eng-tips.com. People see a post that they like, follow the link to my web page, look at the "Samples" page and think "if he's giving this much stuff away for free, what are his paying clients getting", and hire me. At least half the work I've done since the market collapsed in 2008 has been from this scenario.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

http://www.muleshoe-eng.com

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

"It is always a poor idea to ask your Bridge Club for medical advice or a collection of geek engineers for legal advice"

 

[kalens99]

Cold calling is not very effective for most marketing strategies. I am not saying not to do it at all but the payoffs tend to be the lowest considering the amount of time involved. Networking is key. I would use Linkedin and attend any events respective to the industries you are targeting. I would think if you are an ASME member they could give you some ideas on what's going on.

It's much better to have a real connection to your prospects. They will trust you more and you can prove to them how competent and deserving of their time you are.

Kalen Smith
Engineer-a-Business

http://www.engineer-a-business.com