How to adapt in a changing B2B manufacturing buying landscape

The buying landscape has changed in B2B manufacturing.

These four photos represent the ways in which so many manufacturers have approached new sales development over the past decade (or in the cases of images A, B and C, since the beginning of time!):

• Image A: The Three Rs (relationships, referrals and repeat business)
• Image B: Trade shows
• Image C: Calling on prospects and past customers (phone, email, knocking on doors, etc)
• Image D: Getting discovered through Google searches

First of all, kudos to those of you who have successfully built your companies on the backs of these go-to-market methods. Your success to date is a testament to the fact that you have something your audience needs and you’ve figured out how to construct a profitable business around it.

That’s no small feat.

But as someone who has advised well over 200 B2B manufacturing leaders, here’s my warning as I look down the road:

For many of these companies, what got them where they are today won’t get them where they want to go in the years ahead.

I’ll use each of the four images above to illustrate why.

The Three Rs (relationships, referrals and repeat business)

As of 2024, 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day.

And as those who have been our loyal customers for many years walk out the door, so do the relationships we have with their companies.

Meanwhile, members of the workforce who grew up with iPhones in their pockets are moving into their seats and acquiring more buying authority. They collect and consume information differently. And they buy differently.

Trade shows

Consider some of the best things a trade show represents from a business development standpoint:

• A venue for building human relationships with a meaningful number of targeted prospects and customers
• A stage for showcasing your products and exposing them to those individuals
• The opportunity to come home with a stack of business cards for lead development

For three days, you can be in your element.

But here’s my big question:

What about the other 362 days of the year?

I’m not anti-trade show. In fact, I share the sentiment with many of you that nothing replaces being in a room with a human being.

But I am anti-trade show when a manufacturer spends $100K on a three-day event, only to invest a fraction of that into earning attention and trust with their prospective future customers over the remaining ninety-nine percent of the calendar year.

Right now it’s more possible than ever before to humanize our brands, to showcase our products, to articulate our value propositions and to tell our stories to the people we need to reach and influence.

All of this cannot be confined to a three-day per year effort.

Calling on prospects and past customers

Not long ago, my nine-year-old daughter Grace asked me, “Dad, who is Spam Risk, and why do they call you all the time?”

Not a bad question, Grace.

There was a time when sales professionals could warm up a receptionist to get to the decision maker. Then came email inboxes, ripe for us to invade. But today our phone and email service providers filter out the spam for us.

Even when a sales message does slip through the cracks, our guards are up by default. I don’t want an unsolicited sales pitch. And I’ll operate under the assumption that my prospects don’t either.

Now pair that with this:

If you Google search “how much of the b2b buying process happens before a sales call?” you’ll find numbers derived from a variety of studies that range from 50-70%.

Whether your future customer is buying a computer or a car in his personal life, or he’s buying a six-axis cnc machine or an inert atmosphere industrial batch oven in his manufacturing engineering life, chances are his first move is not to call a sales person.

The immediate access we all have to a wealth of information in our business worlds today is astounding, especially compared to a short decade ago.

We (and our future customers) would be foolish not to start our research before we talk to a salesperson.

Getting discovered through Google searches

I’m often frustrated to see “Google” or “SEO” used as synonyms for “digital marketing.”

Take 30 seconds right now to think hard about your answer to this question:

“When do you go to Google in a business setting?”.

I’ll bet it’s some combination of the following:

• When your current vendor drops the ball
• When your equipment is reaching end of life
• When you’re developing a new product
• When you’re expanding your facility
• When you encounter a problem you haven’t seen before

In other words – when you’re being triggered to go find a new solution.

And these triggers only come about so often (in many cases, no more than once a year). So if 99% of our audience isn’t going to Google this week or even this month, why is Google so often our default digital marketing channel?

We’re at a fork in the road

B2B manufacturing leaders have a choice to make in the years ahead.

Some will keep doing what they’ve been doing (the things I’ve already illustrated).

But I’m locked into my belief that the winners will be those who:

1. Accept that the buying landscape has changed
2. Reengineer their go-to-market strategies to align with it

Those winners will:

• Go into their respective markets and proactively educate their audiences at scale
• Position themselves as the most helpful, most knowledgeable experts in their product categories by showing, rather than talking, about themselves
• Start building awareness and establishing trust now – before those buyer triggers pull their prospects into buying mode

The bright future for those who adapt

Imagine how much more quickly and effectively you could scale if the tens of thousands of Design Engineers, Plant Managers, Project Managers, Operations folks, CFOs, CEOs, Owners or whoever it is that you need to reach:

• Knew who you were
• Understood your value proposition
• Considered you the expert in your category
• Believed you could help them solve their problems or achieve their desired outcomes

In this world:

• Your sales team would reallocate the time they spend slinging product on one-sided sales calls into facilitating deeper, more engaged conversations with right-fit prospects who actually have buying intent
• Your prospects would come to you with their guards down, already informed and excited to talk about how you could help them
• You’d elevate your status with future customers from vendor to expert advisor and solution provider
• You’d be seen as much less interchangeable in the minds of those prospects, which means you’d command a pricing premium that your prospect would defend when their procurement manager tries to erode your margins

So how do you start making this shift?

Enter strategic marketing.

Here’s how we believe things should flow:

1. Strategy: Instead of tactics, start with your desired business outcomes and reverse engineer the marketing program to get you there
2. Audience: Identify the buying process influencers from the right companies, establish where to reach them and validate through research what matters most to them
3. Messaging: Craft north star messaging that aligns with those customer insights, while communicating how you create value and what makes you different
4. Content: Support your messaging with the most essential content that will educate your audience, demonstrate your expertise and provide social proof that makes them believe
5. Distribution: Precondition your audience for sales by distributing that messaging and content at scale, at the right frequency, in the places where those individuals already consume information
6. Measurement: Install a system for measuring both business impact and the leading signals that show whether you’re on or off track all along the way

If you need help making it happen…

Our team of industrial marketers at Gorilla 76 has been helping B2B companies in the manufacturing ecosystem (OEMs, machine builders, contract manufacturers, robotics systems integrators, industry 4.0 service providers, etc) drive growth for well over a decade. Our best-fit clients look like this.

Below are are a few case studies that illustrate how we’ve helped and the impact we’ve created.

Case study: driving $9M in pipeline for an industrial oven manufacturer: Learn how we helped this custom-engineered CapEx equipment manufacturer turn their marketing program into a revenue machine. Read/watch case study

Case study: building a marketing program for a cable assembly manufacturer: Learn how we helped this custom contract manufacturer implement their first true, sustainable marketing program, focused on marketing-sourced pipeline. Read/watch case study

Make sense to have a conversation?

If you’d like to talk about how to apply all of this in your own business, please consider requesting a strategy call.