How good is your process for finding and
capturing new customers? In the world of electronics,
this challenge is often a key ingredient
to business success. It is estimated that the average
life cycle of an electronic product is between
four and five years. How long have you
owned your current cellphone? This relentless
churn of new products has a profound effect
on companies producing the components (like
printed circuits, connectors, displays, etc.) required
to build the myriad of today’s high tech
electronic products. With this short product
life cycle, simple math suggests manufacturing
companies might expect about 20–25% of the
part numbers they produce to become members
of the e-waste pile in any given year. Which is
another way of saying, “Time to find some new
customers!”
The “Customer Acquisition” process can
be thought of as consisting of three major segments:
collection, selection and execution.
While these sub-divisions should be considered
as intimately interrelated, examining them as
separate disciplines can be enlightening.
Collection
This broadly describes the marketing process.
How are new customer opportunities discovered?
Word of mouth is one way, and as
start-up companies become established it is a
critical element. A positive customer experience
often multiplies goodwill as new generation
products are developed and word is spread
across an industry. The names and faces of buyers
and engineers frequently show up within
differing companies in the same industry so a positive (or negative!) customer experience is
often transferred as employees move from one
company to another. But as companies mature
and are challenged to grow beyond a regional
customer base, an expanded marketplace visibility
is necessary. This challenge is compounded
as component suppliers are most often building
custom products and selling customized engineering.
As such, the supply base needs to make
customers aware of capabilities, which differs
from marketing to an end user. This presents a
unique challenge (i.e., how to make potential
customers aware of your capabilities rather than
the end product you supply).
Getting capability and visibility out to the
world of design engineers can be done in a wide
variety of ways. Several examples include:
• Advertising in online trade magazines
(like The PCB Design Magazine) and on
the Internet
• Exhibiting at trade shows
• Attending industry events and joining
professional organizations
• Paying Google for position rank
• Using SEO strategies to rank highly for
organic search
• Utilizing an outside sales function.
Most times this is in the form of a
manufacturer’s rep paid on commission
• Contacting prospective customers with
an inside sales function
• Distributing literature (design guides,
datasheets, etc.) and mailing out sales
samples
• Content marketing (non-commercial
technical information that is highly useful
to your target market, such as blogs,
published articles, white papers, etc.)
These methods are intended to make a company
highly visible, hopefully during the design
phase of a new project. Since the sale is intended
to take advantage of a supplier’s capabilities,
the earlier the involvement the better value the
supplier can provide.
Selection
Once the opportunity has been collected, a
determination about engagement occurs. This
section of the customer acquisition process often
begins with a request for quotation (RFQ)
from a potential customer. Vetting the opportunity
requires consideration of several metrics
such as size of the project, size of the customer,
potential for future business, engineering resource
requirement, and estimated profit margin.
These are measures of the desirability of the business
and are considered as part of the selection
process. Creating a checklist with these factors is
a common practice for determining pricing. The
multiple dimensions represented by this information
are considered as a supplier decides if and
how to generate a quotation. The offer of a price
per various quantities is the final method used to
select a customer. Most printed circuit fabricators
employ a staff of applications engineers who are
tasked with completing the selection function.
This is truly the ‘point of the arrow’ as they try
to balance customer needs and supplier capability.
The applications engineering group is challenged
to have one foot in the factory and one
foot representing the customer. Determining the
Goldilocks (“just right”) price means the supplier
realizes a reasonable profit and the customer is
pleased with the value received.
Execution
The execution phase describes how the
project is managed after the customer’s order is
received. On time delivery and cycle time are
key metrics during the execution phase. Suppliers
that can consistently meet expectations
will enjoy new part number opportunities. In
the world of flexible circuitry, job set-up and
CAD get the part ready for production and the
operations team schedules and builds the part.
Although building the initial prototype parts is
often not considered part of the sales organization,
success at this phase can certainly have
a lot to do with customer acquisition. Making
the sale and prematurely assuming program responsibility
has been successfully transferred to
operations is often a recipe for failure. Ownership
of a project is best retained with a sales/applications
engineer at least until the initial parts
are delivered successfully. In a world of timebased
competition, fabricators focused on cycle
time reduction are in step with customer’s basic
requirements.
Collection, selection and execution can be
thought of as three legs of a stool. Being good
at only one or two will make success a difficult
balancing act at best. Describing the customer
acquisition process with these three segments
helps define roles played by various departments
and functions. Metrics describing performance
success vary from segment to segment
and performance tracking can be insightful.
As new part numbers and customers place orders,
the customer acquisition segmentation
helps people understand their critical role in
the organization’s success. It also helps measure
what is done well and where improvement is
needed. A good way to view this model is to believe
the statement, “In our business, everyone
is a salesman.”