EDA ::: The Rainmaker Report

August 2008 Issue
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August 2008 Targeting the Top Buyers at IMTS 08

By David Austin, Machine Tool Product Manager, CMTSE

I recently had the pleasure of helping a managing partner at an investment company. His portfolio company buys other companies, holds them for a few years, and then aims to sell at a profit. He called because he used EDA’s services about 10 years ago and felt it could help him research a company that his firm was considering buying. A few of the items inquired about are:

• Can you tell me what share of the market this company has had in the last five years?
• I know that this company’s product X is nearly always accompanied by product Y. What does the sales trend of product Y look like?
• How many of the top 25 buyers based on UCC-1 filing data in each state does this company have as a customer?
• What do you think the overall size of the market is?
• Which companies are the strongest competitors and are they gaining market share?

The questions were insightful and shed light on the thought process this investor had when choosing a company. Clearly he’d like to buy a company that has exhibited strong growth, has marketed itself well, and has room for growth. Aside from the thought process however; it was the substantial investment in EDA’s market information that was most interesting.

He was willing to invest for information that had no other purpose other than make a great strategic decision. In fact he invested more with EDA than some of the companies detailed in the report – companies that can directly use the information not only for strategic decisions but for targeting proven buyers too.

So often it’s difficult to put a dollar value on the long-term impact of EDA’s data. The near-term value comes mostly from the new buyers and top buyers it identifies. Often overlooked is the long-term value that derives from the strategic decisions influenced by the data. These are decisions such as:

• New products to develop that address emerging demand and emerging competitors
• New offices and personnel that serve growing territories
• New capacity that produces extra product to feed growing requirements
• New processes to reach buyers that are untouched by your current sales and marketing

Using EDA’s data for your immediate sales goals is its fastest application for building your business, but also consider the data for your business’s big decisions. In the end, you can achieve the same goal as the investment firm: add millions of dollars of value to your company.

Vist us at booth D-3141 The IMTS trade show report already has 38,598 UCC-1 filings
EDA has created the first version of the IMTS 2008 trade show report. With a few weeks still remaining before the show, there are already 38,598 UCC-1 filings associated with IMTS registrants.

With EDA’s trade show report, you can determine your target attendee group so you can invite them and measure how many you have engaged as described in last month’s newsletter. The TSR has the 13-year finance history report for show registrants. Importantly too, see which customers are coming to the show and make sure they visit. If not, follow up after the show to see if your competitor is working with them.

Please contact me if you’d like more information or feel free to stop by booth D-3141 at IMTS. You may also download the order form here. This year reports are available for EASTEC, WESTEC, IMTS and FABTECH at $295 per show.

Trend Chart Download
To view this month's trend charts, click here. The default view shows the overall machine tool market trend. To view the trend for a machine type, pick the type from the “machine type” drop down box. For example, see vertical machining centers by choosing “VERT MACH CTR” from the box.

If you have questions about the trend charts or the individual UCC-1 records, feel free to contact me. Please forward this newsletter to any colleagues who should receive the trend information.

Sincerely,

David P. Austin
Machine Tool Product Manager, CMTSE
Equipment Data Associates
A Division of Randall-Reilly Publishing

1509 Orchard Lake Dr. | Charlotte, NC 28270
800.288.8262 | 704.858.2971
daustin@edadata.com
www.edadata.com | EDA Overview Video

July 2008 Better Trade Show Sales Through Better Engagements

By David Austin, Machine Tool Product Manager, CMTSE

Machine tools are complex solutions to complex problems, and your skilled sales staff must engage the prospect to have a fighting chance to sell. In the course of interacting with so many sales and marketing teams while at EDA, I’ve seen the gamut of marketing practices to address this challenge.

Shows are among the most frustrating marketing investments to create ROI, but some companies do very well with shows and prove they are an excellent tool. In comparing practices of the successful and struggling exhibitors, I commonly see the biggest improvement needed in engagement. Engagement refers to having a quality meeting with your target attendees in the booth.

At EDA, we help our clients build and measure engagement at shows using the EDA trade show report (the report is described at the end of this article).

Identifying the target attendees
Quality engagements only come from engaging qualified attendees. This makes knowing your target attendee your first step. Here are a few lists to help you whittle the overall show attendees to just those you need to see:

Your customer list.
Your prospects with open opportunities.
Prospects with proven buying history for the machines you sell, service, or complement. This list comes from EDA’s trade show report.
Prospects indicating interest in your type of product during show registration.

Get the target attendees in the booth
You’ve seen the booths with zero pro-active selling. The booth staff sits and waits for the attendees to discover and talk to them. Clearly a proactive approach is needed to ensure target attendees visit. Product and service demonstrations are an excellent way to attract attendees, but if your top targeted attendees don’t understand how your solution will help them, it fails to get their attention.

How then do you ensure top target attendees will visit? Invite them. It's amazing how many people will visit if you simply take a moment to personally ask them. You can mail or call your customers and top prospects to let them know you’ll be at the show and ask for an appointment. Once you have them in the booth, you can interview them about their manufacturing pain points and share how your solutions fix that issue.

There’s also a certain group that won’t accept your invitation and needs a little extra motivation. Using give-aways as an incentive to visit your booth can boost response rates substantially. However, invite only those you know are buyers. Omiting students, literature collectors, and competitors by using only high-quality lists, such as your own database and EDA’s show report, will ensure a higher ROI.

Use caution with cheap give-aways. If your target attendees are high-level buyers, they won’t respond to free juggling balls - you must offer something of real, personal value from their viewpoint. Some effective give-aways are iPods, gift cards to popular retailers, and navigation units, and be sure to limit them to one per company. If your budget is tight, consider a “chance to win” drawing for these items. Lastly, more effective give-aways benefit the attendee rather than their company (e.g. avoid 20% off your first order) and cost you substantially less.

Turn the visit into a quality engagement
A quality engagement includes a needs-based discussion with an attendee, which leads to closing the sale or at least an agreement to continue talking after the show. This is typically accomplished by having your booth staff trained to achieve this desired outcome. You should at the least have a face-to-face sales meeting that begins this important dialogue. Record the engagement by swiping the attendee’s badge, which becomes an input to measuring your results.

Measure your results
After the show ends, it’s time to see if your target attendees visited the booth. Compile a list of your badge swipes, and compare it with your target attendee group. Hopefully, a high percentage was swiped, which shows your invitations worked and ensures your sales staff is following up with the right prospects.

There are also the target attendees that did not visit the booth. Since you know who they are, your sales staff or marketing team can target them once again to see why they didn’t visit the booth. Use the show as your cited reason for the call or mail, and get your second chance at earning their business.

Lastly, you can compare your results for the engaged target attendee group year-over-year. What you did at this year’s show should build on your positive experiences from the previous show, therefore increasing your portion of engaged target attendees.

EDA’s trade show report

With EDA’s trade show report (TSR), you can determine your target attendee group so you can invite them and measure how many you have engaged as described above. The TSR has the 13-year finance history report for show registrants.

Here’s how the TSR helps you:

Determine the target attendees that buy your product or the product your complement by filtering the TSR by the exact equipment that has been financed. You can then calculate the percent of buyers that you’re targeting as well as who those buyers are.
Match your show leads to the TSR buyers. You can then calculate the percent of target attendees that were engaged with a sales person at the show as well as know which attendees to follow up that did not visit your booth.

To order the trade show report, please download the TSR orderform, select your reports, and fax it to the number indicated. This year's reports are available for EASTEC, WESTEC, IMTS and FABTECH at $295 per show. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Trend Chart Download
To view the trend charts, download the file using the link in this newsletter. The default view shows the overall machine tool market trend. To view the trend for a machine type, pick the type from the “machine type” drop down box. For example, see vertical machining centers by choosing “VERT MACH CTR” from the box.

If you have questions about the trend charts or the individual UCC-1 records, feel free to contact me. Please forward this newsletter to any colleagues who should receive the trend information.

Sincerely,

June 2008 Targeting Buyers with Investing Momentum

By David Austin, Machine Tool Product Manager, CMTSE

Thank you for the compliments received last month about the Rainmaker Report’s trend charts. In recent months, we’ve seen record oil prices and a slide in the U.S. Dollar, and you recognize these changes will impact your business. The trend charts will help you understand how this trend is unfolding for the specific equipment that you market.

Identify Buyers Ramping-Up Investments
With the decline in the U.S. Dollar’s value, the companies producing exports are growing. Are you targeting the exporters that are adding or reconfiguring capacity by investing in machinery, tooling, coolant, workholding, automation, and people? In even the toughest business climate, there are businesses with investing momentum. Are you constantly aware of who they are and to what degree they are growing? Do you know which ones are in your sales territory and what types of companies have they evolved to become?

A traditional method of collecting this information is to use a SIC or NAICS search. There is a correlation between industry type and recent revenue growth, and this can show which companies might be in growth mode. Such an analysis can provide the names of some prospects; however, you may find it challenging to sort this list by companies investing in your type of equipment. Additionally, you will miss the companies with inaccurate SIC or NAICS as well as the contract manufacturers supplying the OEMs.

EDA clients rely on UCC-1 filing activity as a primary source to identify growing companies regardless of their SIC or NAICS. Not only do UCC-1 filings identify growing companies, you will find companies proven to have investing momentum for your type of equipment. Let’s take a quick look at how this search can be performed and a possible action plan for targeting the companies identified.

Using Rainmaker, create a query to return buyers with three or more machining centers added since 1/1/2007. This will identify companies with significant recent purchases. Next, open the downloaded data in Mojo Reports to prioritize the list of companies. The top eight results are shown for machining center units:

Using this report, you can find the contact information for these buyers (not shown) by double-clicking on their grand total numbers. Then, a call to each recent buyer will quickly determine their additional purchasing plans. You can also send a personalized mailer to the buyers with less than three units to generate leads from this group.

Increasing Trade Show ROI
A common theme among our clients is how tough it is to earn and measure ROI from a trade show. At EDA, we encourage improving the quality of your booth visitors to address this challenge. Quality prospects can be increased by ensuring proven buyers of your equipment visit your booth and are engaged in a discussion with your sales staff.

You can achieve the first step using EDA’s 13-year tradeshow report for show registrants. Reports are available for EASTEC, WESTEC, IMTS and FABTECH at $295 per show. You can easily filter the report by the type of equipment you sell, resulting in a list of proven buyers sorted from largest to smallest. Since the list has only proven buyers, you can offer them a strong, relevant incentive, via phone and mail, to visit your booth. You can even customize your message to illustrate exactly how your company will boost their profit.

Once prospects are in the booth, introduce them to a salesperson who can immediately qualify and engage your prospect. Even if they miss your booth during the show, your sales staff can follow up with the qualified prospects, post-show, for additional selling opportunities.

Please contact me for more information on any of the trade show reports.

Automation Equipment Now Available
As of January 2008, EDA began tracking several additional equipment types our clients have requested, including robots and bar feeders. Robots are divided into an articulated gantry robot code and a gantry robot code. If you’re seeking buyers with an automation mindset, subscribing to the national feeds for these equipment codes averages as follows:

Articulated robots – 81 units/month
Gantry robots – 27 units/month
Bar feeders – 80 units/month

Trend Chart Download
To view the trend charts, download the file here. The default view shows the overall machine tool market trend. To view the trend for a machine type, pick the type from the “machine type” drop down box. For example, see vertical machining centers by choosing “VERT MACH CTR” from the box.

If you have questions about The Rainmaker Report or the individual UCC-1 records, feel free to contact me. Please forward this newsletter to any colleagues who should receive this trend information.

Sincerely,

May 2008 Analyze Emerging Trends in the Machine Tool Industry Using UCC-1 Records.

By David Austin, Machine Tool Product Manager, CMTSE

Welcome to the monthly EDA newsletter, The Rainmaker Report. The newsletter quantifies industry trends using dynamic charts to identify the direction and size of your industry. The Rainmaker Report details sales by machine type, such as vertical machining center, lathe, waterjet, punch press, injection molding, and welder. No other data source offers the detail and variety of equipment available in this report.

EDA publishes UCC-1 filings, a Uniform Commercial Code form used to register a lien with the Secretary of State. UCC-1 records have the buyer’s company name and address, the filing date, and the manufacturer, model, age, and serial number of the machine. We summarize the individual UCC-1 filings nationwide to create The Rainmaker Report charts .

Upcoming newsletters will deliver updates to the charts and discuss how individual UCC-1 filings are applied for sales growth. For example, UCC-1 filing users can identify buyers of a single manufacturer and model number, analyze market share, predict top buyers in the coming year, and balance sales territories.

To view the charts , download the file using the link in this newsletter. The default view shows the overall machine tool market trend. To view the trend for a machine type, pick the type from the “machine type” drop down menu. For example, see vertical machining centers by choosing “MC - CNC VERICAL ” from the menu.

If you have questions about The Rainmaker Report or the individual UCC-1 records, feel free to contact me. Please forward this newsletter to any colleagues who should receive this trend information.

Sincerely,