How to Create Distributor Plans that Incent Growth [FREE TEMPLATE]

This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com

Many manufacturers treat their distributors equally. They offer everyone the same discounts, the same promotions, and the same training programs.

However—not all distributors work equally hard for your business.

In this article, we’ll look at how the right distributor plan can help you get the most benefit from your distributor relationships and drive the business objectives you want to achieve.

What Exactly is a “Distributor Plan”?

A distributor plan formalizes the key aspects of your distributor relationships, namely:

• What should the distributor be doing for you?
• What should you be doing for the distributor?
• What’s the reward for success?

How does this help? It allows you to incent the right behaviors and get everyone working toward the same common goals.

For each distributor relationship, you should have specific goals, which will in turn drive the specifics of your plan.

Let’s look at an example.

Common Goal: Rapid Growth

Now that you have a goal, begin answering the questions we mentioned above.

What should this distributor be doing for me?

To grow rapidly, you might ask that the distributor hold a certain amount of inventory at all times.

What should I be doing for this distributor?

Holding excess inventory can be risky. To compensate for this risk, you might specify higher margins for the distributor on those products.

What’s the reward for success?

Here are some options:

• Build in incentives for the distributor’s sales team to hit specific targets, offering rebates to the distributor once those targets have been reached
• Offer to co-share certain marketing expenses to help the distributor and sales teams get there
• If you prefer to directly train and certify the sales reps who represent your product line, you might encourage compliance by specifying higher discounts for distributors whose reps complete your certification

Don’t Reduce Your Spend; Instead, Optimize

Because all distributor relationships are not equally fruitful, your plan needs to direct your money and attention to those distributors that bring you more value.

It’s not necessarily about reducing your overall spend; it’s about redistributing your spend to get the most bang for your buck.

This may mean you spend less in markets that present fewer opportunities. It also allows you to increase your spend in areas with more upside, including growth markets, high margin markets, and markets with highly engaged partners.

Analyze Your Distributor Relationships With These Questions

Before you build your plan, you need to go through some exercises to understand the nature of your distributor relationships. For each distributor on your list, run through these three categories of questions.

Distributor Strengths: What are this distributor’s strengths?

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is this distributor exclusive to my brand or do they carry my competitors’ brands?
• Do they have warehouse space for inventory?
• Do they actively train their salesforce?

Support Initiatives: How well am I supporting this distributor?

Ask yourself questions like:

• What margin expectations do they have, and does my pricing support this?
• Can I offer favorable payment terms or discount structures to incent this distributor to focus on meeting our sales goals?
• Would product training help my distributors improve their expertise and selling efficiency?

Brand Strengths: What could we be doing better in relation this distributor?

Ask questions like:

• How strong is my brand in relation to other brands this distributor carries?
• How well do we market and support our products?
• Do this distributor’s customers know my brand and ask for our products by name?

Turn Your Distributor Analysis Into an Action Plan

Use a Google Form Template with the above questions saved and make a copy for each distributor relationship. Once you enter your answers into the form, Google will automatically create a spreadsheet to store your answers.

At your next pricing team meeting, use the spreadsheet as discussion prompt to create a step-by-step plan to optimize your relationship with each distributor.

To save you time, we’ve created a sample template you can use to get started. Click here to download our free Distributor Plan Template.

You can copy this template to your Google account and use it to store your answers in a spreadsheet.

Get Better Insight Into Your Distributor Relationships with Strong Data

You need to be able to assess the markets you’re winning, the ones you’re not, and the overall health of your financial relationship with your distributors.

To that end, your analysis should include metrics not only on distributor performance, but on market, customer and product segment performance as well.

Look at all of the factors that can impact profitability, including:

• Price (both wholesale and retail)
• Terms
• Rates
• Warranties

Once you’ve armed yourself with the right insights, you can make smart, strategic decisions about your relationships moving forward.

Your clearly defined distributor plan allows you to focus both your time and resources where they can serve you best: on the distributors who are doing more for your business.

By helping your distributors succeed, everyone wins.

The right analytic partner can help you assemble the data you need for the insights that will drive your distributor plan. To find out how INSIGHT2PROFIT can help you unleash the power in your numbers, download this report.

Sustainable Pricing Starts with Your Sales Force

This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com

Achieving significant pricing gains can feel like a long, hard-fought battle. This makes it all the more satisfying when the numbers start to roll in, validating your efforts and proving without a doubt that profitability is attainable.

The thought of losing those gains may keep you up at night. What safeguards can you put in place to protect the gains you’ve achieved and prevent your company from sliding back into past poor pricing habits?

It all starts with building a confident sales force.

1. Handling Customer Pushback

No one wants to pay higher prices, ever. If you recently increased prices or are planning to do so, at least some segment of customers won’t be happy with the change. Know that they will push back. After all, that’s what their purchasing staff gets paid to do. And that’s OK.

Just because they push back doesn’t mean you have to cave in.

A well-trained sales force will be able to hold their ground, resist the pushback and effectively explain to the customer exactly why the price change is necessary and unavoidable.

However, if your sales force is not well-trained—if they are not fully informed about the price change and equipped to discuss it—you’ll likely have some issues on your hands.

2. Communicating Value

Strong companies price according to value. They’re not worried about losing business to the competition because they know they deliver far more value than the competition could ever hope for.

A sales force that is confident in your value proposition can communicate this value effectively. But they need your help to find this confidence. Your sales team needs to be equipped for these conversations, both with hard numbers and high-level messaging.

Data. Quantify your value claims. Your proof might include value calculators, quality metrics, on-time delivery rates, gains on a customer satisfaction index or any host of other value benchmarks.

Message. Document exactly how to articulate the value your company provides so your salespeople know exactly how to make the case for higher prices.

If your sales force believes in your value proposition, and if they are trained to sell a price increase in a clear and thoughtful way, they will be able to ask for and receive the right price—and they’ll be able to stand firm when asked for a concession.

3. The Flip Side of Confidence

Of course, all of this implies that your company does, in fact, deliver value. It’s critical that your quality, service and overarching customer experience be excellent. When this happens, it’s only natural to expect to be paid for it.

But if your company struggles with value—if you’ve had quality or service issues in the past—your salespeople will have doubts.

And if they have doubts, they’ll be more likely to act out of fear when a customer pushes back. They’ll be too afraid to stand their ground on the price increase because they’ll be afraid to lose the business.

If this is the case, it’s time to tackle the issue before your profitability goes out the window.

4. Ongoing Commitment to Training

Ultimately, you’ll find that investing in the confidence of your sales team is one of the smartest decisions you can make. But this is not a one-time event.

Price negotiations happen every time a sales representative talks with a customer, whether or not you or they realize it.

Therefore, you must have ongoing training.

To engage effectively in these continual price conversations, your sales force needs constant reinforcement on the value your company delivers. They need continual updates on the data that support your claims. And they need the freshest messaging and communication materials that will equip them to make the strongest case for a price increase.

If your company does not change prices frequently, the need for this ongoing training becomes even more imperative.

5. Measuring Results and Identifying Opportunities

But slips will happen even in the best-trained companies. Putting a process in place for tracking key metrics can serve as an early warning system to identify potential price leak threats.

As you analyze your price and profitability KPIs, drill down into your data and look for outliers.

It can help to segment the metrics that you track:

• By salesperson
• By territory
• By product line
• By product manager

This may help you understand what is really happening out in the field. You may find, for example, that more concessions are taking place in the Northeast relative to the rest of the country.

Armed with this information, you can look more closely at what is going on in that region. Is there a competitive reason there that warrants the concessions? For instance, has a competitor introduced a new product line that is undercutting yours?

Or is the problem internal? Is the product manager doing a good job communicating value to the sales team? Is this an opportunity to provide the sales team with additional training and support?

Not all price concessions are bad, but all blind price concessions certainly are. Once you start tracking pricing metrics at the appropriate level, you can begin to make accurate judgments about where price concessions are warranted and where they’re not to determine sustainable pricing.

6. The Value of a Pricing Partner

Analytics is one area where the right pricing partner can pay dividends. By helping you establish a system to appropriately and accurately measure price and profitability, you gain a truly granular view of your pricing strategy.

As a result, you can confidently make the right decisions on how to manage prices—deciding, for example, to raise them by 5 percent in Region A, 3 percent in Region B, and hold prices steady in Region C.

You’ll also be able to track against that plan. This allows you to identify gaps and the cause behind the gap so that you can take steps to remedy the gap if needed.

As with all things in business, what gets measured gets improved. If you turn pricing into your most rewarding profit lever, you need the right system in place to implement, communicate and track price changes.

Anything less than that almost guarantees your price gains will be temporary at best.

Creativity is the Key

By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent, Sonnhalter

It took creativity to start your business, and it takes creativity to keep it running every day. So why not apply that same creativity to the greatest challenge facing the manufacturing industry: the lack of skilled tradesmen and tradeswomen?

The time to act is now. Waiting for someone else to plug the hole simply won’t work. Schools’ budgets are squeezed too tight. Government agencies are interested in quick fixes, not long-term solutions. You need to find the next generation of workers.

You have two huge advantages: as a manufacturer you’re used to seeing a problem from all angles and creating a solution. And your jobs are actually cool. They allow people looking for a challenge to use their minds and hands together to build something.

So how do you reach future workers? Show off what you do! Take this example from Birmingham Georgia. A normal company would just see this as another contract. Another job. But BL Harbert saw an opportunity. The Barber Vintage Motorsport Museum is one of the most innovative museums in the world. Why not use it as a draw to show how their skills and abilities help make it that way?

via Alabama News Center

Partnering with Go Build Alabama, they arranged for 120 students to get an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of its museum expansion. Now, we can’t all be working on projects at cool museums, but believe me, much of what you do looks really cool to an outsider, especially when placed into the larger context of what it’s helping to create. I wish I could have seen a CNC machine in action when I was 16 or even a welder or PEX pipe. When you see what a little creativity can do to make the world a better place, or just to improve on an existing solution, you’ve captured someone’s imagination. And when you show them that they, too, can be a part of it, you’ve created a skilled tradesman.

Ready to get started?

Download Sonnhalter’s database of 20,000+ vocational education programs.

Wanted: A Harvard for Skilled Jobs

Today, we have a guest post from Jeff Selingo, author of “There Is Life After College,” which comes out on April 12th.

Nearly 40 percent of American workers hold a bachelor’s degree. College graduates are found in virtually every profession. Some 15 percent of mail carriers have a four-year credential, as do one in five clerical and sales workers, as well as, 83,000 bartenders.

Getting a bachelor’s degree is what going to college means to most Americans and is so ingrained in our culture that students who don’t march along are often admonished, questioned  and considered failures.

The decades-long march to college-for-everyone at 18 has actually closed off rather than opened up options for teenagers and twentysomethings.

As recently as the 1970s, a teenager had a number of options after graduating from high school: get a good-paying job right away, enlist in the military, find an apprenticeship in a trade or go to college.

A teenager today really has only two of those options still available: the military or college. Less than 1 percent of Americans serve in the military, so most go to college right after high school. In the early 1970s, less than half of high school graduates in the United States went on to college the following fall. Today, nearly 66 percent do.

The goal of universal college has actually done more harm than good because it banished anything that smacks of job training to second-class status.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not encouraging 18-year-olds to skip out on further education after high school. But not everyone is ready for a traditional American college experience at 18, nor does it align with the interests, skills, and mindsets of some teenagers.

We need more than just one pathway to good jobs in the U.S. What we need is a place like Harvard—both prestigious and rigorous—that will attract students who have talents and interests to pursue skilled jobs critical for the economy that don’t necessarily require a four-year college degree.

As I traveled the country the last two years talking to employers of all sizes and in all sectors of the economy for my forthcoming book, what I heard most is the worry they have about filling so-called middle-skill positions in advanced manufacturing, healthcare and information technology.

Nearly half of the American workforce has these jobs today, but many of them are filled by aging Baby Boomers who will soon be retiring. It’s expected that as many as 25 million of all new job openings in the next decade will be for middle-skills jobs.

Employers told me they have a healthy supply of talent for their white-collar office jobs that usually require at least a bachelor’s degree and sometimes a master’s or Ph.D. But if manufacturing has any hope of making a rebound in the U.S., there is a desperate need for younger workers with technical, hands-on skills that require training after high school.

Today, only 52 percent of young people have either a two- or four-year degree or an industry certificate by the time they reach their mid-twenties. The goal of universal college has actually done more harm than good, because it diverted attention away from any real discussion of a robust apprenticeship program, and it has banished anything that smacks of job training to second-class status.

There is evidence attitudes are beginning to change. First, the number of apprenticeships is rising for the first time since the 2008 recession. Second, with college debt surpassing the trillion-dollar mark, students and parents are giving apprenticeships a second look as an alternative to paying sky-high tuition for a bachelor’s degree that might not lead to a job. Third, some apprenticeships are beginning to have an academic component that makes them nearly indistinguishable from traditional colleges.

The modern version of what an apprenticeship could look like for American students interested in alternatives to college is on display at the Apprentice School in Newport News, Virginia. Students who choose from one of more than 20 occupational areas are paid an annual salary of $54,000 by the final year of the program—$10,000 above that of the average bachelor’s degree recipient—and afterward they are guaranteed a job with the military contractor that operates Newport News Shipbuilding.

The school is just as selective as Harvard. It receives more than 4,000 applications each year for 230 spots, and significant numbers of its graduates go on to earn bachelor’s or master’s degrees. In many ways, it looks and feels like a typical American college, except in one important respect: its students graduate debt free.

We need more such schools and pathways post-high school that serve a greater array of industries as well as students who don’t want to travel down the one route we offer to them now.

About Jeff

Jeffrey Selingo is author of three books on higher education. He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s “Grade Point” blog, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities.

In There Is Life After College, Jeff Selingo explores why students struggle to launch into a career after college and how they can better navigate the route from high school through college and into the work world. It will be released by HarperCollins April 12

If Your Company Could Speak, What Would It Say?

Today, we have a guest post from Jeff Guritza on the importance of brand identity.

The market wants to know: who are you and what does your business stand for? Said differently, what is your brand promise, and how is your business perceived in the marketplace?

Go ahead and think for a minute about your organization. Take a moment and really ask yourself:

• “Who the heck are we?!”
• “How different is our company than the competition?”
• “What makes working with us unique and compelling?”

All strong brands take a well-defined position, one cemented in a foundation of consistency and sincerity. It is from this position that market alliances are formed, customer relationships are fortified and market share is defended or expanded.

Does your company speak to the market in a clear, consistent manner?

This isn’t just about messaging. This isn’t about a value proposition or pithy mission statement. This is about being real. Proper branding is about having a long-standing, consistent, predictable and definable presence in the market.

“This Is How We Do Things Here”

I believe branding matters today more than ever. Your brand identity will exist whether you’re actively participating in its development or not. You’ve got to clearly define what you stand for, or you will end up standing for nothing at all.

No brand, yours included, will ever hold universal appeal, but that’s the beauty of it. As a successful business selling similar solutions as your competitors, it’s valuable to be able to say to a customer, “If you want to do business this way, then do business with us.” It’s up to you and your brand to define what this way means.

A strong brand opens doors to new customers while protecting the customers you already have. There’s an opportunity for brand building each and every time you engage a customer or potential customer.

It’s human nature to find comfort in the known. If both your brand and your behavior are consistent and predictable, you’re on to something. If you hire or fire with no process, randomly price products in a vacuum or acquire new lines or businesses without a clearly defined assimilation strategy, it’s a recipe for brand insignificance. The devil’s in the details of a finely crafted plan.

The Power Online

Today, customers can be more fickle as they have more options, more opinions and more channels from which to arrive at their buying decision. Years ago, you took someone’s word as to who was the best source for the products needed. Today, everything can be validated or refuted via an immediate, online search.

Buying a new car? Jump online and you’ll instantly compare makes, models, trim levels, dealerships, reliability reports, reviews, recall notices and prices. After an hour’s effort, you’ll become a quasi-expert on virtually every aspect of the planned purchase: what you need, where to buy and what to pay.

When was the last time you talked to an Amazon representative or outside sales person? How about never? Amazon’s face-to-the-customer is devoid of humanity: no names, emails, etc. When you think about it, their “brand” is basically a logo, web address and your online account.

The information superhighway has forced leaders to reassess how they go to market (externally) and how they run their business (internally.) The transparency today leaves little place to hide; employees and customers alike have phones with broadband connections to instantly share their opinions with the planet. Your best defense? A strong brand that’s clearly defined and omnipresent.

Brand Building Isn’t For Sissies

Brand building isn’t like building a house. When building a house, you can delegate some of the work. And as needed, you can make quick executive decisions that cut costs or save time.

Brand building is more like training for a marathon. With true brand building, there are no shortcuts or steps to skip. Either you commit to it fully, or you don’t. Everything matters.

Like marathon running, brand building requires relentless and sustainable dedication, focus, vision and patience. Skipping a few runs and eating poorly has a negative impact on your training. Similarly, neglecting your brand via undisciplined communications, mediocre account management, and misaligned strategies produces poor results.

Here’s a five-step exercise to help get you more refined in your branding discipline:

1. Assess your brand situation/status. Take time to understand the current state of your brand. Are you as committed to your organization’s brand as you can be? Remember: you must always behave/operate in accordance with your brand’s promise. If you’re known for speedy service, you can’t slow-pay vendors.

2. Latch on to a story, and tell it. Every company has a history and a story. This story is the foundation of your brand. Be sure you have that story established, mastered, and shared by every customer-facing associate. Be direct and avoid ambiguity.

3. Think broadly. A brand’s impact and influence is far-reaching. Do not limit your thinking to any existing, narrow-cast set of parameters. Expand your vision beyond the present and explore unchartered markets, pricing models, corporate structures, and product groups.

4. Think digitally. In this era of online everything, at a bare minimum you can’t forget the digital user interface (UI) and the overall digital user experience (UX.) Know that e-mail footers, web sites, invoice templates, etc. are all branding opportunities. Social media has us all interconnected; your brand must tap into this.

5. Be consistently present in the marketplace. Attend industry events. Walk around at trade shows. Hire new associates with fresh ideas.  Blog about your vision for your business or industry. Sponsor community events.  Bottom line: make sure you become a master of brand continuity in the minds of your customers.

Branding Is The W-H-Y

Which leads me to my point: why do customers do business with you? Why do folks choose you over your competition? Why do people pay the prices you charge?

It’s because of your brand. It’s having your people, your processes and your products all strategically wrapped into a compelling, original and authentic package. Proper branding gives an organization its soul. Without a soul, companies tend to behave in awkward and uninspired ways. And this ultimately leads to irrelevance.

Branding requires relentless customer centricity, unwavering internal controls, leadership accountability, laser-focus on corporate metrics and a steady, positive attitude. Your brand is why you matter to your customers. Therefore your brand matters.

Don’t become irrelevant.

Now with The M. K. Morse Company, Jeff Guritza has successfully led sales, marketing and product management initiatives within global organizations and markets for more than 20 years. His work involves creative branding strategies tied to product launches, channel development, structured training programs, corporate acquisitions, and executive long-range planning.

5 Ways to Boost Audience Engagement in the Digital Age

By Andrew Poulsen, Public Relations Technician at Sonnhalter

In 2015, it’s anything but a surprise that social media has completely revolutionized how companies, agencies and organizations connect with their audiences. Many companies utilize these services to build transparency, inform customers of new products and to keep their audiences in the loop on any day-to-day updates and promotions. While we’ve all seen organizations curate pages on Facebook and Twitter, here’s a look at some newer ways companies are maximizing visibility and profitability through social media.

1. Livestreaming-Thanks to recent apps like Periscope and Meerkat, livestreaming has become a totally user-friendly experience, and many brands from Red Bull to GE have used these apps to advance their social media presence. Livestreaming apps can drive engagement through a variety of platforms. For example, Periscope, which is driven through Twitter, can be a great tool for streaming live Q and As, behind-the-scenes interviews or new product releases.
2. Influencer Marketing-A brand ambassador serves as a great go-between for the brand and the consumer. And with the innovation of social media, brand ambassador programs are easier than the more formal programs of the past. Many companies utilize Instagram as a way for social influences to talk about their products. Having these influencers promote your products through their Instagram profiles give the product a much more down-to-earth and less-intrusive style of branding and engagement. The audience also sees the products being delivered often in a much more practical sense than an advertisement.
3. Have an Active Presence-It’s one thing to occasionally update your Facebook or Twitter profiles with product updates and events. It’s another thing to have a constant and active voice for your brand. Ask your audience questions. Be accountable when your audience has issues. Make the audience experience feel personal.
4. Social Media-Exclusive Promotions-Announce deals, sales and contests through your social media profiles. Not only will this capture the attention of your existing followers, but it’s an easy way to grow your audience through sharing, retweeting, etc.
5. Be Mindful of Your Content-While you want your fans to follow all your platforms, you should make sure it’s worth their time to do so. Try to make sure they are getting a unique experience on each platform. While your Facebook could be used for more formal, long-winded announcements, make your Twitter more quippy and digestible. Maybe use Instagram for event photos and behind-the-scenes content.

Seven Mistakes to Avoid in your Content Strategy

Today, we have a guest blog from Machinery Zone on some of the common pitfalls found in a company’s content strategy.

Every construction company with an online presence feels the pressure to create consistent, high-quality content. When done properly, it represents a great way to generate site traffic, build brand awareness and demonstrate your expertise to the world. Every blog post, article and other piece of content you generate is an opportunity to plant seeds that could eventually blossom into a steady stream of viable leads. Are you doing it right? Here are the seven mistakes to avoid in your content strategy.

1) Skipping the editorial strategy set-up phase

Too often, communication projects are missing a guideline. To create an efficient content strategy in sync with your goals, it is essential to set up a solid editorial strategy.

To whom are you going to address your content? What is its purpose?

What are you looking to accomplish?

What is your editorial line and tone?

At what frequency will you publish articles?

These questions will enable you to establish a work methodology and an editorial calendar. Measure your results along the way and adjust your actions according to your analysis, but remember to stay true to your core strategy.

2) Pushing forward commercially focused content

Sales pitches and presentations do not create emotional brand attachment. If you want to see a rise in customer loyalty, offer generous and (almost) disinterested advice and tips to your readers. Share and spread your knowledge. When you educate your customers, they see you as an expert. They trust you and, consequently, they are more likely to buy from you.

In order to produce successful marketing content, it is important to ask yourself:

Is my content truly original, does it offer any added value?

What content will be valuable to my audience and to my clients?

Instead of focusing on selling a product or a service, offer useful, educational content to your audience. Be simple, clear and concise. Forget about technical jargon. Adopt appropriate language and learn to popularize technical concepts. Be interesting and entertaining.

3) Overlooking your target audience

You are a specialist in the construction industry. You host a blog that is appreciated and recognized by professionals in your business sector. But are these professionals really those you want to sell your products or services to?

Knowing your target audience is key to successful marketing content. It is essential to analyze your Google Analytics statistics and clearly identify your clients, those who you are really interested in.

Who are they?

What are their needs and desires? What problems do they encounter?

What vocabulary do they use?

The more you will help your audience and offer solutions to the challenges they encounter, the more they will enjoy, comment and share your content on social media and become your ambassadors.

4) Publishing low-quality content

Long sentences, lack of keywords, poorly explained jargon, major spelling errors, copy and pasted text from the company brochure. These are the main characteristics of poor-quality content.

No matter how exciting the topic is, a poorly written article will not capture the reader’s attention. It can be difficult to read onscreen, create misunderstandings and exasperate industry experts. Worse, it can discredit your expertise.

5) Omitting content promotion

You’ve focused on writing an excellent article and posted it on your blog. But if you do nothing to promote it, no one will know just how great it is!

An effective content strategy does not only address content creation. It also involves distributing, promoting and optimizing content.

Carefully select your communication channels. Rather than dispersing yourself on every existing social network, focus on those on which your audience is present and active.

For example, if your target clientele consists of industry professionals, optimize your presence on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you are selling products where visuals play a major role in conversion rates (house building, gate installation), concentrate your efforts on social networks dedicated to images such as Pinterest and Instagram.

6) Neglecting existing content

You are planning to redesign your website? Before you delete everything, identify which content deserves to be saved, updated and optimized.

Quality content is always of interest to the reader and can be recycled. Obsolete articles may simply need to be updated with recent key figures. Also, when writing a new article, consider making a link to other content-related articles.

7)  Failing to optimize content for search engines

The content you provide to your website visitors is the key to success, not only from a conversion point of view, but from a ranking point of view.

Your main goal should always be to satisfy your audience. However, properly optimizing your content by following a few simple SEO rules, ones that will not compromise the quality of your article, is essential to improve your ranking on Google.

For instance, search engines are more likely to offer better ranking to longer blog posts over 250 words. Work your target keywords in the SEO title, the URL, on-page headline and throughout the content without overkilling it. Add ALT text to your photo and invite your users to share their experiences. A post with an actively engaged comments section is a clear signal that the page has value.

Article by http://www.machineryzone.com/

Think Outside (Your) Box

By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent at Sonnhalter

Ask yourself and a few other people in your organization to name your top-selling product. If anyone answers with a product number, you’re doing it wrong. Don’t think like your catalog or even your current customers. Think like the customer you don’t have yet.

A potential customer doesn’t know you or your company and certainly hasn’t memorized your product numbers. They may not even know that they need your product yet.

All they know is that they have a problem, and they’re desperately looking for a solution.

Help them find it – and you.

Start by not thinking about what you make, but why you made it. What purpose does it serve? What niche it fills? Or, what issues it helps resolve?

Use the answers to those questions as the basis for white papers, success stories and as key words in press releases, websites and YouTube videos.

Put all that out there, and when a customer with an issue starts searching for an answer, your crumb trail of keywords will lead them to you. Make it so that where your marketing efforts don’t bring your product to a customer. Have their search bring them to you.

The best part about turning the tables like this is that it can be a refreshing change of perspective for your entire organization. It makes everyone get out of their silo and put themselves in a customer’s shoes. That can affect not only marketing and SEO, but also product development, customer service and morale.

Fresh Ideas for Staffing Your Hard-to-Fill Skilled Trade Jobs

Today, we have a guest blog from Area Temps on new ways to staff hard-to-fill positions in the skilled trade industry.

The job market is tight, and you have several unfilled openings for hard-to-find candidates, causing your company to lose production unless you pay overtime to your current staff. You’re not alone. According to a recent Boston Consulting Group report, by 2020, there will be a shortage of 875,000 machinists, welders, maintenance technicians and industrial engineers. The steady growth in Northeast Ohio manufacturing, just as many skilled laborers are reaching retirement age, is leaving employers scrambling to find the right candidates from an ever-shrinking pool of applicants. Often, positions remain open for months while HR personnel search for the perfect person who can perform 100 percent of the job duties upon hire. A better solution may be employing individuals with school training who are motivated to work in their chosen fields. Let’s explore why.

Reason #1 – Flexibility

A candidate who is looking for on-the-job experience after completing a training program will be more flexible about work responsibilities than someone with years of experience. They won’t shy away from other duties during down times, such as assisting in the warehouse or cleaning work areas. In most cases, they are satisfied as long as they perform their primary job, such as machining or welding, most of the time. In contrast, many skilled candidates feel that doing work outside their field is beneath them. Recently, we interviewed a highly skilled welder who refused to do anything except welding, even though other job requirements, such as sweeping his work area, were minimal. Needless to say, our client selected a different candidate with less experience but a more flexible mindset. In industry today, having a flexible workforce is a key component to a company’s success.

Reason #2 – Less Turnover

Some skilled applicants are available in this highly competitive market because they are simply not interested in committing to any company long-term. They may spend one or two years with an organization before seeking greener pastures and moving on to a competitor who is offering more money or better benefits. Even though these individuals require minimal training and are productive while you have them, they won’t hang around for long, and you may be in a bigger staffing bind once they leave than you were before you employed them. On the other hand, trainees tend to be appreciative and loyal to the companies that took a chance and hired them. There is a higher likelihood that they will stay with you if you treat them well and give them opportunities for advancement.

Reason #3 – Economical

To land a highly skilled applicant, you must be prepared to offer an extremely competitive salary and benefits package. And if you want to keep them, you will need to give healthy raises, which may become a strain on your budget. In contrast, a candidate with school-only training is typically willing to work for a reasonable entry-level salary to increase their hands-on knowledge in the field. Be careful of underpaying these individuals once they become proficient in their jobs. You should always keep tabs on the going rate for their experience level and pay them appropriately, so you don’t lose them to your competitors. Keep in mind that other forms of compensation work well too, such as generous vacation plans, profit sharing or production bonuses.

Reason #4 – Faster Hire

Since there are more trainees available than experienced applicants, you will be able to fill your openings more quickly. Many times, a trainee can be hired within a few days, versus the weeks or even months needed to hire a skilled individual. Leaving a position open for an extended period of time will result in higher overtime costs to offset lost production. In most cases, a trainee will become proficient in less time than it would take for you to fill the job with your ideal candidate.

Reason #5 – More Trainable

Have you ever hired a candidate who, on their first day, said, “That’s not how we did it at XYZ Company?” If so, you know how frustrating it is when a seasoned person comes into your organization and is reluctant to conform to your procedures, because they feel they know better. Granted, some of the ideas they bring to the table might be good ones, but if they haven’t learned why you handle tasks a certain way, how do they know their methods are better? Trainees come into your company with a clean slate. They are eager to be taught your processes, to prove that they have what it takes to succeed within your organization. Even though they need more initial training than a skilled candidate, they make up for their lack of experience with a willingness to learn.

Reducing the Risk of Hiring an Entry-Level Candidate

Are you still unsure about hiring candidates with limited on-the-job experience? If so, you can mitigate your risk through Area Temps’ temp-to-hire program, which gives employers the opportunity to work with applicants during a probationary period, prior to making a long-term commitment. A trainee’s ability to learn the job, their attitude, their reliability and other important factors will all become evident during this timeframe. Candidates who develop into assets to your organization can be rewarded with permanent employment, at no additional cost to you. Please contact us if you would like more details about available applicants or our temp-to-hire program.

This post originally appears here on Area Temps blog.

Top 10 Posts of 2010

As the year comes to a close, I thought I’d share the Top 10 Posts from the Tradesman Insights blog for 2010.

Social Media: Who Uses It and Why?
Made in America: It Still Matters!
Social Media: Here’s a Manufacturer That’s Getting it Right
Social Media: Don’t Forget the Human Side
LinkedIn: 5 Ways to Make the Most out of Your Connections
50 Power Twitter Tips to Help B-to-B Marketers
Generate Qualified Leads Using LinkedIn Answers
Reps vs. Factory Direct: The Debate Continues…

Enjoy your Holidays with Family and Friends.