We have talked a lot in this column about how board shops should treat their customers. How they should try to get to know their customers and their needs. So now let’s switch things around and talk about how customers should treat board shops, how they should work with board shops to get the best […]
Contract Manufacturers: Where Do You Get Your Boards?
Choosing the right PCB vendor is critical to your success Choosing the right PCB vendor is not as easy as you want to think it is. There are still many contract manufacturers out there who believe the myth that all PCB shops are the same and that in the end it’s only a matter of basing their […]
Contract Manufacturers Need Sales And Marketing Too
Artwork courtesy Bob Tarzwell (gallerydeboer.ca/portfolio/tarzwell-robert/) For many years now, too many that I want to count, I have been a real pain in the neck advocating that all board shops need marketing, they need to advertise, send out newsletters, hire and manage, measure, and motivate sales people, create forecasts, and account plans and pay attention […]
Building Leaders
The hottest topic on the PCB circuit these days is the lack of young people in our industry. As the rest of us get older, it is finally occurring to us that there is no one following in our footsteps, there is no one there to fill our shoes, when we decide enough is enough. […]
Customers Still Deserve Your Respect
Times may have changed, but some things never do. The old adage that the customer is always right still stands. No matter how hard it is to accept, you have to live with that law if you want to stay in business. We all know that it is harder to respect the customer now than […]
Three Easy And Inexpensive Ways To Market Your Company
Okay, I give up, you don’t have the funds to properly market your company. You don’t have the less than one percent of your revenue that it would take to get your name out there like it should be. Or maybe you don’t want to. Remember the motto of PCB shop owners, “when your sales […]
The Path To Success Leads Through Customer Service
All customer service starts at the top. It’s a cultural thing. To have great customer service you have to have respect for your customers, everyone in the company has to respect the customer not just the customer service people. Look, it’s pretty easy to pass everything along to the customer service people (by the way […]
The Best Way To Compete With The Chinese
Don’t. Just do what they can’t do instead. While talking to a friend of mine the other day our talk turned to how American Printed Circuit Board shops can compete against the Chinese and other Asian board fabricators. After an extended exchange he turned to me and said. “It’s very simple Dan, the best way […]
Companies That Buy Cheap PCBs Get What They Deserve
This column is meant for those customers who need printed circuit boards but don’t want to communicate with the PCB shops directly. It’s meant for those customers who believe that a PCB is just a thin piece of green plastic that anyone can build. This is for those companies who feel that the board shops […]
To Charge The Most You Have To Be The Best
Being the best will get you the best prices. You have to be better than everyone else. You have to be better than everyone else to win the business; not only win it, but keep it. If you are good, very good, you can be good enough to get past the price issue. If your […]