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10 The PCB Design Magazine • December 2016 Andy Shaughnessy is managing editor of The PCB Design Magazine. He has been covering PCB design for 17 years. He can be reached by clicking here. answer emails from sales types. And they are the future of this industry, whether we like it or not. The old saying, "Sales is like fishing out of a boat, but marketing is like convincing the fish to jump into the boat with you," still applies. You still have to reach out to potential customers any way you can. You still have to tell your company's story, and sell that story, any way you can. So, this month we shine a light on sales and marketing in this industry. Naturally, we began with a survey. The survey results were surprising, especially when some respondents admitted that their company had no sales or marketing plan at all. They just winged it. I wonder how that's work- ing? The results can be found in the article "Much Ado about Sales and Marketing." Then we asked five contributors to share their take on selling and marketing in PCB de- sign. In our cover story, Barry Olney of In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd explains how EDA sales and mar- keting techniques have evolved as EDA has ma- tured, and he traces the drop in tool cost over time, along with the increase in tool capabili- ties. Next, Abby Monaco of Intercept Technol- ogy discusses how the Internet and social media have enabled salespeople to target exactly the right buyer , to the point that a salesperson al- ready knows what kind of tool you need before he ever makes direct contact with you. She also focuses on the near-death of the single-vendor software solution. In an interview, DownStream Technologies founder Rick Almeida explains his sales and mar- keting philosophy, and DownStream's use of di- rect sales, telesales and value-added resellers. Al Wasserzug of Cirexx International focuses on the sales and marketing techniques that are specific to flex circuits, as well as rigid PCBs. And Lawrence Romine of Altium discusses the company's philos- ophy of selling directly to the PCB designer, not the suits in the C suite, and how Altium manages to gain market share without necessarily convert- ing existing users of a rival's toolset. We also have a great article by columnist Dan Beaulieu. In this piece, Dan reviews his five favorite books on sales and selling. If you're in sales, you'll want to order all five of these, pronto. Have a great holiday, and I'll be seeing you in 2017! PCBDESIGN SALES AND MARKETING IN PCB DESIGN Battery researchers seeking im- proved electrode materials have focused on "tunneled" structures that make it easier for charge-car- rying ions to move in and out of the electrode. Now a team led by a researcher at the University of Il- linois at Chicago has shown that certain large ions can hold the tunnels open so that the charge-carrying ions can enter and exit the elec- trode easily and quickly. "Significant research has been done to increase the energy density and power density of lithium ion battery systems," says Reza Shahbazian-Yassar, as- sociate professor of mechanical and industrial engi- neering at UIC. His team has focused on devel- oping a cathode based on manga- nese dioxide, a very low-cost and environmentally-friendly material with high storage capacity. Man- ganese dioxide has a lattice struc- ture with regularly spaced tunnels that allow charge carriers—like lithium ions—to move in and out freely. The finding shows that tunnel stabilizers can help in the transfer of ions into tunnels and the rate of charge and discharge, Shahbazian-Yassar said. "With potassium ions staying in the center of the tunnels, the capacity retention improves by half un- der high cycling current, which means the battery can hold on to its capacity for a longer time," he said. Researchers Peer into Atom-sized Tunnels in Hunt for Better Battery