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16 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2019 A Conversation with Barry Matties I-CONNECT007 Dan Beaulieu, president of D.B. Management Group, has over 30 years of experience in the PCB industry. In this interview, Dan provides his expert knowledge on selling strategies for companies, and covers magnetic marketing, the extent to which education leads to sales, methods of marketing that used to work but not today, and more. Barry Matties: There's a lot of similarity in the strategies that people use for selling circuit boards, assembly, and so on. Most often, it's delivery, low cost, and high yields—all the bits and pieces that you normally hear about. When it comes to selling your services, what are the greatest challenges that you see that they need to overcome? Dan Beaulieu: Every company that I talk to men- tions how difficult it is to get appointments. Their generation doesn't really want to see people. They don't want their time invaded, if you will, like Seth Godin [author and market- ing expert] talks about; you have to figure out other ways to get in there and bring something to the party that they need. You see more and more companies offering technical expertise in the form of newsletters and other items that will help educate the cus- tomer and make them stand out in a crossover between traditional and modern. I know a couple of companies that are doing very well with technical bulletins using sales optimiza- tion companies. One company makes over $11 million a year without outside salespeople, but they're putting their name in front of people. That is one way to do it, especially if you're not really selling technology. If you're selling technology, it's important to create a sense of expertise so that the people who want that technology want to work with you. Years ago, all of the OEMs had their own experts and did their own R&D. Now, I think there are two R&D shops. Other than that, they rely on a circuit board fabricator to do this for them. The circuit board fabricator needs to have enough knowledge to be their PCB expert and to teach them about the board side of the product that they're building today. The fabri- cator must be willing to invest in the future so that the salesperson is more a guide into the PCB technology. Dan Beaulieu on Magnetic Marketing