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December 2016 • SMT Magazine 15 SALES AND MARKETING IN A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REALITY Becoming a Strategic Partner Effective farming allows organizations to at- tain strategic partner status. This is somewhat of an ideal state, in which your organization is tightly integrated with client teams. They ap- proach your organization as the proven experts and take your consult without hesitation; and for that trusted supplier status, you are reward- ed with business as a primary choice. Repeat or- ders, additional optional services, and new op- portunities continue to reward that partnership. Figure 2 outlines this the journey from an ini- tial deal (as a hunting deal) to strategic partner. No Shortcuts As with any other profession, sales people have varying degrees of effectiveness. By the law of averages, you may have some high-perform- ers and some low-performers. Most prospective clients will immediately know if a sales pro- fessional truly understand their challenges. In that initial discussion, they get a feel for wheth- er you can solve their problem. A knowledge- able sales person, one who understands clearly the internal offerings and capabilities and the market space, is required. Frequently, profes- sional sales people from non-related industries are hired, but it takes time to build this unique knowledge before they can succeed. One key variable with organizations is size. The amount a larger contract manufacturer or hardware vendor can invest in people, technol- ogy, and process significantly differs from small- er contract manufacturers. However, the princi- ples of the basics described above still hold re- gardless of size. A tool may be a MS Excel or sim- ple database organized marketing platform vs. a CRM software solution (although cloud services such as salesforce.com are relatively less expen- sive now than ever before). Or engineers in the organization may be doing some of the inter- nal sales calls, rather than an organized internal sales organization. Whatever the execution of the basic principles, they are still required. Contract Manufacturers Now that the basics are covered, what is unique related to the PCB assembly contract Figure 2: The transition from one-off deals to establishing long-term, sustaining relationships.