Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/759357
10 The PCB Magazine • December 2016 Patricia Goldman is a 30+ year veteran of the PCB industry, with experience in a variety of areas, including R&D of imaging technolo- gies, wet process engineering, and sales and marketing of PWB chem- istry. Active with IPC since 1981, Goldman has chaired numerous committees and served as TAEC chairman, and is also the co- author of numerous technical papers. To contact Goldman, click here. style aside, you will always do well to follow his advice. No issue would be complete without some good technical columns. RBP Technology's Mike Carano delivers with his second column on drill- ing, a continuation of last month's column. True to form, Mike focuses on some common defects and troubleshoots them for us. Keith Sellers, NTS-Baltimore, writes this month on supplier surveillance plans. While it sounds slightly ominous, Keith explains the im- portance of ensuring that what you get is exactly what you ordered. As he puts it, "A little bit of testing on the front end…can go a long, long way in providing you and your customer some piece of mind." Last, but of course not least, we have the final column in Happy Holden's 25-chapter Essential Skills series. This last chapter is on predictive en - gineering for new products, of which design for manufacturing and assembly (DFM/A) is a part. Happy explains predictive engineering as an ac- tivity involving trade-offs, focusing on product definition, design, PCB fabrication, and assem- bly, as well as specs, standards and regulations. W atch for an expanded edition of the entire 25 chapters in an upcoming downloadable book published by I-Connect007. I originally thought this would be a "light" issue but there was just so much to talk about— and so much to be said. Don't forget, techies, we're all in sales, so do study up a bit with this. Next month we're back to the nitty-gritty with an issue devoted to plating and surface finishing. Ah, wet processing! Subscribe now and be one of the first to read next month. PCB we think about sales, marketing, customers and customer service." American Standard Circuits' John Tusant writes on transitioning from a PCB engineer into a sales position. John gives some excellent advice on dealing with customers' revised view of the engineer-turned-sales-guy. Worth reading because in our industry, technical sales is where it's at. And our resident social media guru at PCB007. com, also a regular columnist who sometimes gets overlooked because it seems his subject mat- ter is not necessarily germane to the PCB world, Bruce Johnston presents a great case for making use of LinkedIn as a sales tool in your sales/mar- keting toolbox. After reading his column, take a few moments to check out Bruce' s columnist page for some real how-to instructions on how to get started and make the best use of this pow - erful tool. Sales and marketing is all about making your company more successful. Which is why this month, IPC's John Mitchell provides solid advice on how to strengthen your value proposition in order to boost your company's success. Do you know your company's value proposition, and is it strong? Read this article, especially if you aren't quite sure... Tara Dunn of Omni PCB has done a little survey of her own, asking both PCB manufactur - ers and PCB users a couple of questions on what makes a good salesperson and what can be im- proved—from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. I included a couple of interviews in this is- sue, both by Dan Beaulieu. I know, that's a lotta Dan, but you will find them interesting. The first is with our industry M&A guy, Tom Kastner of GP Ventures. Tom reviews the M&A activity of 2016 and then looks ahead to 2017. The second inter- view is with Bruce Johnston, truly a sales veteran. We get to know Bruce a lot better in this inter- view. He is a real go-getter! And it turns out both of these guys are "real" PCB people—yes, they ac- tually worked in the business. This month, Barry Cohen (Launch Commu- nications) adds his usual whimsical, yet infor- mative touch as he talks about developing a to- tal marketing program with integrated tactics, as opposed to one-off projects that are not part of the plan, so to speak. His tongue-in-cheek WE'RE ALL IN SALES