Manufacturing sales strategy: more work from the OEM accounts you already have

In the second quarter of 2026, GE Vernova’s Power segment booked $16.7 billion in orders, up 135% from a year earlier. Electrification booked $6.3 billion, up 93%; Wind booked $1.2 billion, down 39%. One customer name on your invoices carries three different futures, all in an earnings release filed with the SEC on July 22, 2026, still the company’s latest quarter when we checked EDGAR on Oct. 26, 2026. A gas turbine supplier and a wind supplier sell into different accounts, whatever the logo says.

For a contract machine shop or molder, the best manufacturing sales strategy for 2027 starts with the OEMs you already ship to. You have passed their supplier approval, you are in their portal, and their quality team knows your name. Growing those accounts takes four steps: map every plant, program and buyer at each OEM; list the parts you could make but do not; watch the public signals that show where the OEM is adding volume; and use quarterly business reviews and supplier scorecards to ask for named part numbers.

Why start a manufacturing sales strategy with OEM accounts you already have?

Approval is the expensive part. Our view is that winning a new OEM often means months of audits, first articles and portal setup before the first production order. An existing customer has already done that work on you.

Look at what a supplier sees once inside. GE Vernova’s Gas Power supplier page describes the digital exchange of documents a supplier uses to respond to an RFQ, submit a contract, purchase order or invoice, and check on shipments and payment status. Technical documents reach a supplier through its Supplier Technical Collaboration folder, and the quality page names P28A-AL-0002, D50A159 and P23E-AL-0255 as examples of documents a buyer may need to add. A supplier with that access can see the specs, the buyers and the RFQ flow, which an outside shop cannot.

There is also a defensive reason. Anthony King of Molding Services in Olney, Illinois, told Plastics Technology in a report published Oct. 21, 2026 that the company’s 2025 capacity utilization was “the lowest we can remember,” which he tied in part to its largest customer being acquired and shifting production to plants in Mexico. A shop that knows only one buyer at one plant learns about a move like that when the orders stop. A shop with relationships across plants and programs has a better chance of hearing early, and has somewhere else in the account to go.

Where are your OEM customers adding volume?

Three kinds of public signals tell you, and none of them cost anything.

Segment results in SEC filings. Public OEMs report results by segment, and the differences inside one customer can be large, as GE Vernova’s split shows. The same July 22, 2026 release said the company was on track to reach 20 gigawatts of annual gas turbine output in the third quarter of 2026 and 24 gigawatts in 2028. Earnings releases like this one are filed as exhibits to a Form 8-K; the annual 10-K and quarterly 10-Q carry the full segment notes. SEC’s EDGAR full-text search covers filings since 2001; search your customer’s name with a product word you make, such as “castings” or “machined”, to find the segments and plants that matter.

Supplier and investment announcements. Manufacturing Dive’s Oct. 16, 2026 roundup carried two: Caterpillar’s plan to invest about $1 billion in a Sanford, North Carolina facility to expand compact construction equipment production, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $75 million, five-year expansion in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, adding testing, warehousing and manufacturing. On Oct. 20, 2026, Apple named Perryman Co., a Pennsylvania titanium producer, as a US supplier for the iPhone Duo and expanded its agreement with Qnity Electronics. If any of these companies is your customer, those are the plants and product lines to ask about. Our guide to building a target account list from public data covers the Apple announcement and more signals, including construction starts and job postings.

Published supplier requirements and recognition programs. OEM supplier pages tell you how you are measured. John Deere’s Achieving Excellence program, created in 1991, rates suppliers on quality, delivery, process alignment, value creation and relationship, according to a May 2025 release from The Integration Group of Marshalltown, Iowa, which was named a Partner-level supplier, Deere’s highest rating, for 2024, its 11th consecutive year at that level. Those five categories are the agenda for your next review with Deere, whether or not anyone hands it to you.

Power$7.1 billion to $16.7 billion+135%

Electrification$3.3 billion to $6.3 billion+93%

Wind$2.1 billion to $1.2 billion-39%

One customer, three directions: GE Vernova orders by segment, Q2 2026 vs. Q2 2025

Item	Value (%)	Note
Power	+135%	$7.1 billion to $16.7 billion
Electrification	+93%	$3.3 billion to $6.3 billion
Wind	-39%	$2.1 billion to $1.2 billion

Reported orders (U.S. GAAP). Organic changes were +134%, +66% and -40%. The second quarter was GE Vernova's latest reported quarter on EDGAR as of Oct. 26, 2026. Source: GE Vernova second-quarter 2026 earnings release, Exhibit 99 to Form 8-K filed July 22, 2026.

How do you build an OEM account map?

Keep it in a spreadsheet, one row per plant and program. The columns that matter:

Column	What goes in it
OEM and plant	Each location that buys from you or could, with city
Program or product line	The end product your parts go into, and its segment in the OEM’s filings
Buyer or commodity manager	Name, title, commodity they own
Engineer and quality contact	Who approves drawings and who scores you
Parts you make now	Count of active part numbers and annual revenue
Parts you could make	Part families in your envelope, material and certification range that you do not make
Current source, if known	Incumbent supplier or “in-house”
Your scorecard	Latest rating, on-time delivery, quality PPM
Latest signal	Announcement, filing or visit note, with date
Next ask	The specific part numbers or family, the person, and the date

Most shops can fill the first five columns from their ERP in an afternoon. “Parts you could make” is where the money is. Ask your buyer for an indented bill of materials or a commodity list for the assemblies you already supply, and mark every part inside your envelope. Our teardown of job shop capabilities pages shows how to define that envelope in numbers.

How do you ask for more part numbers?

Use the quarterly business review, and bring data the buyer already trusts. Lead with your scorecard: on-time delivery, quality, responsiveness, in the OEM’s own categories if it publishes them. Then make one specific ask.

A request that names specific parts, such as “We would like to quote the 14 brackets on the same assembly that run in our four-axis envelope,” tends to get the buyer to send a list. A general request such as “We would love more work” rarely gets anything concrete.

Three questions get you that list:

• Which parts on this assembly are you re-sourcing, or having quality or delivery trouble with?
• What new programs are coming to this plant in 2027, and when do RFQs go out?
• Who else at the company buys this commodity at other plants?

Then make it easy for the buyer to say yes. Offer to quote within a day; Modern Machine Shop’s 2026 Top Shops data ties that speed to a higher win rate, and our RFQ-to-quote playbook has the numbers and a triage routine. Offer a first-article run at a fair price. Molders can offer to take over tools. Molding Services lists transfer programs as a service and says it works “with OEMs looking to consolidate outsourced molding and manufacturing operations.” If your buyer is trying to cut its supplier count, the supplier that offers to absorb a struggling incumbent’s parts is helping the buyer hit that goal.

In your industry

In metals and machining, map by commodity and envelope. Brackets, housings, shafts and fittings often sit with several suppliers at one OEM. Your quality record on the parts you make is the argument for the parts next to them.

In plastics and rubber, map by tool. Ask how many molds for your assemblies sit at other molders, and when their production orders renew. Tool transfers take months, so make the ask well before the renewal.

What to do Monday

1. Pick your top five OEM accounts by revenue and start the account map, one row per plant and program.
2. Pull each one’s latest 10-Q or earnings release from EDGAR and note which segments are growing.
3. Search news for each OEM’s supplier and plant announcements from the last six months and log them with dates.
4. Ask your main buyer at each account for the bill of materials or commodity list on the assemblies you supply.
5. Put a business review on the calendar with each account in the first quarter of 2027, and write the specific part-number ask before the meeting.