Topic
Sales process and enablement
The work between an RFQ landing and a PO arriving: response time, quote content, collateral and the handoffs between marketing, inside sales, outside sales and engineering. These pieces draw on real quotes, price notices, job postings and public bid documents. Start with the RFQ-to-quote playbook for job shops.
Everything on sales process and enablement, newest first (23)
Durable goods orders are up 8% in 2026, and primary metals orders fell once price is taken out
After taking each industry's producer price change out of its 2026 orders growth, we estimate machinery volume is up 8.7% and primary metals volume is down 4.0%.
Can you put a customer's drawing into ChatGPT? What OEM purchase terms and AI addendums now say
We read 10 published purchase terms from OEM buyers. Five now have AI clauses, and all five put the buyer in control of when AI touches its data or your deliverables.Architect or engineerSpecContractor buysArchitectural billings index at 44.7: where to send spec reps in 2027
Architects' billings fell again in September 2026. Beneath the national score, commercial/industrial firms and the West and Midwest have moved the other way since January, and that is where we would point spec selling time in the first half of 2027.
Getting written into the spec: how to get specified by architects
For building products makers, many orders are decided before the bid, in a spec section you never see. To get specified by architects, make your spec, BIM and course content the easiest to find and edit; five manufacturers' specifier pages show what to copy first.
Google Ads for manufacturers: the platforms mostly buy each other's names, and job shop searches are thinly bid
Protolabs puts about 92% of its estimated $173,000 a month in Google search ads into rival platforms' names, mostly "xometry". Process and service searches get about 8%, and 16 of the 22 shops we checked showed no search ads. A 60-person machine shop or molder can buy narrow certification, process and local searches cheaply, if it tracks every click to a quote.
Is Thomasnet worth it? What a job shop gets from Thomasnet, Xometry and the RFQ marketplaces
Directories sell visibility. Marketplaces sell finished jobs on the platform's terms. Your own website is the only one of the three that sells your shop. We read each platform's supplier terms and checked who ranks for two common buyer searches.
IBS 2027 and KBIS: a building products plan for Design and Construction Week
Builder confidence is at 29 and 43% of builders are cutting prices. At IBS 2027, the companies that come home with orders will be the ones that booked builder and dealer meetings before Feb. 2 and brought numbers on margin and labor.
CRM for manufacturing: decide what your ERP owns first
Before you pick a CRM, decide which system is the record for each piece of data. A field-ownership map by sales motion, the five ERP fields worth syncing, a requirements checklist, and what to skip in year one.
CRM for distributors: what inside sales, outside sales and the counter each need
Orders already live in the ERP. We coded 20 distributor sales job postings, read Oct. 26, 2026, for the systems and activities each role is asked to use, and built the case for three CRM reports to set up first.
From RFQ to quote: a job shop playbook, and where quoting software for manufacturing and AI help
Shops that quote within a day report winning more of the work they quote, yet 12 of the 20 Top Shops' websites we read never tell buyers how fast they respond. A first-hour triage routine, a quote checklist, and what quoting software for manufacturing and AI should do, with AI kept away from the price.
How to write a price increase letter or tariff surcharge notice for 2027
We read 10 real price notices that manufacturers issued in 2025 and 2026. Of the seven that show both a notice date and an effective date, four gave less than 30 days, and only one of the 10 tied its charge to a public index. What to copy, what to avoid, and two templates.
Selling into the data center supply chain: who buys, and what they need from suppliers
Data centers were the three largest construction starts in September 2026, and one big electrical distributor's US data center sales grew by triple digits in the third quarter. Who actually places the orders, what a project buys, and how a mid-size manufacturer or distributor gets on the approved supplier list.
Selling automation to manufacturers after a year of AI pilots: what plant managers want to hear
Plant leaders told Manufacturing Dive they buy against downtime, scrap and throughput, prefer retrofits, and distrust vendors who skip the safety case. We checked eight automation homepages to see which ones lead with those numbers.
New robot safety standards: what automation marketers need to change in their copy
The revised ISO 10218 and ANSI/A3 R15.06 treat "collaborative" as a property of the application. We read 10 robot and cell product pages and sorted their safety wording into patterns that hold up and patterns that need a condition.
The job shop capabilities page and capabilities statement buyers actually read
A capabilities page should give a buyer your envelopes, tolerances, certifications and volume range in two minutes; we read seven 2026 Top Shops' pages to see which do. The one-page capabilities statement a prime asks for follows a federal format, with the UEI in place of DUNS.
Economic indicators calendar 2027: release dates and timing for the ISM PMI and seven more numbers manufacturers watch
Eight monthly releases tell a manufacturing marketer whether customers are about to buy more or less. This calendar lists the 2027 dates the publishers have posted, ISM's expected dates and the usual timing of the three releases with no posted schedule, plus what each release measures and which industries it leads.
Inside sales vs outside sales at an industrial distributor: who covers which accounts
We read 20 open sales job postings at industrial distributors on Oct. 26, 2026. Not one set a numeric quota, only two named gross profit, and none sized a territory. Tier accounts by gross margin potential instead, using the worksheet in this piece.
Injection molding cost: what buyers search before they pick a molder, and whether to publish your pricing
Four cost searches add up to about 1,080 a month in the US, and half the molders we reviewed publish no dollar figures. Molders should post tooling ranges and cost drivers in their own numbers, and keep piece price in the quote. We checked eight molders and two marketplaces on Oct. 26, 2026.
How to build an AIA continuing education course that architects book
AIA continuing education is one of the few ways a building products manufacturer gets an hour of an architect's attention on the architect's terms. What it costs to become a provider in 2027, what gets a course approved, and what 10 manufacturers' course pages show about getting booked.
Selling capital equipment to a B2B buying committee
Public equipment purchases put the buying committee in writing: who sits on it, how they score you and what they ask for. Read four of those documents, from a town's screw press to a college's CNC tooling, and you have a working map of who decides on a machine or automation cell, and the one asset each person needs from you.
Manufacturing case studies engineers actually read: we scored 8 application stories
We scored eight real application stories from robot makers, an integrator, a machine builder and parts suppliers on Oct. 26, 2026. The average was 5.25 out of 10. The best ones show the math, state the constraints and date the page. What to copy, and how to get the customer to say yes.
Marketing through a system integrator: what makes one recommend your product
On an automation project the integrator usually writes the bill of materials and the plant approves the quote, so the integrator decides whether your brand is in it. We compared six integrator programs and directories, from A3 and CSIA to Inductive Automation, FANUC, Rockwell and Siemens, to see what they ask of integrators and what they give back.