I was at the Industrial Supply Association's annual Conference and Tradeshow the past few days. They've redone the format and it's much better.

The meetings were crisper, attendance was up 100% (100%!) from 2009, the guest speaker, Jason Jennings, was fantastic, only the manufacturers have booths this year, fees are down, and the energy was through the roof. What a difference a year makes!

This isn't all about a better economy either, the leadership, Philip Hanson, Kathleen Durbin, Michael Carr, Derek Yurgaitis and many others did a great job.

Here's what I'm doing different.

    1.   I brought my Flip HD camera and will shooting some videos of my meetings, some of the new products I see and the event.
    2.   I'm going to post the raw footage and, then
    3.   After a few quick edits, I'll post the edited video, maybe several, here on my blog.
    4.   Since one of my goals in life is to get hard core industrial companies to embrace cool marketing, I'm going to promote the heck out of the video to the ISA members while demonstrating my video editing capabilities.

New subject: Luck & Relationships
On my plane ride I just happened to be seated next to one of my old work-mates, who is now a Vice President of Marketing. By the time we landed, we were outlining a project he's going to have me do. That happened for two reasons, one he was thinking about it anyway so our "chance encounter" (luck!) simply accelerated his thinking. The other reason is we've both expended time and effort to keep our relationship solid. So when the time came to discuss business we were able to get "right to it." There's a lesson in that last sentence for those paying attention...okay, I'll spell it out. If you have a good relationship the sales cycle and ramp up to doing productive work is compressed. Work on your relationships.

Final thought: More Praise; Less Blame
It's really great to see everyone at ISA. As a lone wolf (Consultant) I don't get a lot of time with my industry friends. These are the wonderful people working behind the scenes that make this country work. From screwdrivers to drill bits, wrenches and expensive pieces of super-sophisticated equipment, these are the folks that make, sell and install the tools that make the US the world leader in advanced manufacturing. Here's an example: Whatever progress we make in minimizing the damage from the Gulf oil spill and the ultimate "solution," will in large part be the result of the good work done by these people. You'll only hear about who to blame on the news and that will be politicized. You won't hear about the people to thank, such as Derek Yurgaitis at Brady-SPC - see above, anywhere else but here.

Thanks, Derek, 3M, and all the other ISA members who make this country run. I'm proud to be a part of the team.

Steve
800-707-9150

In early May I attended the 2010 Industrial Supply Association Conference and Tradeshow. It was a great event and much more upbeat than last year, as you can imagine.

Here are some highlights:

(If you like the video, give me a call and we'll make one for you! 800-707-9150)

Aligned Marketing had a fantastic ISA Conference in San Antonio last week. Our technology partner Doug Schust and I scheduled 16 booth appointments. Incredibly, we ended up meeting with 28 companies and approximately 70 people! Here’s what we learned:

With sales declines ranging from 20% to 40% (and more), ISA members are truly open to new ideas and straight-talk. Conservatism is out and traditional fixes, such as loading distributor shelves with products or running sales spiffs, are considered ineffective. That was an important lesson for some excellent companies to learn.

Our sales strategy to confront ISA members was driven by our belief that (1) communication to external and internal customers is average at best and (2) websites that don’t generate new business, that are just an expense, need immediate attention. I admit, we’re biased on this issue since communication and technology is what we do.

Many of the people we met with have built good websites but virtually none of them have done much with search engine optimization (SEO). In our view, it doesn’t do a company much good to have a super website if their customers and potential customers can’t find it. Many people were surprised when we showed them our small company was listed #1 on page-1 of Google.

Similarly, everyone expressed a need for new customers but only a few knew that 70% of all new product and services searches begin online and that 65%+ of those searches begin on Google. Further, 91% of searches are abandoned if the person doesn’t find what they’re looking for on page one or two of their search results. Everyone needs a Page-1 Google Strategy.

Most members said SEO and video technology is expensive, it’s not. If you’re NASCAR you can spend $50,000 (whatever you want) on a 60 second video starring Jimmie Johnson. We’ve created high quality videos for under 5% of that number. In today’s market, technology is affordable for any size company.

Best of all, it is always a wonderful experience to re-connect with old friends and make new ones. It was a great conference for Aligned Marketing and me personally. I truly feel blessed.

Steve

I leave for the Industrial Supply Association Conference in San Antonio on Monday. My technology partner, Doug Schust, a leading expert in Search Engine Optimization, is joining me in the Aligned Marketing booth (#1060). We'll be meeting with key executives from 3M, Columbus-McKinnon, Kennametal, Saint-Gobain (formerly Norton Abrasives), Snap-on, Stanley Tools, and several other leading companies.

Some of these companies may not be household names to my readers. However, in the industrial segment of our economy, these are big-dogs.

We plan on making a splash. Here’s what we’re doing:

• We’ve produced a new video for our website that will be viewable Monday morning, just as people begin to arrive at the conference.
• We’ll have Phase 1 of our SEO completed, which will place us on page one of Google for selected (secret) keywords.
• We’ll have our evaluations of every ISA distributor’s website and evaluations of selected manufacturer sites available for discussion.
• We’ll be passing out our new capabilities brochure that was updated in February 2009.
• We’ll have 60 copies of my book, Communication Wins, that I’ll be autographing and giving away during our booth appointments.
• We’ll have our new touch-screen HP computer with several vignettes promoting our communication, technology and video capabilities.
• We’ll be showing nine additional one-minute videos describing our capabilities and services.

I’m very excited about the opportunity to share our full capabilities with my fellow ISA members.

See you in San Antonio!

Steve