Ecommerce for Manufacturers

In this week’s The Faces of Business episode, our guest speaker was none other than our very own Curt Anderson. Curt is the renowned author of “Stop being the best-kept secret.” He is also an ecommerce evangelist for manufacturers.  We are talking today about ecommerce for manufacturers.

One crucial step in learning about increasing manufacturing sales is knowing the strategies of ecommerce for manufacturers.

In this week’s The Faces of Business episode, our guest speaker was none other than our very own Curt Anderson. Curt is the renowned author of “Stop being the best-kept secret.” He is also an ecommerce evangelist for manufacturers.  We are talking today about ecommerce for manufacturers.

The conversation started with Damon introducing Curt to the show. Curt started by talking about a few statistics regarding ecommerce for manufacturers. He said that in the last few years, eighty to ninety percent of B2B sales connections are made on LinkedIn.

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After this, Curt talked about how someone can be the best-kept secret without even knowing. Further elaborating on this, he said that usually, someone that has a business and works for it doesn’t market enough.

This means that that person does not have enough outreach or connections to market their skills and business properly. This is how these businesses become the best-kept secret.

After this, talking about ecommerce for manufacturers, Curt shared his views on some other things as well. He said that we are lucky that Covid-19 happened in 2020. This is because it gave a chance to the entire world to get into the ecommerce world.

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Further, into the conversation, Damon asked Curt that when you look into this year what things do you think can make a difference? To this, Curt responded that there are a lot of Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEPs) helping manufacturers generate ecommerce sales.

Curt further said that the MEPs are a great network and that his friend Steven Melito has around 10 different MEPs throughout New York State. After this curt talked a bit more about ecommerce for manufacturers.

He said that the sessions that he and Steven are doing on MEP are to teach people regarding it. Moreover, according to him, it is like teaching a person how to fish so they can fish on their own.

Get the most value for your business by understanding the process and preparing for the sale with information here on our Selling a Business page.

After this, Curt gave a few examples of his clients and how he was dealing with them. Later on, the conversation ended with Curt and Damon talking about the details of their weekly shows.

In the end, Damon thanked Curt for coming to the show as a guest.

Do you want to know if your business is ready for your exit or what you should do to prepare? Learn this and more with our business exit assessment here.

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Exit Your Way® provides a structured process and skilled resources to grow business value and allow business owners to leave with 2X+ more money when they are ready.

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1:01:37

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

e commerce, configurator, manufacturers, people, talking, website, manufacturing, business, ecommerce, product, price, buy, mep, great, buyer, webinars, strategies, created, years, metal

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, Curt Anderson

 

Damon Pistulka  00:03

All right, well,

 

00:04

thanks for that intro

 

Damon Pistulka  00:05

music that just makes them want to dance as I see it when I hear it. So I had to do a little bit of that in the background. But thanks everyone once again for joining us for the faces of business. I’m Damon Pistulka, your host, and I am so happy to have my friend current interests in here with us today. Kurt, welcome.

 

Curt Anderson  00:22

Thank you, brother. Thank you. I did my hair just for you fix my eyebrows. I’m just I’m super fired up excited. This is put on kind of shirt. I don’t know if it’s clean or not. But

 

Damon Pistulka  00:36

yeah,

 

00:37

yeah. All right. Well, that’s good.

 

00:39

You’re looking good,

 

00:40

man. It’s so

 

Damon Pistulka  00:42

you know, so let’s get to some important thing. So what’s the temperature at your house today? Because you’re in New York and I just had,

 

Curt Anderson  00:48

you know what? It’s a heat wave. Dude. It’s like 40 bed first. If you’re a skier, that’s a little depressing. So almost too. It’s too hot for us here in New York.

 

Damon Pistulka  00:58

Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna have to worry about that. Because what’s it here? 44 here, right down. 44? Yeah. 40.

 

Curt Anderson  01:05

I was I’m a little, you know, messes up the whole escape plan. So yeah, you know, not good. But yeah, we have a lot of snow. So that’s.

 

Damon Pistulka  01:12

Oh, that’s good. We’re supposed to be getting like 24 inches this weekend up in the mountains. You are? Oh, yeah. It’s It’s crazy. In Washington, the mountains right here. I mean, our average temperature in the winter daytime highest probably close to 40 4042. Something like that. Yeah. But in the mountains. It’s right at that nice level temperature for heavy snow. Yeah. And like, Mount Baker, that’s north of us. They’ll get 10 feet of snow in the winter.

 

01:39

Oh, wow. Okay.

 

Damon Pistulka  01:40

Yeah. So so we get some good, good snow, but it melts right away. It’s not like Paula. It’s not like Colorado snow. That’s all fluffy. Yeah. Usually, you know,

 

Curt Anderson  01:48

our city. We start in October and then like in June, so we have 10 months.

 

Damon Pistulka  01:53

Yeah. Yeah, that’s like Andrew in Park City. I mean, they have a little bit more there. So right. It’s good stuff. But well, we’re here to talk about e commerce strategies for manufacturers. It’s something that you and I get to discuss quite a bit your urine every day talking about it. So that’s cool. So when you look at this, tell us a little bit about the stuff you’ve been doing in the last year. Yeah, I’m talking to ecommerce manufacturers about e commerce.

 

Curt Anderson  02:21

You believe it’s almost Benny? I mean, it hasn’t been a year yet of this whole new world. What a total shift. You know, I was in a total total different place doing different things. And you know, you’re kind of hearing this rumbling of like, what’s going on in Asia? What’s going on? And early?

 

02:38

Like, hey,

 

Curt Anderson  02:38

you think that’s gonna come here? and was like, it was almost like, we’re just like, you know, so. Yeah, so manufacturers, you know. And I have to say, David, I’m so honored. I I’m always like, every day I pray like, David doesn’t get sick of me because I just love hanging out with you. You know, we have a great time on Fridays with our, we’ll talk about that. But you know, manufacturer so I’ve been doing this for a while really pounding the drum for like past 10 years or so like trying to like, you know, have just a squeaky wheel megaphone, manufacturing, e commerce cheerleader, or, like, get an e commerce getting e commerce.

And for years, it’s been a lot of resistance, not for us, you know, you know, we’re word of mouth, we’re the best kept secret, that type of thing. And boy, COVID hit and it really kind of made my life a lot easier. It was like, you know, we’re right place at the right time. Right. So, now, thank you, man. There it is. So yeah, so I so, you know, my shameless plug. And it’s a best seller in the Anderson family. I have to tell you, there you go. My mother, my father, they bought a couple my sister.

So but, you know, the whole so ironically, I was working on a book prior to COVID coming out, step by step e commerce guide for manufacturers COVID hit, I finished it up and you know, put it out like it was like May or June. And so since that time, I know that’s, you know, you and I connected almost a year ago, we’re having our one year anniversary, buddy. Yeah. And, you know, so this past year, we’ve been just really just relentlessly trying to help manufacturers with this digital transformation, how to get an e commerce better lead generation. And so that’s been our preached for for a while now.

 

Damon Pistulka  04:24

So, so what are you here and when you when you are talking to manufacturers last year and into the beginning of this year? Yeah. What what are you hearing about their sales efforts? I mean, have they just went you know, on their face or is it not just not good? Or is it just fine in some cases? What are you hearing?

 

Curt Anderson  04:44

Yeah, you know, great question. And I think you know, for those of us who are you know, in we can price is about a lot of industries, but I think manufacturers have a kind of a stigma or a traditionally you know, resistant to change. Yeah, you know, and got busted, man, because I’ll tell you, you know, you’ve been in manufacturing You know how hard it is to get from ground zero off the runway to actually create a sustainable, profitable business? And boy, these manufacturers how, you know, like, you know, this, how many businesses fail in the first five years was at 80%? Right? Yeah. Crazy.

And when we think of like these businesses, you know, we know quite a few, you know, 3040 years by the same owner, same on general. Yeah. And you’re like, dude, you just defied you know, I say, dude, or do that, you know, yeah, man or woman, you know, they’ve defied all odds, where you know that 80% if you make it to 10 years, what’s it goes down to like, you know, 5% of companies survived 10 years, then, like, 2% survived, you know, 20 years. So like, there was such an anomaly to go 20 3040 years.

And when they figured out a formula that works, they don’t want to mess with it. Yeah. So they’re like, Hey, we went to trade shows, we had sales reps on the road, I would go upon the pavement, my sales reps upon the pavement, I don’t need this digital thing. So when COVID hits us in the carpet gets pulled out, no trade shows, sales reps are grounded. Now they’re finally saying, okay, I finally get it. Now I need to do something.

 

Damon Pistulka  06:10

Right. So you think you see some willingness to explore different options? Yeah.

 

Curt Anderson  06:15

So I used to do a lot of webinars while they were webinars, like I did webinars, but you know, live workshops. 1014 15. And I always felt that my workshops were the why, why do you need to be on LinkedIn? Why do you need to be commerce? And you know, you have the skeptics and critics that people like, my boss made me come to the stupid workshop, what do you got, dude, you know, and, you know, so the workshop was all based about, you know, try to make it fun, but like, why you should do it, because this guy’s having success.

Let’s take a look at your competitors that are coming up first page on Google, you know, those types of things. And, you know, so now finally, we can start having, you know, you and I are doing a lot of webinars together, you crushed it in Illinois on Tuesday. Now, we finally, were able to have webinars on how to do it, because they want to do it, as opposed to the resistance and the reluctance of why should I be doing this? You know, it’s a totally different mindset, which, for me, I’m a static about, right.

 

Damon Pistulka  07:15

Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. Okay. I didn’t think about that. That little, little thing that’s changed a lot.

 

Curt Anderson  07:25

It changed a ton, you know,

 

Damon Pistulka  07:27

yeah. Because you were trying to justify before and now it’s a matter of necessity in a lot of cases.

 

Curt Anderson  07:33

Yeah. And I indicated, you know, as you know, like, I do some LinkedIn workshops and stuff. And so on occasion, you know, the CEO, President, you know, business development person sales, to say, Hey, can you come in and do a LinkedIn workshop, but I have to tell you, engineers are really mad that we’re doing this. So, you know, again, there’s a there’s that small group of the why do we need to do this social media LinkedIn is like Facebook, you know, we’re going to talk about last night, you know, but when you go through, you know, like our, you know, look at the business of majority of my business, you know, probably 80 90% of it is thanks to LinkedIn. Right?

Yeah, I’ll be same for you our network that we’ve created all the relationships we create created these Emmy peas that we’re working with that we’ll talk about, you know, it’s all thanks to LinkedIn. I mean, I there’s no other way to make these connections. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  08:26

yeah, you’re right you’re right there and I think that that for me, right because because look, I got enough gray hair I’m old school. I’m old school in a new school gig right now that’s really me. And and I was out pounding the roads pounding the road man, I was doing that selling molded products selling Mandy fabricated products, metal products, whatever it was CNC machine product.

And you know, now if I were going to go out and do that again, it would be a hell of a lot easier with a nice LinkedIn, an understanding LinkedIn, understanding the way that buyers buy cars, because that’s the other thing that that I think a lot of people neglected across the board manufacturers as well but that the buyers were changing in the way they buy has changed significant. Right and and the whole thing and that is really interesting to me because that buyer change. I was wrong about it in the workplace that I was wrong about it is that I knew that the buyers are using Google more.

And I’ve talked about this they use Google more to search before the buy get three quarters of the way through the buying process before they buy Yeah, what you’re doing and you’re helping people with that I that I was missing. is then we have to make it easy to buy. Right with the kind of things that you’re showing manufacturers how to do because these buyers are look at the the the 20 high 20s to Low 40 year old people that are buying, they’re buying a ton of junk off Amazon probably.

What does Amazon do? I just click shows up tomorrow or the next day, I click goes up tomorrow, the next day. Now, think about 15 years ago, right? The buyers 15 years ago, We’re all afraid to click on somebody’s website and buy something, right, let alone You know, a nice big one like Amazon. But now today, think of how many times a buyer will go to kind of a random website and buy a product off of it. It’s never done that many, many, many, many years, you know, years ago. So that this that last part that I wasn’t thinking about? Is is really crazy. Oh,

 

10:50

I agree.

 

Damon Pistulka  10:51

Ronnie Ronnie said he’s on the past. Now. I think Ronnie, actually Ronnie works with a company that’s over the past here. But he Oh, yeah. He said it’s tough. But Lincoln has been a great platform. I forget people on LinkedIn. Just comment, Facebook comment, tell us where you’re coming in from tell us what industry you’re in. Hey, if you got some questions, ask those two are added because God knows what he’s doing. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about the e commerce and, and, and maybe some of the things he talks about in this little book that he put together.

 

Curt Anderson  11:25

Thanks for joining us, Rodney. But you know, David, you’re making a fantastic point. And so, you know, we’re old enough to you know, we are digital immigrants, right? We easily remember life without internet smartphone. Any you know, you and I were faxing back in the day, right?

 

11:42

Oh, golly, did say that.

 

Curt Anderson  11:44

And I I say that frequently. I’m like, just think if COVID happened in 1990? What would we have done? You know, like, we’ve been in our dorm rooms or apartments, doing what you know, like, like, thank goodness that you know, that we have this digital age, to be able to stay connected, to communicate, so on and so forth. You’ve had some, you know, personal experiences this past month, where thank God for technology allowed me to, you know, cherish those moments with your dad.

You know, but, you know, I got into e commerce in 1995. And we both you know, vividly remember the.com bubble, right? Remember the bubble burst in 2000, and pets.com, and all that. And, you know, so on and so forth. I feel for manufacturers I feel I’m saying man, we’re partying like it’s 1999 right now. It’s I feel like what’s going on and manufacturing for e commerce is where retail was in 1999. I, Mike, you are not too late. The party is just starting that b2b e commerce market is so mammoth. And there’s so much upside potential. You know, we’re just looking for slivers that could be massive, you know, for Yeah, actually,

 

Damon Pistulka  12:58

Rodney saying he’s in sheet metal fabrication and CNC machining. So that’s, that’s cool. To drop in. There. Thanks, Rodney.

 

13:07

Hey, Randy, you’re right.

 

Damon Pistulka  13:08

You’re right. It is it is because if you think about and we’re gonna talk about e commerce, like you have to make a standard product off the shelf. If you are, that’s cool. Because I know a lot of manufacturers, especially custom manufacturers, tried to do this try to Oh, I want to make a product line. I’ve got this stamping press out here. Why don’t I make this or that and just have it kind of utilizing you know, scrap material inside of a another piece or something? Something like that, because it comes out free, basically, and all those kind of things.

But the challenge in those days was how do I sell enough of them to make it worth my time to do that right now? Now we have those things. I mean, just think of if I had if zatt example, if I had a stamping press and I was making something cool and little that I would be on Amazon selling that sucker every single day because the traffic is insane.

 

Curt Anderson  14:04

Right? And that’s right. And that’s exactly you know, like a guy like Rodney, you know, CNC, we bend metal, we cut steel, we make circuit boards, wire harnesses, you know, whatever, you know, injection molding, you know, very broad. And so that’s a challenge for those manufacturers. You know, I think as entrepreneurs and I’m sure you see it all the time in your in your line of work, you know, we try to be it’s that entrepreneurial curse, we try to be everything to everybody, instead of something to someone. And with manufacturers from a marketing standpoint, you’re like, Oh, well we’re a CNC shop, or we bend metal or we cut steel like Well, okay, well who do you do it for?

We can do it for anybody. Well online from an online marketing standpoint, that’s a challenging approach because now we’re trying to go after CNC. Well, you know, you in, you know, $100,000 CNC shops, but if we can complete the sentence if you talk to a manufacturer a custom job shop long enough say okay, well who do you Who do you fabricate metal for?

Oh, well, you know, we’re in the northwest, and we’re great in the supply chain of aerospace and we do we bend metal for turbine engines just say, you know, yeah, okay, bingo. That’s a potential key word of like, Alright, I’ve been metal for turbine engines, you know, or I cut steel for something. I make circuit boards for x. I’m being facetious or like making it simplified, simplified.

But when you can, when you can skinny it down, niche it down, and focus on what you’re best at, like those trinkets that you’re talking about. Hey, man, we produce 1000s of these little trinkets. Okay. Is there anybody else on the planet that needs that trinket? Because your your buyer that doesn’t know you that doesn’t know that you’re that you exist, you’re the best kept secret? What did we find out from Brian back during one of our webinars? Wasn’t that shocking? You remember that stat. He threw it? I

 

Damon Pistulka  15:54

was like, What was that? Seven?

 

Curt Anderson  15:57

Yeah, seven. And the thing is, I’m doing a webinar tomorrow at the Montana MEP. I have a slide 63% of product searches. Brian said 17. I’m not disputing them. That slide I have 63% of product searches start on Amazon. Not Google isn’t like that blew that blew my mind. So now if I’m a job shop, that scares me. But you know

 

Damon Pistulka  16:21

what I mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I was, you know, and this is something that I that I wrestle with a little bit in my mind, too, that if I’m a job shop, and I do want to start that conversation, right? Would it be worthwhile for me to put something a more common product type of mine on Amazon?

Not because I’m thinking that I’m going to get a gazillion dollars for the sales, but because I’m going to get the exposure for something like that. And then in my listing, somehow say, well inquire about other sizes. I don’t know what the I don’t know the listing details on it. But it really is something the 63% is a mind boggling, especially when you when you go back and you talk about if you’re in pay per click, and you’re trying to go now for that same product or that product line I want to get get people to me using paid search, right? It’s not as much paid search and be the Patriots there has more competition.

 

Curt Anderson  17:20

Absolutely. And we want it in your Dude, you’re nailing it right on the head. So the thing is, you know, we as manufacturers we get so stuck on Well, you know what, I’m a job shop, I always make something for somebody else. But if we could stay in our lane, stay in our strike zone and do exactly what you’re saying. use Amazon, Zorro, Walmart use it purely as lead gen use it as a lead generator, where because they’re going after those keywords for you.

Yeah, so the thing is, again, let’s use that you know, CNC for, you know, I’m using that example if you have a better one, but like, you know, turbine engines, okay, or jumpin injection plastic injection molding for turbine engines. I was I did one in Nebraska and somebody was like, they were talking about Caterpillar gear, you know, injection plastic molding for lawn mowers, you know, like something, you know, you sit around going, finish the sentence put for after what you do, and then finish the sentence. That’s your key phrase.

Now, if I’m going after that now we’ve niched down, not many people are going after that. You can now you’re the king of pay per click. What are your clicks going to be if I go after CNC or injection plastic injection molding versus plastic injection molding for lawn Mars? Oh, yeah, it’s going like, like, you might spend 50 cents on a click instead of $10 a click Exactly. organically, I’ve got a great chance of coming up free organically. Now I put that on Amazon. Now Amazon helps me Zorro might help me I could own that page. And everybody’s coming to me because I’ve niched out

 

Damon Pistulka  18:56

here that that is that is a great example of that. And and, and if if people haven’t thought about that, first of all, I’m gonna say you do explain it well in your book, I just no bullshit you do. Because I just read it again on the on the bike, the stationary bike again, but and again, it reminded me of that because you’re exactly right. If you If you answer the question, I do CNC machining for automotive engines. Yeah. Like that. So you’re so you’re finishing that sentence.

Then you go search, and you and you start to do some keyword searching and just understand, okay, how many people are really ranking for it? Does Google have stuff is it old? Is it is it is it not good information and then just keep moving around with your with your phrase a little bit.

And then you as that custom manufacturer can start to to a you can buy pay per click on that. And just make sure that when it comes to your site, you’re talking about that stuff. Be you could do like Doing now you can do content make content around something and and write a blog about CNC machining for automotive engines. And the next thing you know you’ve got you do you can own that page and and again, use Amazon and Walmart as a listing page verse net you machine that has those keywords in it and they’re going to try to sell that

 

Curt Anderson  20:25

on Google to your, your nail on the head. And the thing is what’s what’s so critical? What’s so difficult for us to challenge ourselves to put ourselves in the shoes of our persona that I do a buyer in my book, I call it our soulmates, right? We you know, basically your website’s a matchmaker, and we’re just we’re all looking for soulmates we’re looking for clients that want to know you know, grab buddy Greg miss you. What did he preach? know like, trust know, like trust, right? Yeah. So what do you got? You can show something Oh,

 

Damon Pistulka  20:55

I got I’m gonna pull up I you know, I was reading, I was reading the brand story again, brand story, story grant. But that there is a there is a an example in here. And this is one of the other things that I think when we’re talking about e commerce and manufacturers is we got to get off of telling people, I’ve been metal, I haven’t I miss encima being shop and showing us the all the great equipment and all that kind of stuff. And there was an example I read this morning, it was a high end resort help.

One of them to clarify the message. It says like many companies, they were experiencing identity crisis, their marketing collateral feature collateral featured images of their restaurant, front desk, and staff, it all looked really nice. But unless they were trying to sell their buildings, they weren’t exactly inviting customers into the story.

Now, what really connected with me is this, what they changed it to was they change the text on our website from long stories about themselves. Yeah, to images of warm bath of a warm bath, plus towels and robes, someone getting a massage, and a looping clip of a back porch rocking chair against the backdrop of trees blowing in the wind along the golf course. Right now. Just I read bad. But even with my bad reading, how better was the second part of that you

 

Curt Anderson  22:22

can feel it. You felt it? Right. That’s Alison, that’s all our sister, our sister out before that’s the wee wee syndrome talking all about us. We do this we have these capabilities. We’re great. Just ask us versus making the customer being felt, you know, and that’s in talking about the, you know, again, when you put yourself in the shoes of that persona, okay, you’re up in Seattle, let’s just use this as an example. You know, there’s a buyer at Boeing, and their soup, you know, supervisor, boss, somebody above them comes down and says, Hey, Damon, you need to buy 30 things today for this project. Ready? Go.

And so you’ve got this list, you’re like, oh, my goodness, how am I going to finish this today? I’m going you know, you’re going to Google, you’re going to Amazon, you’re you know, you’re doing searches, yeah, have to be found, you’ve got to be found easily. And then again, you have to make that client’s life as easy as possible. Ironically, I’m starting to throw up my book, I have a chapter, treat your manufacturing, market, your manufacturing operation, like a five star resort, right?

That’s one of my chapters. It’s all about because if I’m that buyer at Boeing, and you know, you know, the little greasy, you know, machine shop, they’ve got 10 employees, and it’s not very clean. They’re like, you know, how can I treat my place like a five star resort that, you know, however, if that bout that Boeing engineer, that buyer at Boeing is under the gun and naini products, and they need a service or they need a machine and you have it, and I can’t find you, you’re the best kept secret that what a crime that is, but if I do a search and I find you and I don’t care if you’re a hole in the wall, what but if you can solve my problem right now, dude, I love you.

You are a five star resort. And so that video that blog post that content, that LinkedIn profile, you know, anything, make that connection, right?

 

Damon Pistulka  24:17

Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s a really good point. And one of the things that I wanted to make sure that people know they’re listening to this is when we say e commerce for manufacturers, we’re talking about doing business online, it’s not necessarily just the transaction part of it, because if someone says, Hey, I’m going to I’m going to put up a website and it’s going to have a little buy here button and you’re going to make money.

I you know, I got a couple couple bridges I’ll sell you to right because because it isn’t, it doesn’t work that way. You have to look at this as the whole thing in the whole customer experience. And in doing that, well because e commerce is all encompassing from from getting someone’s attention all the way through to get it making it easy for them to solve their problem,

 

Curt Anderson  25:01

you’re 100% correct. And again, you know, e commerce can be that lead the, you know, just a nice clean webpage with a clear, concise call to action. And, you know, give me that RFU as fast as possible. Give me you know, if you’re, if it’s a circuit board, give me a drawing without, you know, whatever the product is, you know, these long forms of like, you know, Hey, who’s your firstborn? What’s your social security number? You know, that? short, sweet, concise? And then of course, what do you and I talked about? configurators do you know?

So if you’re a manufacturer, and again, you could be in the service sector, you know, whoever’s out there today, make it as easy as possible. Man, I bought I, you’re gonna love this. You’re ready for this? We’re gonna do a little a little opening. Look, what do they call it? Like when you get a package and you open it? So I go online, I wanted to get a shirt for so daymond I have a show.

Every Friday. I got I bought a shirt for our show. So I do a Google search t shirt. And in Google Shopping this this company called rush my rush order tees, you see that right there rushing please. Look at the packaging. Like it’s a you know, digital teamwork you need. like they’ve got all these like pas inspiration. Like you’re like, hey, how cool is this? Right? I ordered this on Tuesday night. Got it today. Okay,

 

Damon Pistulka  26:21

yeah. Now,

 

Curt Anderson  26:22

so if you’re a costume manufacturer, you’re like, well, we can’t you know, I paid a premium. I you know, I wanted it quick. But the thing is, I made and created my own t shirt. They had a configurator. That was phenomenal. absolutely phenomenal. I could pick out from dozens of different types of T shirts, I could pick my size, I could put my color I could put I had printing put on it. I’m gonna break it out tomorrow, it’s gonna be a surprise. Yeah.

 

26:47

And so I have a great example.

 

Curt Anderson  26:51

This was a Yeah, and, you know, proudly, proudly printed and handcrafted in the USA, you know, I mean, like, everything that they did was exact, like, as a matter of fact, we should get the CEO or somebody on that company on our show. This was a textbook config, I just, I

 

Damon Pistulka  27:09

absolutely. Have to,

 

Curt Anderson  27:11

I was in love with the configurator. So I mean, again, if and I always use that T shirt as an example. And again, I know people are like, Hey, wait a maker, you know, like, we do very complicated engineering high end data. And I get it, I totally understand that. So it’s not for everybody. But boy, it’s for all a lot of people. There’s a lot of companies that should be taken full advantage of a configurator.

 

Damon Pistulka  27:35

And, and I think of this, I go back to to run a custom shemale fabrication company, right. And we we’ve been a lot of different things, a lot of different stuff. But one of the things that we did a very fair amount of was electronic enclosures. Yeah. And if you look at something that’s simple, yeah. From that, that you go, Okay, I want an electronic enclosure, that’s four by four by four with a screw on lid, and I want to hold like this in the side or something like that. Right? It’s not that hard to put together. configurator to do that.

 

Curt Anderson  28:09

It’s not that hard. And if there’s see, you know, what I always preach is like the 8020 rule. So say that you’re a, you know, a power unit, you know, supplier, Okay, go. Good. You know, like, so like, you’re familiar with my Falcon electronics, right? All gonna tronics they make power strips. So like, if you walk into Walmart, any Walmart in all of North America, you see their television department, those televisions are plugged into this real heavy duty, US Steel metal fabricated power unit.

Okay, Lowe’s, they make another one for Lowe’s at Christmas time, when you see their artificial Christmas tree displays. Their trees are plugged in? Well, if you what we did is like people were going into Lowe’s flipping over the power strip, and they were calling us and they’re like, Hey, could we buy your power strip? Can we buy a power strip? Like, hey, that’s an e commerce opportunity? Yeah, we’d say hey, let’s create that. It’s we had it was our ul listing. It was our design.

It was our product. Let’s just create a handful. We’ll put it in stock. Let’s see what happens. And so now, like when target like Target called us recently, they’re like, Hey, we need power strips. And we want to set it up. Well, that’s great. But we have this one. Oh, okay. Well forget what I was looking for. I’ll take that because you already have it in stock. Or they can go to the website, though. They’ll use the URL, they’ll grab the link of that product, and say, we want that product because we narrowed it down for them. Yeah. You know, it’s just we’re the goal is how do you make it easier for him?

 

Damon Pistulka  29:34

That’s true. That’s true. Well, and that’s you make a great point. Because a lot of times we sell custom because we are custom. And we don’t have to be. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you think about it, and you go, Okay, if I’m making the 17 different enclosures for all these people, when you look at them, you go in the middle, there’s three that would take care of 12 of them.

Yep, you go. Oh, Maybe we should start thinking about that and explain to our customers that you buy, what number one, you buy number two, you buy number three, and you’re going to get a better price. And then we begin to send those sell those same things online, this is the way that you start to go, Okay, well, I can get volume like,

 

Curt Anderson  30:19

no, I couldn’t agree with you more, because now, now you’re scaling. Yeah. Now, you know, you know, you know, it’s the McDonald’s concept, you know, it’s like, now you’ve narrowed it down. Now you can, you can buy, you know, your volume is gonna go up, you’re, you’ve created economies of scale.

So all the above, you know, so between going manufacturer direct, taking that at, you know, customizing and creating some custom, some converting what I call demon, you know, those custom manufacturers, what do they have every single one of them have a proprietary process, right? So what we talked about in our webinars is how do we scale? Or can use them or convert? How do we scale your proprietary process into a proprietary product? You know, either scale it or convert it? And that’s exactly what you just described?

 

Damon Pistulka  31:09

Yeah, yeah, that’s, yeah, yeah. Because there’s got to be ways to do that in, in, in business, even to the point that if you’re a custom manufacturer, and you understand your customers product a little bit, and a few customers like that, you could redesign a more common product that would fit your process. Right. I come back again to and we talk about e commerce. And one of the things that I think is a is a low hanging fruit opportunity for manufacturers that they’re they’re not utilizing. And one of the strategy e commerce strategies that they should be, at least if they’re not doing now, is setting up carts for their existing customers.

So it’s almost like an Amazon thing for their custom products. It’s like, I got to repeat, Oh, I got to fill out this purchase order, and then I got to send it over to you and you’re going to do it in an order we’re going to eat Ei which EDI is better. Don’t get me wrong, EDI is better for the people that do it with their big customers. But the is this where you’re sending anything by by way of p O. And then there’s manual entry at the other side, it’s more efficient and better for both parties, if they can just buy on the other end. And talk about when your e commerce strategies for manufacturers is that a lot of times people want to then pay with a credit card to at that time they buy

 

Curt Anderson  32:32

I agree with you 100%. And think about your hidden rate on ahead, you know, because the thing is, what you can do is you there’s multiple things you can do you can have it password protected where that that item, you know, within your website, but nobody else can see it. You can have a hidden, you know, there’s multiple things that you could do with that customer. And again, what are we trying to do?

Make that make our customer the hero? So instead of like, Hey, here’s a purchase order, hey, you know, what was the price last time data, I can click a link, I can log into the website, place the order, like you said, more and more people are now using credit card. You know, and I know, you know a lot of people like I don’t lose that 2%. Man, I’ll take 97 cents all day long to get paid today, and get and get paid before not only before I ship the product, before I even make the product. That’s cash is king. And to me it’s worth that two 3% you know,

 

Damon Pistulka  33:24

yeah, yeah. So well, Ronnie says a we should go to magic metals for enclosure. So let’s do it. Let’s do that. Ronnie. He’s got a good question here. He said, How do you deal with the volatile metal market? And you know, I think that’s just go ahead.

 

Curt Anderson  33:37

No, that that’s so as far as pricing goes. That’s a fantastic point. I don’t know if it’ll work for metal, metal market, what we’re doing so late on we created a you know what, we just launched a brand new configurator. Our buddy, our mutual friend Jeffrey stern. Yeah, just launched a configurator for his company, just Tuesday. So, you know, So say, for example, you know, do I have a good question, a good answer for writing, let me go this direction, and I’ll come back.

Um, you know, so like in electronics, so like, there’s all sorts of massive electronics suppliers, or, you know, say like Mauser Digi key, or some places like that, right? You can take you can get an API, pull the information into your configurator. And so now the prices are live, you know, for for volatile prices for metalwork, depending on how many skews you have, or how sophisticated your suppliers are. Either a can they get a arm? Can they can they get the API to pull the prices in? Or can they just set the prices and then somebody manually is gonna have to monitor it, you know? Yeah.

 

Damon Pistulka  34:42

Yeah, cuz i think you know, the pricing when you’re doing it online like that you make a good point. Most suppliers in metal probably aren’t changing more than once a month or every couple of months. So it’s easy, or if you got a feud update just to put the play the cost in once Because your configurator if you’re doing it the way you want to do it is going to spit out a cost. And it’s gonna it’s gonna cost. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Now, let’s go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, you go ahead.

 

Curt Anderson  35:15

So back to like, say the enclosures or power strip example, you know, another thing with that 8020 rule, what it does by like, you know, really trying to scale or just blow out that, you know, narrowing it down, because a lot of people, you know, like, say, a power strip, you know, I mean, so many receptacles, you know, well, did I really need 24, you have 20, and stack, I’ll just take the 20. But if they really need the 20, for, at least they have a foundation that the conversation has already started, like that 60% of due diligence that you always talk about, like they’re already past that point. So okay, I see you the 20, I have to go 24.

But since I’d like the price of the 20, I’m assuming is gonna be a little bit higher. But I think, you know, you’re so far ahead of your competitor, that just like, Hey, we got to keep everything to the vest, we’re not gonna post anything, you know, and I, you know, my response always to that is like, man, I’d rather have a customer see my price, then, you know, I’m more worried about my customers not seeing my prices, then I’m worried about my competitors, seeing my prices, you know what I mean? Mm hmm.

 

Damon Pistulka  36:17

Yeah. And that’s, that’s what I was gonna bring up, because that’s the first thing that when you start talking about prices and public, oh, no, you can’t do that. But at the end of the day, I just wonder, in that regard, I agree with you. I wonder how much of that is, is really true, you know, that, that you would ever a competitor would a be looking, I see what your price is on somebody else’s? Because I contend that they’re probably busy running their business.

 

Curt Anderson  36:50

You’re busy, but you know, and even with competitive intelligence, you know, I mean, bottom line people, you know, in certain cases, you’re going to get a price, you know, I mean, like, yes, anytime you’re going to get a price, but now, even with a configurator, or some of these custom situations that we’re talking about, you know, on the configurator, what you do you submit, you know, the customer has to submit an email, it’s coming to them personally. It’s not being you know, those configurators The price is not posted publicly, in some cases. Yeah.

On my T shirt, or Jeffrey Stern, you know, they’re putting it right out there. Because, you know, it’s a it’s an interaction, we want to close the sale. And here’s another nice thing is, by putting sometimes putting those prices out there, you eliminate people that you would have wasted time with that had no intention. 100%

 

Damon Pistulka  37:34

right. Yeah. Yep.

 

37:36

It makes a great point.

 

Damon Pistulka  37:39

Well, Ronnie Ronnie out a little bit, they’re changing metal prices daily.

 

Curt Anderson  37:44

Yeah, that’s not my, my, my theory, you know? Yeah. Um, but again, either a can you get? Can you get an A, you know, how sophisticated that that vendor is? Can you get an API in pulling live prices, then you don’t have to babysit it? Or if it’s a limited skew product line, unfortunately, then somebody does have to babysit it, you know, yeah, you

 

Damon Pistulka  38:06

probably wouldn’t be able to get it. So it’s a spreadsheet upload.

 

Curt Anderson  38:09

And here’s the other thing, depending on the raw material that you’re purchase, you know, you can base that price on what’s an inventory versus what you buy. And then you can have it you can also have, you know, related and today’s prices or you know, I mean, there’s, there’s things that we can do to work around that. Yeah. Real quick, Damon, so next Friday, and our Friday webinar is President Chris Harrington from an alpha. So if anybody’s out there, and they want to go deeper on configurators, Chris and her team at Gen alpha, do an amazing job with configurators. And so we’re going to be talking about that from her perspective. Next Friday.

 

Damon Pistulka  38:44

Yeah. And do they tie in then to the GRP systems that they do? Yeah. Season pays. That’s, that’s a big thing. And every manufacturer has some sort of GRP system there. Yep. Yep. And that’s, that’s what I see is, is one of the things that would be really, really nice if your configurator just rolled right through your website into your earpiece system. And, man, you gotta get it.

 

Curt Anderson  39:06

Right. I better just wanted to get the dog out of here, you know, you know, I mean, my, my dogs always crashing the party yourself. But I

 

Damon Pistulka  39:14

gotta, yeah, good stuff. Well, you know, one of the things that I was thinking about is, as you look forward into the rest of this year, what are you seeing as some of the leading things that are like, wow, yeah, that is really something that I think if we could get that out to the masses, it would help a lot of people in getting their their a getting out more but actually beginning to start to sell online.

 

Curt Anderson  39:45

Yeah, so So Ben, stand in our manufacturing lane, what, you know, more of a shameless plug, you know, we so we’ve been connecting with a lot of the MEP s. So if anybody’s not familiar, that’s a manufacturing extension partnership. So there’s a manufacturing extension partnership in all 50 states, I think their claim is like there’s one within two hours of every manufacturer in the country.

You know, impact Washington where you’re at, they do amazing, amazing work. I’m blessed. Fortunate I do work with those guys. Here in New York, our friend Steven Leto talking with him tomorrow. He’s part of, we have 10 different MEPs throughout New York State here. But the MEPs are a great network.

And so we’re we’re blown out a lot of webinars, a lot of putting out a lot of information, we have our little Rat Pack, or whatever you want to call it, our group of 12 different manufacturing marketers, that we’re, we’re rolling out at IMAX, you just went on Tuesday at the Illinois MEP template, we landed a really nice program that we’re doing at Temple University next month. And so I think what we’re so to answer your question, what I’m hearing, and I feel comfortable saying this, because we you know, you and I work at a lot of different states, with different manufacturers tomorrow, I’m in Montana, I’m in my basement, but I’ll be at Montana.

We’re, we’re really aggressively going after this, do it with you model in that concept for these manufacturers is, you know, a lot of them. You know, they have folks on a team or under staff that know what they do know what they need to do. But they’re in an island or in a silo, they need help, they need a trusted guide. And so what I feel like we’ve been doing is like we’re trying to help educate these folks. And in some cases, we’re trying to teach them how to fish so they can fish on their own. In other cases, this is someone right in your backyard, I had a great call with someone in Seattle this morning. She is so sophisticated man.

I’m like, I’m going to learn from her. But she just wants somebody by her side, they’re going to run out like a whole whole new e commerce, you know, strategy, e commerce for their website, SEO Pay Per Click data she wants, she just wants a trusted resource. We’re like, they can’t go to a firm because of a marketing firm. They want to do that do it for you concept. They want to take it and do it themselves. She’s like, I don’t need somebody to do it for me. I just need somebody to do it with me. And so if I’m answering your question, I’m hearing a big, big trend with that. Right,

 

Damon Pistulka  42:15

I think I think you’ve hit one of the key stumbling blocks for most men, a lot of businesses overall manufacturing. Implementing e commerce is they’ve tried it before it spent a ton of money and it didn’t give them anything. Yeah. And I mean, this is be honest, because because what happens that I think about I put myself while I was in the seat, right?

You were in the seat, and I was in the manufacturing company you are, you’re running a manufacturing company, I’m sitting here and someone comes to the sit someone talks to my sales and marketing people and said we need a new website. That’s how we’re going to get ecommerce. And if that person that’s the selling that service looks at your business, they’re looking at it in the in the eyes of the website developer. Yep. And yes, yeah. You may, you may sooner or later need a website. Right.

But is that the right thing today? Right. And, and that’s where I think that if, if anything manufacturers and other business people need to do when they’re looking at e commerce is find a guide, that is not tied to APR, click a new website, social media, and go Okay, what do we do next? Because successful business owners, right? They understand what to do next? A lot of times because they’re not in business long, if you don’t, we work in sales, or working on making sure we make good money with the sales. I’m working to use that money, right?

So I can get more sales, and they’re working through all these different things. Ecommerce is a little bit different, but exactly the same. But you have to understand ecommerce well enough to be able to do that, because it’s not as intuitive as business is in general, because of the technical nature of it. It’s Yes, in most people, yes, a new website could do it. But is it going to do enough that that that warrants your attention? And the 1000s of dollars that will take right now? Or is it that you’re not getting the right traffic to your website? Or Or are you getting enough traffic but it’s not the right traffic?

Is it that you know there’s all these different things. And really, when I look at ecommerce for manufacturers or e commerce strategies for manufacturers, it’s really about we all have limited resources, figure out what we should be working on today because we can’t work on all of it. And we have to work on what is going to help us generate revenue the fastest. And it is nothing’s fast, right? It takes some time for this kind of stuff, especially and some and now. Now it’s a tougher thing when you’re talking about SEO because You’ve tried all the other stuff, and you have to build SEO job because that takes months to do that, right.

But oftentimes, I think manufacturing people and business people in general, I don’t know there’s many you can walk up to anymore that can’t tell you a bad experience about someone sold me a new website, someone sold me pay per click, someone told me race advertising, it doesn’t matter what you just pick one, right content writing blogs, and in and together, they could be very good. And I did it at the wrong time. Because if I have the right amount of traffic, and I’ve got to write the good paid strategy, I’ve had a good website bill, it may be time that you need to generate content, you may need to generate a lot. But if I do it first, right? It’s not gonna do you any good, right?

Well, well, but it’s going to take you two years for it to even show itself up if you’re even writing the right content. Because you don’t know your customers wanna, this is why I come back to the thing to do it with you, or finding someone that can help you through this overall, that’s not necessarily a specialist that says, I make you know, I make it it’s like having a heart surgeon be a general general doctor. I don’t want a heart surgeon come and look at me, when I got a cold. It’s not my heart. I don’t need heart surgery to fix my head cold.

Go find somebody that’s more like a general MD. A family practitioner because listen, I just want I want to get if I need to go to a specialist, I’ll go to a specialist. But today let’s talk about the whole my whole self. Right? Figure out what what you think and those kind of things. That God is so critical because and and forget the money too. It’s not money. In a lot of cases we cuz you’re gonna spend money to do ecommerce, yeah. But the thing is, is the time you waste because if you’re not, if you’re not doing the right things, you can be down the road six, eight months, and you’ve just lost that time.

And that’s why you’re talking about what you’re seeing from from these customers, and they’re wanting people that can kind of help them with it. I think there’s a huge opportunity for people to do that. And then you bring the right resources in and put them in the right spot and do that kind of thing. And do the things like we talked about in some of our stuff about, you know, making sure that that’s getting the return, we want making sure that it’s the right time and really driving the results you want. Over time, I think just about anybody comes with a good ecommerce strategy

 

Curt Anderson  47:37

right now, dude, guy. That was phenomenal, man. Hey, are you recording us?

 

Damon Pistulka  47:45

Well, I think it’s something that we hear every day, right? We every day, we hear it every day. That was

 

Curt Anderson  47:54

That was so good. No, I got so many things, you know, again, going like if we equate this to like the 90s, you know, say like the service sector, plumbers, electricians, you know, you know, you took an ad out in the phonebook, and did it once a year. And you’re set, right? Internet comes along, disrupted all these the trades people, trades folks, right? And like, gosh, you know, now I got this whole internet thing in manufacturers like, Oh, thank goodness, you know, that’s never going to catch up to us.

Thank goodness, we’re not a plumber, good thing. We’re not a beauty salon or, you know, whatever nail salon. We hit the service sector 20 years ago, or however many years ago, you know, when Facebook, social media, you know, so on and so forth, that hit those sectors, it’s now hitting manufacturers. I remember in the 2000s when I had my ecommerce business, I was flying all over the country going to, you know, conferences, you know, I’d go to San Jose, you know, run Google campus for, you know, this kind of search engine, marketing, Manhattan, Chicago, whatever, just trying to get nuggets, because you know, we couldn’t even really go online and get information right.

Now, there’s a ton online, you can YouTube, anything, how to do pay per click, how to do SEO, tighten it up, what the differences here is having somebody a trusted guide, by your side to kind of help you go through that process. You know, like figure out these strategies, figure out how to do these things, or I’m not in a silo. I’m not paying somebody 50 grand a year to manage my pay per click Account, you know, but I could have somebody just kind of show me how to fish or fish with me, you know, so it’s, I just think it’s super exciting. The MEPs I’ve been just phenomenal. It’s fun watching what they’re doing with manufacturers and how they’re helping them elevate. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  49:43

yeah, I’m just really excited as to see how, you know, the next couple of years will play out for manufacturers in e commerce and just some of the innovative things that we’re going to see just how you can rethink the way that that You can make it easier for people to get what they need. Oh,

 

Curt Anderson  50:03

it’s just, you know, it’s hysterical. I was on, again, plastic injection molding. So like, I’m on a line with a client, and we’re going through some search strategies. And and, you know, and again, like, you know, this poor person, you know, like, last week I was asked what is Seo? I mean, like, that’s, you know, unfortunately, if you’re a widget expert, like, why would you know what SEO even stands for?

They just don’t know, you know, um, you know, you and I, we’ve come across those manufacturers that are spending 50 grand on Pay Per Click strategies, and we look at their, their, their campaigns that they’re paying these firms that do, it’s almost criminal, and the keywords are have no relevancy to what they do. It’s just they might as well just donate that money to charity, you know, and it’s it. So like this one particular woman, you know, plastic injection molding, we’re doing some searches.

And we did by little, okay, finished a sentence and we’re going through that, but prior to that, when we’re going broad, we found a plastic injection molder that had a configurator in there, Google Ads said 30 seconds or less. Yeah, you know, like, 30 seconds or less man, that’s like, you know, that’s crazy that you can you know, hey, we’re going to spit out a quote to you and, you know, 30 seconds, we’ve got your back, we’re gonna make this happen so fast. You don’t need to call us You don’t need to email us. We’re just going to make this happen. You know, that’s, that’s crazy.

 

Damon Pistulka  51:23

Yeah, it is. It is. And even in the even in the years ago, when I was still in the machining industry, and I think it’s kind of interesting, because Rodney says, miles sale is up 60 cents, or aluminum 60 cents last mile and miles to almost double. But then he says he’s been a couple months. But man, that’s a lot. I didn’t realize

 

Curt Anderson  51:43

I’d really

 

Damon Pistulka  51:44

like that. Because that’s that’s a fair amount. But I always thought it was interesting. Now, with the advent of something like the solid modeling programs that are out there, that if you had a CNC machine product, you can drop the model in and have it spit out a cost based on the volume of material you’re taking away from the blog. I’m like, because because I used to have a very good, a very good estimator.

I know, he still is up here by me, but he would, he would. That’s the way he estimated. And yes, there’s different speeds for holes and all this kind of stuff. He says, overall, if you do it like this, and he would get pretty damn close like that. But I just think of the way that you could you could get real data about that, with custom products,

 

Curt Anderson  52:33

right? In, in writing in order, it’s gonna be it’s gonna be Siri, Siri or Alexa. Hey, Alexa, what’s the price of 1000? aluminum, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, like, and, you know, it’s gonna, you know, it’s probably not that far away, to be honest with you, right?

 

Damon Pistulka  52:50

I mean, ask you five or six questions you answer. It’s not the forum for that big boom. Where would you like me to send that?

 

Curt Anderson  52:57

Yeah, I need a six foot aluminum, you know, five inch wide, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I need, you know, yeah, I mean, like, I that’s, that’s well, within

 

Damon Pistulka  53:08

voice activated. configurator. Well, and I just, you know, we

 

53:14

were getting a Jeffrey stern about that. I

 

Damon Pistulka  53:16

got a tie. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah, he start that, but you talk about AI and the way I can really, that’s gonna do some stuff there. But, but, you know, even just going back to the basic things that e commerce strategies that manufacturers can can look at now, right, can a educate themselves on and I all across the board, because this is one of the things that I see that executives need to understand. In any business, you should be at least somewhat dangerous in e commerce. Right? Right.

Otherwise, otherwise, you can get taken advantage of, but not so much. That is if you’re at least dangerous. You can help to lead your people to drive the results you want. Or to achieve results. I always use the word drive, but I mean it in a nice way, but achieves results your month. Because sometimes, if you don’t know, you’re gonna go, why should I spend that $10,000 and if you’re, if you’re know enough to be dangerous, you can ask two or three questions or six questions or 10 that make you feel comfortable and go. Yeah, that’s a good decision, we should move forward. But if you’re not don’t have that education about it. You might turn it down and it might have been the best thing

 

Curt Anderson  54:35

you know, and it Yeah, and it when it comes to technology, it’s so hard, you know, like you hate to, you know, we’re, you know, different social media platforms. We’re talking about clubhouse? I hope not, I could be out of a job.

 

Damon Pistulka  54:48

Like that.

 

Curt Anderson  54:50

Rowdy with that won’t happen, dude. We won’t let that out. But you know, that, you know, with technology, you know, remember when social media first started coming out like You know, to present uh, you know, we had a, I was younger than we had a young team.

And our goal was always like, we never wanted to be beat by the competitors by ignoring you know, you know, I’ve told you a story before you know, like Twitter, I’m like I you know, who’s ever going to type 140 characters at Twitter? things never gonna work, you know, you know, is clubhouse, Periscope, you know what, you know, it’s just man, sometimes this technology just gets overwhelming.

But boy, you just you hate to get beat by the competitors. Because you intentionally ignore these opportunities, you know, an e commerce can be extremely inexpensive, can be effective. If you you know, not always sometimes you’re looking at, you know, pretty big strategies. But you know, it’s like a business development, you know, what’s your payroll for a sales rep or a business development person? You know? Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  55:48

yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, and it is different. It is, it is more technical in a lot of ways. But it’s also sometimes it takes a lot more creative flair to just because of the writing and the graphics and the other things that have to be involved in it. But it’s, it is the way that people are getting more comfortable buying,

 

Curt Anderson  56:09

right? In order. A lot of it is David like the configurator the content, the e commerce, you know, you were talking earlier about, like all this content that you’re putting out for your company, all we’re doing is we’re doing the work ahead of time.

Anticipating business, that’s all it is. It’s like some you know, we’re hoping or anticipating someone’s going to buy that product at some point time, or configure that product, or need have that FAQ, or that question, by doing this content that you’re doing. By doing that. configurator all we’ve done is like, we you know what? It’s like we went into pregame mode. We did everything ahead of time. Now we’re ready for you. So instead of you coming to us, and we’re gonna do it after the fact, we’ve done it beforehand. That’s the competitive advantage.

 

Damon Pistulka  56:53

Yep. Yep. That’s that’s a good point. That’s a good point. Well, I you know, we’re getting to the end here, Kurt. And it’s, you know, like usual, we could talk about this a lot. But, you know, where can people find you? First of all, they want to talk to you.

 

Curt Anderson  57:10

Well, right here with you, brother. So every Friday man every Friday me my brother from another mother Damon, we do our weekly manufacturing ecommerce success webinar. Dude, tomorrow, get a good night’s sleep man. Tomorrow is just gonna be we have Mike Womack from the New Jersey MEP. This kid is just a ball of energy. He’s just on fire. So like, we’ve got that tomorrow. We’ve got Harry Moser from the restoring initiative. He’s a celebrity and you must manufacturing he’s going

 

Damon Pistulka  57:43

back to the USA man.

 

Curt Anderson  57:45

We got we got our we got our dear buddy Dan bigger is coming on in a couple weeks. Yeah, he’s talking about his Twitter chat group. We’ve got Kara golden might the founder might my daughter love my life. I’ve hit wider. So we have a lot of So join us on Fridays. We’ve also taken initiative we’ve we’ve created this little fun Co Op, this e commerce Co Op, that people now can go on our website and people are starting to use the statement. We have a free audit tool. So people go to its e commerce, management.

And Amazon management is MGMT e commerce management. And you go on there, and you just pop in your domain name. And man, that tool that we have is just phenomenal, very robust, tons of information. We’ve got our free webinars, we’ve got our free audit, and then our good buddy, Jeffrey Graham, has just created this phenomenal free e commerce course. So at some point, we need to make a living dude, we got to pay, you know, I got a daughter’s got to college. You got to pay.

But you know, we have a lot of free resources. We’re just very passionate. We’re doing these webinars for the MEP. So we’re just we’re really, you know, you’re great. And you’re such an inspiration with all the work that you do. All this, the shows that you’re putting out. It’s such an honor for me to be with you on Fridays. I just I can’t express my thanks for your friendship, your support. It’s just been you’re a blessing Dude, you

 

Damon Pistulka  59:09

really are. Well, you know, I’m an old manufacturing guy. I love building shit. That’s just I do it. I can’t get it out of my blood even even when the e commerce has pulled me away. I still like that. Right? I think it’s I think there’s an opportunity for people to for us to educate people. Yeah. And and let them do like I do, innovate and do great thing. So I think Yeah, thanks for being on here.

Kurt Anderson, my friend, partner, brother from another mother. You know, we’ll be seeing you tomorrow. And if you haven’t seen it, stop by the manufacturing ecommerce Success Series Friday at 1030. Pacific time. Yep, I would. You know, I’m actually getting better at this East Coast stuff now. I can convert pretty quickly in my head. But yeah, you’re gonna hear us tomorrow and we do much Like Womack is there tomorrow?

Yeah. And he’s O’Neill’s in manufacturing. I think it’s gonna be a great topic because man, it is something I am passionate about. I think it’s just a it’s a it’s a shame that we don’t have kids graduating from college or from my from high school, thinking about this thinking about going to work in a manufacturing plant, because they’ll go down and there’s nothing against this go down and I’ll work at a Domino’s or something like that, right? delivering pizzas. When they could go to a manufacturing plant, make more money, have benefits have an it have a career opportunity for them. Right and they don’t even consider it. So I’m happy Yeah,

 

Curt Anderson  1:00:41

and he you know, I think you had Hollywood you today Hollywood clear right? But you know, guys like Michael I mean, I there’s momentum man there’s there’s a change taking place. There’s a mind shift. It’s not grandma and grandpa’s manufacturing anymore. You know, there’s a lot of he’s going to be talking tomorrow about SEO, pay per click from from, you know, from a manufacturing standpoint, and create stuff, so yeah, good.

 

Damon Pistulka  1:01:07

Well, Kurt, thanks again for being on the faces of business. Thanks, everyone for listening, Rodney. I’m great. I’m grateful that we made a drive go by fast,

 

Curt Anderson  1:01:18

rowdy thanks, dude, I got to connect with you on LinkedIn man. So yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  1:01:21

tonight, you bet. And for everyone listening. We’re here every Tuesday and Thursday 3pm Pacific, talking with interesting people about life and business on the faces of business. Thanks for being here.

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