Material Insights

Four questions that focus on reducing complexity

We’ve been talking a lot about change at Material Insights. Why it’s important to your business to recognize what’s happening around it, particularly the types of change that doesn’t get talked about in the break room or the boardroom. Kind of like climate change, except on fast-forward. The point is if such phenomenon is not recognized soon enough, you could end up out in the cold, unprepared...
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Five ways to keep moving forward… in spite of change

Since the introduction of Henry Ford’s moving assembly line in 1913 time has become an important dynamic for every business, large and small. Fast forward nearly a hundred years and most manufacturers, including coatings operations, see or feel the effects of time being compressed. It has become a force of change that your business must reckon with, if it hasn’t already. What was novelty in 19...
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Four forces of change…why it matters so damn much

Change is everywhere. It’s constant, and it’s subtle all at the same time. But what the signs don’t tell us is that when the world changes, the rules change. You can get stuck with currency nobody wants. Rules both define and constrain your business in significant ways. Since nobody’s handing out new rulebooks, understanding exactly what is changing, and how it’s affecting your business, is ke...
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Supply better quality at an understandably higher price

Ask your sales team, “What part of our products’ value proposition do you take responsibility for?” It’s a fair question—even if you have to ask yourself. There are two roads, price and value and you have to choose just one. If your coatings company battles over price, you may be standing in the middle of the road where, ultimately, you’re gonna get run over. My recommendation? Step out and ru...
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Rescue sales and marketing efforts with effective email

Everyone has an email inbox. It’s the one media you know everyone uses virtually every day. But with all the hype around social media you might think that the power or relevance of email in the coatings industry has diminished. It hasn’t. There’s hardly anything in sales and marketing more cost effective, easier to track, easier to measure, or more direct than an email with a purpose. That sai...
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4 Critical capabilities; yours for twelve bucks

There’s a new book that can give you an immediate edge in your coatings business. It will show you how to take stock in yourself and reframe your current business midst the technological and social change that’s afoot in the world. And, in spite of its small size, this book builds a compelling case for changing what you think it means to build a company. Top-down management styles are fading i...
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Set the score straight with your offer to coatings customers

When profit margins are shaky thin, you can blame it on assumptions. When we lose business we deserved to have, again, blame it on assumptions. Assumptions are dangerous but they are avoidable. Instead, take less for granted and swiftly shift the spotlight on your proposals from cost to unquestionable value. By taking the road less traveled you’ll win more business and make more money doing it...
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Put your coatings business on the road. Five practical steps

Do you want to ratchet up your sales? Increase potential new business opportunities? Build your network? Explore new vertical markets? Consider event marketing. Take your company on a road trip and explore new territory. Forget “visitor,” you can become a trade show exhibitor—think of the badge upgrade. Imagine your logo on that big vinyl banner. Seriously, trade shows mean business and this k...
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Customer perspective offers direction to more valuable coating solutions

Seize a ship of fools and commandeer a slight shift in your sales process. The maneuver could help you attract more business and build longer-lasting relationships. Adopt a more analytical approach with your customers. Aim for proposing solutions that better connect to your customer’s real needs and thus their very present reality. To do this, examine what you’re doing: do you spend more time with...
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Get more “go” out of your coatings business

Believe it or not, coatings contracts has been won and lost based on whether or not the customer “had a good feeling” about your business and its employees—particularly in the beginning during the kick-the-tires stage. When everything else is equal, and geographic location is of little consequence, the gut feeling your company generates will motivate customers to choose, rather quickly, whether to...
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