For many manufacturers, recovering from an industry downturn can be challenging. With Athena’s proven process and infrastructure one precision tooling company was able to secure new customers that have a conservative annual potential of over $6 million.
The client is a manufacturer of highly specified precision tooling. They produce tooling components for various industries, including automotive, medical, ammunition, and firearms.
The tooling company built its reputation on delivering high-quality tooling primarily to automotive and ammunition manufacturers. While this allowed them to have deep expertise in these sectors, it also meant that the company’s revenue streams were highly concentrated, especially since a few key customers made up 65% of its revenue.
The onset of global chip shortages significantly disrupted the automotive industry, while simultaneous gunpowder shortages similarly impacted the ammunition sector. These supply chain issues reduced orders from the tooling company’s key customers, severely affecting the company’s overall revenue.
Faced with these industry downturns, The tooling company recognized the urgent need to diversify its customer base to stabilize and grow its revenue. However, the company faced internal obstacles: the lack of infrastructure and hunters on
its salesforce.
The company needed to implement a structured and sustainable front-end sales model to improve opportunity flow in a more diversified market and increase sales representatives’ productivity by enabling them to concentrate on active selling.
To address these challenges, the tooling company engaged Athena SWC, which implemented a robust infrastructure that provided people, processes, and technology. These are critical components for creating the front-end sales process the tooling company needed to drive sales growth and market expansion.
Armed with a clear understanding of the tooling company’s target markets, Athena’s team built prospect lists that became the basis for systematic outreach efforts, which included both calls and emails. Athena’s teams’ industry knowledge and willingness to learn the company’s business provides the company’s vice president confidence in the team’s ability to speak to prospects on the company’s behalf.
“They understand our business and are willing to learn more,” said the VP. “We’ve talked to them about different materials, and we’ll discuss the machines we run on or what part shape we are looking at. They learned what we do specifically, not just our industry. I feel confident that their outreach is presented very well.”
Inbound and Outbound Lead Generation
In addition to its robust outbound efforts, Athena SWC implemented a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy to enhance the tooling company’s visibility and attract potential customers organically. This multi-faceted approach focused on rebuilding its website, implementing search engine optimization (SEO), creating content, posting on social media, and leveraging digital platforms (lead capture forms, chatbot) to engage and convert leads.
Athena SWC’s approach to sales coordination focuses on managing leads through the sales pipeline, following up on requests for quotations (RFQs) and quotes, and capturing feedback on wins and losses. The process is crucial for enhancing conversion rates and ensuring opportunities don’t get cold and age. This approach has led to re-engagement with dormant companies and the revival of opportunities that seemed lost.
“There have been some dormant companies that we have heard back from,” explained the VP. “There were two companies that Kevin [Athena account Manager] followed up with. It took almost a month, but we finally heard back from both of them. He also checks with customers to ask about the quality of our work — just to keep the dialogue going with them to try and get repeat orders.”
The tooling company partnered with Athena to protect itself from industry downturns and from relying too heavily on a few customers for revenue. Athena’s efforts have successfully reduced the company’s risk and provided opportunities in other industries. Because of the tooling company’s reputation in one industry, they also saw growth in that specific industry.
“Athena has certainly helped us get back into industries we hadn’t seen in a while. However, we are so well known in [one] industry they tend to get back to Kevin faster,” explained the VP. “We have diversified, but a lot of it has been diversification by the customer, more additional customers in certain industries, which helps to insulate us.”
Athena’s inbound process has resulted in a 96% year-over-year increase in organic traffic to the tooling company’s website, along with a 183% increase in qualified submissions and an 80% increase in secured meetings from them. Overall from both inbound and outbound initiatives, the company has had ten closures, resulting in nearly $370,000 in purchase orders with a conservative potential annual spend of over $6 million.
