I meet a lot of job shops that don’t know how to sell beyond their local market and some that don’t even think to try.

Many job shops are too small to justify a salesperson, so the owner ends up being the one who goes after work–in addition to all the other hats they wear every day.

Generally, when job shops get an RFP, they gather all the details they need to put a proposal together and then send it off into the ether to await a response.

I’ve seen too many job shops grow to a certain size and get stuck because they’re still trying to operate like a small shop and flying by the seat of their pants.

I’m going to get real for a minute: you’ll never have a Radical job shop with the potential for increasing profitability and influence if you operate from the traditional service-based business model. Continually re-inventing the wheel to meet your customer’s every need is not profitable or scalable.

If you’re like most job shop owners, you’re offering a broad range of manufacturing services to a wide variety of customers–and you’re probably not hitting it big.

When you run a custom manufacturing shop, you are providing a service to your customers, which means they are more than just a quick sale. If they’re a great customer, you hope to work with them long-term.

I don’t care how rich you are: We are all blessed with the same amount of time and energy to use in a given day, and how you put these resources to work translates to your success rate. Do you use that time developing your brand to attract the customers you want, or hitting the pavement to sell your machine time?