Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast. I'm Bill Woods, your host, where we're discovering what's missing in B2B and manufacturing marketing. We're here today live from the Ascenso Tires warehouse in Stow, Ohio. As you can see, we're surrounded by a lot of tires, both large and small. And with us today is the marketing manager of Ascenso Tires. Annie Boyer. Annie, thank you for joining us today.
Annie: Hi. Thank you for having me.
Bill: Excellent. Well, thank you. So we've been working with Ascenso Tires and Tyres International before that for a number of years. And I wanted to start by just getting a little bit into your background. So you're newer here to a company that's been around a long, long time. But in the two years you've been here, you've been baptized by fire and this transition and growth. So maybe if you would talk a little bit about your educational background and maybe where you came from, because I think that also ties into why we maybe we could talk about the heritage you have in the tire industry and just start there and we'll just learn more about you.
Annie: Sure. Yeah. I went to school at Bowling Green State University. I actually started out as a marketing major, switched to public relations and then finished with a communications degree. So I took a lot of classes it just worked out that way. I was able to study abroad in France for my last semester. So that was that's an amazing experience to discover really, who you are as your final release before the real world.
Bill: Yeah. My daughter is advocating at least a year abroad to study art, and so I'm sure that will cost me a lot. Anyway, that's great, and I think that is an experience. Those are the type of experiences that really can shape you internationally and then you're now working with an international company. So that's kind of a neat transition.
Annie: Yeah, I learned early on the communication styles. I was told I have a very American accent and I need to slow down a little bit. So yeah, it was it was a great experience. And now working with an Indian company has really benefited that I'm kind of learning the cultural shifts and the communication styles. So yeah, it's great.
Bill: Excellent. So your background before the college experience, maybe there was some foreshadowing as to how we arrived in the auto and tire industry. Maybe talk a little bit about that heritage your family has in the tire business.
Annie: Yeah, my dad just retired from Bridgestone. He was there the last half of his career, he was in I.T. He actually graduated with an accounting degree, but found a passion in technology, infrastructure. So he he was there for a really long time. And it might have been the Bridgestone Invitational Golf Club seating that got me here. But it was yeah, it was a great industry to be in. And he just, you know, when I applied for this job, he was like, it's benefited me very well. And it's a growing industry and it's never going to go away anytime soon. So tires are needed on every facet. So yeah, it was a good encouragement from him.
Bill: Yeah. Ever since what, the invention of fire and the wheel, there's been certain industries that have stood the test of time and certainly wheels and tires are a big part of what keeps this economy going and keeps things moving, whether it's an agricultural tire, keeping the backbone of our country, moving with food production, or if it's the construction tires and some of the other things you guys have that keep building and road construction and just commerce moving. Yeah, I don't think you have to worry that the tire business is going away anytime soon. So that's a that's interesting. So one of the things we had, the interesting position of at the time Tyres International came to us, Mike came to me, and said, Hey, Bill, we need some help recruiting in-house marketing talent because we're just growing so fast. We need support. He didn't have the capacity or the resources to do it anymore because of his moving up in the company and extra responsibilities. So we actually helped recruit and hire you, which is kind of a neat story to see it all came full circle and now you're sitting on our podcast. So that's the we have, I guess, a vested interest in your career. But as you came in and this I think is an interesting topic, we could kind of discuss. You came in as a marketing manager and that didn't replace our services as an agency. It really was more about teamwork and support and working together. So how have you seen your role with the company and then working with us to really drive campaigns, content, social media, video, all of those things? What have you seen over the past two years?
Annie: Yeah, so I actually come from my past career. I was the only person marketing department in nonprofits. So having someone to talk to and strategize and think marketing and less business like with Mike who was just thinking, you know, maybe a little political about as we get to have creative conversations. And I think it's been a huge help. And even with the small stuff you guys helped with like posting on our website page, or Hey, can you translate this to a PDF because I don't have the software at the moment. Like even small stuff like that, but then then they can share ideas as well. I think it's a huge help. And you guys had the experience and background in manufacturing marketing, which I don't. So it’s been helping me grow in this role and learning the different facets of it and where we need to be in ten years and not just how to get something done tomorrow.
Bill: So we see strategy is a huge component and we can’t just go out and do things in marketing anymore. I mean, one of the things that's critical to our brand is, you know, in 1896 John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising, said half or 50% of my advertising is wasted. He only wished he knew which half. And that's so much more true today because there's just an infinite number of possibilities and ways to approach it. And I think as we've seen Tyres International move to Ascenso Tires North America and that transition has been pretty amazing and fast and approaching that with an incorrect strategy could be costly or more costly and inefficient. So I think the collaboration we've been able to establish and working on the strategy first was super important and has really helped the growth and where we are today. So that's that's been exciting to see. When you look at Tyres International having been around for 50 years and as a distributor here in North America, and then you look at Ascenso while they're a new company, they're the family that owns Ascenso, has 30 plus years of manufacturing experience in the tire industry. It feels like and you can see why both companies came together because there should just be a tremendous output based on, you know, collectively 80 years of experience or however you want to do that math. Are you seeing that day to day as you watch some of your colleagues work together, both from the factory and then here from your distribution work here?
Annie: Yeah definitely, so we have so we have both the technical side and the sales side working together now. So we have people who are communicating from the plant in India saying this is where we want to go in the future. And the sales guys saying, well, this is where you should be going based off our customers needs and wants. So it's been a it's been a lot of communication, but it's gotten us really far. I think we're 700 plus SKUs now in four years, which is we're the largest growing our fastest growing tire manufacturer in the world. So I think we're in over 90 countries. So it’s not just in North America. So you get the feedback actually do communicate with our partners in Ireland and Australia and the UK and we kind of collaborate just like on the side in LinkedIn. But it's still, it's, it's great because small stuff like where do you get your tires hands and, and what are you putting at your trade shows or what kind of social media do you think is more important than others some of those things. So it's so it's really helped us kind of meld all the experiences together and to really push forward and to see where it leads.
Bill: We, my family, in the early 2000s owned about 14 John Deere dealerships, and we often found when we got together with the other dealers, we learned more than when we were talking sometimes to the manufacturer. And I think there's what you're describing, there's very important. You have your sales team here in North America, but also around the world that’s giving good market feedback. You have your technical manufacturing arm that is bringing in their feedback and it feels like with Ascenso they're listening to both sides and really trying to find the best path and the best like balance point for those things. And that probably is what is contributing to them being the fastest growing tire manufacturer in the world because you can't operate in any vacuum on the marketeting side or on the manufacturing side. You have to find that balance. So that's exciting to see. We also know that Ascenso has this credo, their tagline, mission statement, whatever it is, never stop rising. Can you talk about maybe how you see that every day and what that means here in North America to Ascenso.
Annie: Yeah, definitely. I think honestly, it's very inspiring to like to look at that every day, which is awesome and I think it's just we're not just doing what everyone's doing. We're looking forward to what needs to happen in the future. Whether that's bias to radial or the the technology that we've been importing, that's seen a lot of traction and the steel belting and all that stuff.
Bill: Yeah. So when we look at so I have a personal interest in agriculture. I own a my family and I own a organic dairy farm. So like we actually have, full disclosure, we have some Ascenso Tires on our tractors. Yes, we paid for them. So this is not a paid program, a paid promo or whatever, but we have enjoyed those tires. But one of the things the point of this is agriculture around the world is very similar. And while there are cultural variances based on geography, climate, etc., people are just trying to grow food to feed their customers. So in specifically in the agricultural segment, I can see how you you're finding parallels in Ireland. I saw there was a recent a big event in Poland and the UK, Australia, certainly India because that's where they're from. The factory. So that's exciting to see. And I think I've been watching, I've been lurking on the social media of these different folks. I think we're starting to see that “never stop rising” really penetrate each distributor or dealer or distributor organization however that's termed in those countries really, really embody that. And I think that's a great credit to the leadership and to each member who’s really focused on that and receiving that inspiration every day. So that's that's exciting to see. So one of the things we like to talk about in this is this is the Missing Half podcast and we're trying to discover what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. So when you look at what you're doing in marketing today, for Ascenso and then maybe even compare and contrast that to your nonprofit work, what do you feel maybe a year or two ago was missing that you're now kind of fulfilling and doing? And we always like to talk about what's working and also what didn't work because let's be honest, it's marketing. It all doesn't work, right? We have to test, we have to experiment, we fail, we optimize and pick ourselves back up and try again. So what do you feel are any like missing components that you were observing in the past that you fulfilled, and then after that, maybe we'll pivot to what do you feel is still missing that is part of the future.
Annie: Yeah, I think there was not much of a marketing presence before I came to be completely honest. It was very much just B2B marketing being a distributor. But now we are the manufacturer there's a little more end user involvement and I think what has been working is almost using end user marketing to get the B2B sales. So while our digital ads and our sponsored ads are more end user targeted, it's that B2B, the sales guys, the distributors are going to see that and see that we're putting in the money and effort into marketing us as a company. So they see that and like, that gets us in the door. So we did our market mapping with you guys. So you are so they those names and numbers are in the sales guys' hands as well as in our ad. And so they see the ad and they get the call from the sales guy and they’re like, I know who you are. So it's kind of melding the two, which is a lot different than what we were doing before. I think also a social media presence wasn’t much before. I think it's kind of a goal of ours is to do something every day. Just to have something out there to keep the presence front of mind. And then also our sales guys want to use that stuff in their sales. They’ll share it or they'll take that graphics and give it to their distributor. They’ll say hey you should use this on your social media help you market our company. It's those are kind of the things that have been working that maybe were missing first.
Bill: No those are good points. So when you look at those things. So let's talk about branding Ascenso was brand new to the market. And one of our first initiatives was to get branding information out there. So it wasn't to sell SKU wasn't to sell whatever SKU this is, right? It was just to say, hey, we're Ascenso, never stop rising and specifically we’re in that R1 which for those of you aren’t tire folks that's the agricultural tire this this type of profile here but front and rear on a but the that was our first effort. And one of the things I felt that was really gratifying is you don't always get attribution to every marketing dollar you spend. But whenever we got the feedback from the sales team that whenever they were walking in and talking to people on the phone, email, in person at trade shows or polishing doorknobs because it still happens in the industrial segment, they were known, the people had seen the ads. People were aware of the brand in a very short amount of time, and I think that really helped tee up some of your trade show activities. Hopefully there was more volume of people into your trade show booths. So I think that was exciting to see that branding component take place. And one of the things we're seeing in the market is branding for B2B is now so important. If we're not in front of our clients on a consistent basis, we're going to miss the opportunity for that 95/5 opportunity and the 95/5e rule states that 95% of your market is not actively buying or looking to investigate a purchase. Only 5% is active in buying. The 95 we have to stay in front with branding so that whenever they move into the 5%, we're top of mind and a consideration for that buying event. So I think that was one of the initiatives we did that was really successful. And that we continue to do because branding is so important. We've extended that with your unique value proposition. And then also you guys had some independent testing done, which I'm not a tire scientist, so I can't go into a lot of detail and I don't think that's your space either. We just as marketers, we recognize the arrows were pointing up and our performance was good, so we want to tell the market, but that's another initiative we use. So I think we had a great marriage of branding and then getting into some more features, benefits, and more importantly than that, telling the story of the value of those tires. So that was that was very important. So and I think social media is also something that you mentioned that we we've done some work in. And you're right, we've gone to the end user. So we did a wonderful shoot with Vince, a farmer in northern Ohio. This gentleman has been farming for forever. Like I think he started with the first John Deere and now he has big John Deeres and beautiful tires, wonderful man, a rural cropper here in northern Ohio. And I think he told a valuable story that is very much an important part of marketing today, which is we can't just show the factory and the machines and can just show this beautiful warehouse with all these amazing tires in it. We have to show solutions. And that end user story with that solution was so important to, I think, kind of rounding out the the company's story this year. And it was great production value. The drone, beautiful day and I think Vince may wax the tractor every day. I don't know. It's a beautiful tractor, but it was just such an amazing event. But are you seeing those social media inputs really drive conversations, not only like in the office with the factory, with the sales team and then with distributors and possibly end users?
Annie: Yeah, definitely. I think that video, we got so much great content from it that we can use in almost every section of our marketing. So while yes, it looks very nice to have this gorgeous video production on our social media, we take that to the distributor. We're using that in our OEM prospects at the moment. And saying this is a real life testimonial of someone who's had it for two seasons who has testified that the tread doesn't look a day old is the insane thing. It has everything he wants with the dual mud breakers and how long he's been farming, he he knew his stuff better than I did. He knows some of the things he was saying. I was like, That's great. I don't know what it means, but it sounds great and it's stuff I have heard our production team talk about as I'm learning, I'm like, okay, this is I'm so glad I can match what our production team’s goal is to what the end user is saying. I think that's so important and those testimonials are kind of what’s driving our business right now, bringing those videos, those small snippets. And I know we talked about doing smaller like that for a good minute and a half video, but pulling some small things from that and expanding that beyond into construction and forestry, I think is just what's really going to put us on top as the value high quality tire that we are improving it.
Bill: Sure. Yeah, I think that's an important point. You know, one of the stories, it hasn't been told yet and it's young, right? We're impetuous and impatient and we're like, we’ve got construction, forestry, we want to go and market it. And that's hopefully I'm not spoiling 2024 and 25, but there's the value proposition and the value story, the brand promise, and then the brand delivery and agriculture is going to be extended into those other markets. I think that'll be exciting to see that story play out and then also see some end users really utilize those tires or tracks or whatever type of situation there is and to execute their business and do it really well. So one of the things we worked on this year and I guess something we found that was missing was in the website, a lot of users were looking for a selector in a search functionality, not to look for the Ascenso X, Y, Z model, etc. They know their machine and they know the tire they need. So I think one of the things we found there was an area that was missing in like the usability of the website. Maybe talk about how we came to that conclusion, like the feedback you got from the sales team. And then we know we're actively addressing that even as we speak. I think there's folks back at the office are working that today, but maybe talk about how you got that feedback and learned what was missing in the website user experience in finding the tire that they needed for their application.
Annie: Yeah, So we definitely still have those customers, those and users like our our friend Vince still has a flip phone. And I couldn't email him had to call him and he wants the mailers and the print catalogs. But we're moving a little more into the digital space with our dealers and they want to make sure that they have what their customers are looking for and really cleaning up our website to showcase our range. But also what they're looking for specifically on has been a huge and just to like talking to the sales guys and having them go through the website and then communicating that to you guys and you by saying, okay, this is like the perfect mix of that. Of what's going to help clean up the website, make it, optimize it faster, and show that also what they want in the specific search functions. So I think it's been it's been that it's improved a lot over the years. I'm sure if we we we work on it constantly. I feel like it's not something that you can do and leave it alone for couple of years. It's going to need constant updates and there's development happening and new products being added. And you know, we've developed a really great process of doing that with you guys, where because it's kind of it's going to take a couple people to got there. So yeah, making it user friendly but also dealer friendly and compliant with India what they want. So it's something.
Bill: Yeah. So I think when we look at the website process and optimizing usability, probably one of the recognitions there was while large distributor deals like ABM type of work where we're looking at maybe someone has 20 or 30 branches that they're going to buy the tires by the container and then redistribute. They're probably looking more at that high level, high funnel value proposition, you know, support, supply, on time delivery, etc. When we're looking, though, this is a business that sold basically two tires at a time, right? Because you generally are based in pairs. So when we look at that, we have to recognize that not only do we have to meet that ABM or that big corporate client and communicate to them, we also have to communicate to the final transaction is going to be done with several digits, dashes and back slashes that you know, as this tire right here is 420 backslash a 90 or 30 and I don't know what that means per se. I know there's a grid and we can look it up and we can define that. But those are that's ultimately where the transaction occurs. So we have to be mindful of the different buyers personas that are involved in your website and involved in all of your digital, and then making sure that we have a user experience that meets both of them or multiple buyer personas where they're at. So that's exciting that we've we've kind of figured that out and we're developing an optimization plan for it. So when we look at what's missing and what didn't work, are there any examples and some of our clients really struggle with this So it's fine if you don't have anything. What we tried, where you tried that was not as successful as you would have liked it to have been, or your you want to change for next year.
Annie: I think something that I've learned when it comes to especially social media, there's difference between paid and organic and they going to be completely different campaigns in a sense even between social media is like our LinkedIn presence is going to be different than our Facebook presence. Our LinkedIn is very is more B2B, whereas our Facebook is more end user. So we actually got an opportunity to work and partner with his name’s Juan from Gold Rush on Discovery Plus. So yeah, and he has really helped with his influence. And if we think about influencer marketing, you think of people selling stuff on TikTok. And you, they go, we're a manufacturer. We can't really working in influencer marketing. But he has grown our social media following and by one with one post. Crazy. And it's going to be like we've given the tires he has we've made them a little more shinier and like putting the white on it. So when he's on the show you’re able to see it too so we wouldn't do that he's not on LinkedIn. That's not where his audience is. So it's completely different. And so I think trying to have the same target market for different avenues was kind of where we learned over this year. So it didn't work to do the same thing for everything. I mean, we talk about in general marketing, but anything tailored specifically like our digital ads are going to be completely different that our organic social media cause they’re not the same. And so I think that's that was the missing part, is that learning of those differences.
Bill: No, that's that's great. And I think that that talks about a category that we're very passionate about, which is no one in manufacturing and B2B marketing should talk about social media. Social media is too big of a word. We have to have a LinkedIn strategy oh wait that's even too big. We need a LinkedIn organic strategy. We need a LinkedIn paid strategy. We need LinkedIn employee advocacy strategy. We need LinkedIn and some people don't even know about this sales navigator strategy. And it is so important in today's B2B and manufacturing marketing space that we look at those things and really segment them, segment them by target audience, by message, by value proposition, by problem solution definition, and it’s so critical that we identify the differences that occur or need to occur in our approach and execution to deliver on something like social media, which has to be broken down. So Annie I think that's a that's a great insight. And I agree that Ascenso has come a long way now that was something that was missing, let's say, 12 to 18 months ago. We're getting there. We're not there yet. I don't know that we’ll ever get there. Right. It changes every day. But we're getting there. And I think the other thing that's neat about working with you guys at Ascenso is in it's exciting is your product line is changing every day. They're constantly sending out new inventory lists of new models and sizes and SKUs that they've developed. Maybe talk about that, that dynamic environment of it's never the same day twice at Ascenso Tires North America.
Annie: It’s definitely not. I think we do so much across the marketing channels. It's not because we do have those end users who need the print catalogs, but we also have to cater to the digital stuff. We have to do the trade shows, which again isn’t as fancy, I guess it's is not as digitally up and coming. You don't have screens everywhere. We have tires everywhere. So we're not going to I'm saying you need to kind of tailor to the end user who's coming to touch and see what you have. And then they're asking you, do you have this exact size? And is like, we might in two days. Like, who knows? So yeah, it's been a lot of a lot of growth and a lot of figuring out how to implement that growth smoothly and not just throwing information at people. It's collecting it in a way that you can put it out in what how they want to like take it in on how they want to talk about it to their customers. So it's it's not just, hey, we have this and it was one new size. It's like we have to twenty sizes. Where does this fit into your customer base? And I think we have been doing like even the old school presentations and USB drives and, and that stuff. That helps because then, I mean, but then we're sending them a new one in a couple of months. So it's in that works for some people more so than just putting on our website and saying, hey, go find it.
Bill: I think the important thing you're getting at there and we talk about this a lot with our clients in our office is we have to recognize that the buyer's journey is not linear. The buyer's journey is messy. It involves traditional channels like paid search, paid social, seeing ads and kind of coming in through that high funnel attraction content. But it also involves a new and emerging field called dark social, where people are watching a podcast like this and getting information and learning about 50 Marketing and learning about Ascenso Tires and then they maybe take a screenshot because I know my staff loves it when I do this on social media. Take a screenshot and send it to them and say, Talk to me about this. I'm sure there's no one else on the planet that does that. So there are so many ways in this messy buyer's journey that we have to be mindful of and make sure that we're meeting our buyers where they are, wherever they are on the journey. There's a statistic that 86% of the buyer's journey happens online before a client contacts you, via phone text email chat, however, and we have to make sure and I think you're alluding to this, that we are meeting that buyer on that 86% of the journey wherever they are and filling in those gaps. And if it's an old school USB drive, I mean, I'm a good bit older than you and I've been around a lot longer. And I remember like we used to print CDs and hand out the sleeves and then the USBs and then did you get the lanyard with the USB or did you just hand it a whole bunch of things we did back in the dark ages. But if that still works in this industry and it helps the buyer and meets them and fills that gap in their journey to get them to that purchase point, I mean, ultimately what we're here to do is not to do digital marketing, it’s to affect markets and to help our clients grow and help you grow. And if that means USB drives let’s do USB drives, if it means trade shows, as much as we all love business travel, let's do trade shows. And you know, so and to follow up on that, your trade show business you guys have done and this industry seems to still be very trade show centric. I mean, it's just the nature of it. People like to touch the tires, which I guess that's still important. I don't know. Like my family used to own a furniture manufacturing company. And people love to sit in the couches and the chairs that I kind of got because like, you would touch it, you'd sit in it, you would feel it. But this industry seems to be very they want to touch the tires. They want to see it. They want you to be there. And you guys have how many trade shows did you guys do?
Annie: It was just a handful. And I say that as an we're looking to a lot more in the future. And it's kind of, again, that building the brand awareness and then that will lead to those distributor purchases. Proposition so I it's it's and I will say that working with you you put that so much better than I could have and I think that’s such that’s a point of kind of our relationship is I have these ideas and I can you can eloquently say them and put them into action whereas I'm just like this happened and I think we should do this about it. You're like, okay, let's do a little more professional than just that.
Bill: That's hopefully what we bring to the table. What we really strive to do and is kind of at our core is we do not want to do digital art. We want to be part of the journey at the inception with the strategy and making sure we have the right goals and objectives set forth. And it's trickier than ever, right, because we're seeing a lot of generational shifting. So there's more millennials in the workforce than ever. And the way they buy, even in the professional B2B space, is wildly different than certainly the baby boomers. I think I'm Gen X, I can't remember. You know, all those different generations. So I think it's very important that we have the right strategy and that's what I do all day is talk to clients and develop strategy. So that's hopefully why I can put those things together. But getting the information from you guys is what's so important to understand the business. And I feel like in the last two years you've come up to speed really, really quickly, even though you have that heritage in tires. Your dad was at Bridgestone in I.T. So it wasn't like you were touching the tires, but you were aware of the industry. But I feel like in the last two years you’ve really come up to speed quickly in understanding the market, which is so critical because for us to have a successful client relationship, we need a point person at the factory or representing the factory or the distributor who can help extract information, who can help be that bridge for us and will we find that team between our team and your team, when we can really work together. That's where we get outsized results. And we found that with Ascenso. So we've enjoyed the relationship certainly. And I know Mike isn't here today, but I'm going to shake his hand again so I always like to see Mike whenever I'm in town. But this is my second visit to this warehouse. The last time there were flat tires moving everywhere, which is great, but right now is a downtime, so we don't have all of the forklifts running and all the tires moving. Well, Annie, the the other things we look at is as we look towards the future and as you think about B2B and manufacturing marketing, is there anything you see as being like critical in the next phase for Ascenso develop? ome of the things that come to mind are the social media, the the organic content we’ve talked about. Those or anything else you can think of that would be super by more part of your strategy.
Annie: I think we're looking a lot closer at sales enablement stuff that we're doing. We have the initial promotional items that we give at trade shows. Pens, post-its. We've actually been becoming known for our hats. I'll give you one.
Bill: Nice, I'm looking at our producer Noah, you're going to get a hat. I got a thumbs up.
Annie: It's just as in we're really looking into doing things well. Not just to do them. And that comes with the sales enablement stuff and not just putting out fliers. It's the correct flier. It's creating a flier for a distributor. It's that kind of stuff that's going to, again, get us in the door, keep us in the door, keep us front of mind. But then it also complements everything else we're doing. It's not just those fliers are going to match our ads a little bit. Our trade show stuff is going to get into the right hands and end users are I'm I'm trying to do a little sponsorship action in there I think that's a huge deal especially these big shows because you've got the right people there who are interested in this stuff and but like the hats, they’re nice hats so it's like just like wear it out or like the shirts or the polos we're trying to invest things that are going to the dealers to get them to where to get stuff to go in their stores, like posters and tire stands and just attire out there so people can see it. So that and these are asked, is that I've never maybe never heard of that before. I'm sure something we've implemented this year is the farm service truck technician recognition program. So it was kind of it was from one of our products managers. And he sees that the truck technicians, the guys who go out and replace the farm tire in the dead of winter, in the freezing rain. They are some of our biggest advocates. Because they work with them so often. So we really wanted and they’re never really had the spotlight before because everyone's worried about the end user or the dealer. So we’re starting a program we’re taking nominees and we're going to have a committee choose a winner. We're going to fight it out for SEMA. Yeah. So it's really feeding in. We've already gotten some submissions, even though there's no submission form people are just emailing us. So it's and we got a lot of traction with publications and stuff too that are saying, wow, this is something that no one’s done before, but they should be doing it. And so we're nominees. If you have, I think like five years, you get gloves hitting the 15 years, you get a really nice cargo jacket. And so and it's just a way to say, like, we see you, we appreciate you deserve this. And it's not for the faint of heart to do this work. So it's it takes a lot to stay within it in fifteen years.
Bill: So it's a physical it's a physical business. I mean, this is you know, this isn’t even the largest tire that's in here. I've seen them replace them on our tractors at our farm. My father was in the mining business. So some of the largest tires that I see down a couple rows on the rock trucks and the wheel loaders, I saw those being replaced and it is not for the faint of heart. I will say this, though. The skill and the artistry with which a single person with a crane in some like large rock class can take on and off a huge tire by themselves makes it look easier than whenever I'm trying to change the bicycle tire on my ten-year-old's pedal bike. They they like they they learn this craft. And I think that's excellent and just amazing that you guys are recognizing their contribution to not only the American economy, but also in the whole value chain, of what you're doing. We have other clients who are doing similar things, who are really recognizing every person who's involved. And I think maybe one of the things we learned from the from Covid one of the things we've learned from the whole pandemic, whatever you want to call it, is that the blue collar work is honorable, it is valuable and it is so important to everything we do every day. And when we saw that, you know, the challenges the companies had with maintaining a workforce and then, I don't know all the figures but like Mike Rowe talks about 7 million people dropped out of the workforce on his in his Dirty Jobs or whatever it is publication or show is that there was a real crisis. And I think the other thing we deal with is the younger people and the younger generation don't value that as much so we're having trouble getting the younger people to go into that field of study and that we could about that's a whole other show we could do on like society, but let's get back to this technician recognition program I think is just amazing. I think that's going to be great and it should provide and help your story. But whether that happens or not, I think when we look at the “never stop rising” attitude of Ascenso that falls right behind with recognizing people who are always rising to do that craft and do it well. And if it's rising through a rainstorm underneath a muddy piece of equipment or it's in the mine or whatever, that certainly embodies Ascenso I think that's that's amazing. And we'll be looking forward to seeing how that pans out this year. Annie this has been an amazing conversation. We have covered everything from, you know, college days through the growth of Ascenso and your professional involvement and experience here. So that's been amazing. So thank you very much and we really appreciate you joining us today.
Annie: Yeah, thanks for coming out and sparking more ideas as we had this conversation. So I'm going to run back to my desk. I'm going to watch this over and over again.
Bill: We’ll get you a transcript so you can take those points down and will include up to 2024 2025.
Annie: I’ll be typing up the notes really fast.
Bill: Well, thanks for joining us.
Annie: Of course. Thank you.
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast, where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today I'm joined by Brett Kaufman, director of Sales and Marketing at B-TEK. Brett, thank you for joining us today.
Brett: Bill, thanks for having me.
Bill: Great. So, Brett, we'd like to get started here by getting to know, our guests, a little bit better. And, you know, we don't start back where we were born, you know, with our mother in the hospital, but maybe in that educational time frame and what brought you here into your career? So we have some, kind of reference and perspective as we get your feedback and input on these topics.
Brett: For sure. Yep. I went to school in Louisiana, played golf in college. So, yeah, far away from Ohio, but wanted to go somewhere warm. So anyway, here I am. Let's see, 2008. I was looking for a sales position, and I wanted something in the industrial world. I didn't necessarily think I would be in the truck scale world, but, here I am and never looked back. So things are good. And, started if you want some of the history of B-TEK. Started, with a regional territory. So I was actually on the broker dealer side. I was on the distribution side for a few years. Moved over to B-TEK formerly in 2011, and I was doing corporate account stuff. So I was calling on Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 type companies. some of those companies bought direct from the manufacturer. So I was facilitating those relationships and then I believe 2012 took over a sales team. And, that's morphed into a sales and marketing team then over, I guess, the last few years and, I guess I need to be responsible for everything customer facing. So all commercial sides of the business, product managers, marketing people, salespeople.
Bill: Excellent. So maybe, tell us a little bit about who B-TEK is, what they do, who they do it for just kind of that elevator, pitch that we sales and marketing like to talk about.
Brett: Yeah, B-TEK is a full-line manufacturer of scales. We start at something that you put on this table top. Call it 50 pound capacity. And we go up to 1 million pound capacity. Offer a vehicle scales, airplanes, anything you could think of.
Bill: Million pounds. That's a lot.
Brett: It's a lot. Things that you'd never drive to next to on the road.
Bill: I'm trying to visualize something that weighs 1 million pounds, and that's scary. But that's good that you guys have figured that out for sure, that’s awesome. So interesting journey. You came up through the sales side. And, when you look at, being in charge of sales and marketing, that's kind of exciting. from my perspective, because we're always trying to see that alignment between sales and marketing and breaking down those silos. What have you experienced and learned as you've gone through that process that you maybe discovered was missing when you took it over, but you were able to kind of bring together, break down those walls.
Brett: Yeah, sales and marketing go hand in hand. I think they go hand in hand in most organizations whether people want to admit that or not. Sometimes I think our best salespeople are in the marketing department. And vice versa in many ways, you know, but some things that were missing, it was just, we're so young in this industry. So we started out in the service business, and we're very unique from a manufacturer standpoint in starting in the service industry and then moving into manufacturing. We could get into more of that later. But, from the manufacturer side, we're only 25 years old, and I think the next youngest is probably double that. And so just really building the brand recognition and the brand awareness, throughout the country, it's very, very difficult throughout all of North America, you know, you know, you travel around and need to hear people say, hey, you have a great product, but nobody knows who you are. And we struggled with that a little bit because, you know, truck scales, there's brand recognition is important. But then also your service company, they are pushing a brand per site usually. And so what your service company recommends is also very important. But we are calling on distributors. We are talking to distributors every day. And so when a distributor says these people don't know your scale, these people don't know your name. But we really like your scale. Well then that's on us. That's on us to push the name and to help make things easier for them, for our customers.
Bill: So this is a topic that I really am passionate about and I think it's so important. It is branding when we think of branding it, a lot of folks in the industrial or B2B marketing space kind of say, well, that's for Coca-Cola or the, you know, the big brands for the Super Bowl ads and all of that. And branding should just be left in that space. We sell directly to very small groups of people, and that's an important. But we're seeing more and more allocation happening in B2B budgeting for marketing, eating, branding to make people brand aware so that then they can move to solution aware right from the company. And that's so interesting that you bring that up.
Brett: Yeah. Well, everybody can learn at their fingertips. Right. So everybody's got a Google machine at their fingertips and everybody can learn anything they want to know. So just naturally I think the human instinct now is to be more inquisitive and try to understand, just more about the companies that were behind the scenes before and start looking for options. Everybody is looking for options. Nobody wants to be tied down to one company or one service company or one brand. And so there's just more out there. I think brand awareness is a big deal no matter if you're a manufacturer that supplies to other businesses or if you're a service company or if you're, you know, name whoever you want it’s important. You have to have a presence.
Bill: So another thing you brought up there, which is so vitally important, you manufacture a product that has to have its servicing dealer attached to it, you know, for it to be successful and work. But this isn't something you just sell and ship off.
Brett: Installation too.
Bill: Yeah, installation, calibration, the certification, the whole thing. So that's a challenge as well, because you're really looking at you have to sell the distributor, but then you also have to have that pull through to the end user. So that's a it's a double edged sword that you're dealing with every day.
Brett Kaufman: Yeah. Our dealers are our lifeblood for sure. We wouldn't be here without them. But you have to make it. You have to bring them value. And part of bringing them value is making it easier for them to sell your product, which is getting the pull from the consumer to say, I saw something about that truck scale. Sure, I think I want one of those. I think I wanna learn more about one of those. And so that's huge. But then on the flip side, if you don't have a product that's easy to work on, easy to install, a distributor is never going to want to have it, never gonna want to mess with it.
Bill: No matter how good the marketing is, no matter how good the support is, if it if there's not a good product there, you're dead in the water. So that's that's great. Well I think that kind of leads us into some of the things I want to talk to you about today, when you look at, when you look at what you've achieved here at, B-TEK in that when you came, you know, obviously this is a younger company and you came and took over the sales and the marketing, and you guys were identifying some, maybe some gaps or what was missing in supporting those dealers. And there's just some real interesting things I've observed you guys do over the past couple of years that, hopefully they've worked. And we're going to ask you, like how they're working and what was missing, and if you found them to be valuable because I think other marketing managers in our audience would say, hey, that sounds interesting. I wonder if we should try it out, those type of things. But, when you look at your, dealer support line, like the marketing and, content side and those type of things, could you maybe talk us through like what you saw was missing. The kind of gave you the strategic plan that's brought you up to this point and why you developed some of the things you did. And I have some specific questions I'd like to ask about specific ideas but why don’t you start broadly.
Brett: You know, so painting a broad brush, I would say you want to make things as easy as possible for distributors to get your product in their hands. So we made, a web store. Where you can order any product we have, if you have a distributor login. So think of the technician going down the street that needs a replacement part. Hopefully he pulls over and isn't driving, but he can order it from our site. Right. You could order a truck scale from our site. And so all of that, it’s just more accessible. Easier. We live in this age where nobody wants to talk anymore or anything. And so having something like, just call it a self-service portal or store, that was a very big deal. And then, you know, talking about content. So just things that we're doing that we put out there for dealers, hopefully they can repurpose that. They can repurpose that, with our output, hopefully they utilize that. I've heard they do utilize a lot of our material and send it along to end users or consumers, that are interested in our products so that helps a bunch. The Google Ads and, you know, really it's a tough game to play, but you have to play it and you have to be involved and you have to have a presence. that, along with just all the money that we've put into our site and making sure that it's friendly for the browsers that are crawling it, you know, so all of that, I think is, is hugely important. And then we, you know, there's some programs that we have where we give marketing funds back to distributors and we give them the chance to host local trade shows with the next showcase, be part of national trade shows that we do put more, gear on their employees, which is a big deal. You know get your logos paraded around a job site. That's a big deal. But whatever they choose to spend their money on, however they think it's best spent.
Bill: Yeah dealer fund participation. In my early career, I worked with our family company, and we were John Deere dealership. We had New Holland dealerships. We were Honda still. And we utilized, as we called them, they're either dealer participation funds or co-op funds, and they're all kinds of different labels. But it was all the same. It was like basically rebate available based off of purchases that we could reinvest in marketing items that could help us grow our business. And, one of the things we did a really good job of in that business, which I'd encourage your dealer channel to do, or any marketing manager who's trying to, grow this type of program is encourage those dealers to use the funds. And participate. We we had a goal every year of 98 to 99% utilization of those funds. And the people we dealt with at those manufacturers would always say that we were weird. We were the outlier because we were using it, and there were others just left it all on the table. And my encouragement to your dealer channel to others who have distributors, dealers, that type of thing is make the effort to use those funds because you want to spend them. Nothing would please you more than all those funds were depleted every year and deployed. And those the swag. The whatever the items are, are perpetuating that market. And sometimes I feel like the the dealer feels like, oh, they don't want us to spend that. No. Go use it. Like utilize these tools.
Brett: You have these dealers that are so busy day to day and maybe they don't have the structure of people or, you know, a bunch of marketing people that could track some of this. And you understand that their business has been rolling along so good and is rolling along so good that they're not necessarily focused on the marketing or and doing anything else. But yes, you want them to utilize it just from a appreciation standpoint. You know, we want to give this back to you. And you know, they a lot of times they'll co-brand things. They'll put our logo, their logo on. But yet it it like you're saying, utilization of this is so important because there will come a time where you may not think you have to market, but you're going to have to market. And that time’s coming sooner than later.
Bill: And the time to do that is before you need to do it right. The time to invest in the marketing budget isn't when sales are down, cash flows weak, and you're in a position of like poverty, right? You're in a bad spot. The time to invest is when things are good so you never get to that bad point.
Brett: Yeah that 18 month ramp up is really dark. Really quiet.
Bill: Yes and let's be honest, in today's marketing world you can't just like, okay, my early career. Now we’re really going to date me. You can't just call the rep at the billboard or the newspaper and get an ad cranking by deadline. If you want to play the game, if you want to be in the manufacturing, the B2B marketing space, you have to build a foundation. You have to build followers. You have to have content, right? You know, the I mean, there's a lot of work in that and it takes time and time to build traction. So 18 month ramp up is what it would take to your ramp up. And you can’t just it’s not the old days of, you know, call and see what the press time is. So and I think the unfortunate reality is a lot of distributors and dealers and those businesses still kind of operate in that mentality. I'll do it when I have to. And, I've seen a lot of, of our clients have in their dealer channels, a lot of dealerships or distributors fail because they wait too long and they can’t recover. They whether it's financial or, people power or whatever, they just aren't able to get over that hump, because they didn't start soon enough. So I think that's, that's a word of encouragement to all these folks out there to do that. That would be great. But, one of the things you mentioned, I think this is so critical, we're seeing a lot of development in this we're developing a lot of this for these things for our clients is what we would call B2B commerce. So websites that are not designed for the consumer but operate like e-commerce sites. So you have full access to the entire catalog readily available. Right. On the phone, on the desktop, on the tablet, in the service truck, however they choose to interact. But that to me, I think you guys were ahead of the curve on that development. Because we're seeing some clients just adopt that like in the mid-market. So, have you seen that adoption and usage by your users and really seeing that that's helped them to have more access to information more quickly?
Brett: Yeah, you just have to make things easier. It doesn't matter who your customer is or your target customer. You have to make things easier for everyone. So easier to find your product and easier to find your name and easier to buy your product. You have to. And so that's what we've done for dealers. And I think it's been a huge help.
Bill: Well and the consumer behavior then soon follows commercial behavior. So if I'm used to being able to go to Amazon or wherever my shop online quickly and find stuff and buy it, it's not that we're going to necessarily buy a truck scale that quickly, but we're going to research it and know all about it before and have access to all that information before we're ready to engage it. And certainly it seems in your in the smaller, offerings that you have that can be more immediate.
Brett: Yeah. So I related to that, but we've got an interesting tool on our website where it's a CRM. It’s a CRM for our dealers, because there's a lot of our dealers that don't have a structured program, and they want professional-looking quotes, and they want something that they're proud of when they're in front of the end user. And so we developed a CRM where they could put their company’s logo, company name, contact information and then showcase our products on there. And so, yes, that will build the behavior that you're talking about as well.
Bill: So let's talk about discovering something that's missing. I think there's, a gold nugget. I am a firm believer, our company uses a proposal automation software because if I'm presenting something that is more than five bucks, I want the proposal to look like it's worth more than five bucks. And when you're dealing with professionals to professionals, because this isn’t, I'm sure you're seeing this business transition from fewer hometown entrepreneurs running scales to professional businesses that have scales as part of a greater operation. You can't show up the way we did 30 years ago. Right? And you've been on the road selling I in the early part of my career was on the road selling. So we get that right. We understand. So maybe, we need to recognize that something that is always missing for a lot of marketing managers and sales managers out there is their dive into professional. And whether you call proposal automation, proposal standardization, that type of thing, whenever you identify that as a missing item and then like walk through the journey of implementing that with the dealers. Could you talk about that a little bit and how it may be impacted and changed maybe the perception of the dealer and of the B-TEK product whenever they're showing up with that nice, organized proposal.
Brett: For the dealer it helped a bunch because there’s some traceability now and they can track calls. They can track how much volume is out there, they can track the customers that have quotes of different people in the organization that quote things, without maybe the president knowing or sure, you know, the GM knowing. So there's some of that, obviously. But yeah, I think gone are the days of people buying 60, $70,000 truck sales with a handshake. So just naturally you want to have something that's more professional looking, something that, if it gets handed down to a purchasing agent, if it gets handed up, you know, wherever it goes, it you want your company image to go along with that. And so it's really been an easy adoption. And people, our customers are dealers that really appreciated it. And so it's, it's pretty user-friendly. It's a lot more user-friendly than I thought. Our marketing manager who told me about this idea, I thought it was a great idea but I said, we’re not implementing this in a week. It's going to be pretty difficult, but, no, he's done a great job and it's a great tool that is being utilized.
Bill: So I think there's two other things you hit on there. One, branding. Right, when we talked about branding earlier, now you're talking about branding the whole way from first touchpoint, the whole way through to the quote. Right. That's important. And then, the other thing I think we see is you talk about is really talking about the buyer committee, because I think you're exactly right. You're not just handing it to one person and they're handshaking. And John Hancocking the agreement. It’s going to finance, you know, it's going to engineering. It's going to whatever the participants are in the buyer's committee who are going to sign off on that purchase. There's a lot going on there.
Brett: Yeah, and a huge part of it for us is how our product is presented. The specs that are presented, the important items that people need to know about. And so we want to control the message a little bit more. And this essentially accomplishes that.
Bill: Yeah. And when you look at the B-TEK product line and the specific things that you guys do really, really well and differently than other, manufacturers of scales, certainly when you're going to that point of sale and getting someone to sign off on, I mean, you came from the sales team, you sold Fortune 100. So you were in very competitive, very professional situations. You need to make sure your features and benefits and the things that are going to solve their problems are at the forefront of their mind when they're making that decision that aren't just looking at $70,000 a scale. Right? Because it that you've lost that opportunity for that final touch point. So that's that's really interesting. And I think, I had no idea we're going to talk about that today. I’m doing research for this so that's like, I'm discovering what's missing.
Brett: Yeah, just all things that make it easier for our dealers. And that's what it is.
Brett: That's great. So one of the challenges I think, that you guys may face, is that you're selling everything from the million pound scale, like you said at the beginning, down to the table top, 50 pound scale. And I imagine you're having to segment the audiences a good bit and then really recognize the challenges that I'm sure there's similarities. They want accurate measurements. They want to be certified, they want uptime, all of that. But then there's some other things, that you have to message completely differently.
Brett: Vastly different worlds.
Bill: Yeah. Because that’s, some are long term buying cycles. Fortune 100 million pound, I'm guessing million pound are not being bought by local entrepreneurs. Those are pretty big companies. And then the the desktop or countertop, whatever you want to call them, that could be purchased. Really by a tremendously wide variety of people. So what have you experienced like in in how maybe, maybe how you approached tackling that huge issue?
Brett: Yeah, it sounds kind of elementary, but you have to start it making sure you have the right list internally. So when you're marketing to end users, you have to make sure that you're not telling somebody about 1 million pound off-road vehicle scale. And they're in the market for a wash down bench scale, you know, you’re gonna lose a, unsubscribe. Right away. And so you have to make sure that you have you know, we have a lot of data on our site to show who's interested in what. And we make sure we never cross that off. With that said, you know, definitely appreciate both sides of the coin for sure, because the people that are buying bench scales, they're buying them more frequently, and the world is filled with a bunch more of those. However, there's a very competitive, very, very competitive market. On the other side of it, everybody's chasing the homerun ball, right? And so the million pound off-road vehicle scale. Yeah. You know everybody that's the that's the flashy thing in the room. Right, right. can make your year as a salesperson. But there's a lot less of those being sold. So it's interesting, actually, from a product managers and just a focus. And we can, you know, the nice thing about being young and being as a manufacturer, being younger, and I don't even want to say smaller, but a middle of the road. That relates to our industry. The nice thing is we're very flexible. So from the product management standpoint, we have a great team. We have four product managers, and they're very nimble and very, very capable of making some some modifications and doing some things to target what we want to target. If we’re missing the mark with a product you change it, you know, we modify it, we do what we need to do. So it fits the market. With that other stuff, it's a little harder. You know, with the bigger stuff it's harder. But, yeah. And the little stuff or the smaller stuff, we, there's no less focus on that. As you can imagine, you know, it carries higher margin. On some of that. And, you know, again, there's more of those being sold. So you appreciate the repeat business, so to speak. And you appreciate, the replacement timeframe in those versus something that lasts 20 years. Those are just things coming from a manufacturer. But yeah, very, very different, very sure. And there are days, I'm sure a salesperson says there are days where, I'm consumed by, you know, a 50-pound capacity wash down scales. And then there are days where they're out in the middle of the field looking at some blueprints and, you know, it's going to be ten truck scales. And that's what's cool about this business. It's never the same. Never the same thing twice day after day.
Bill: So a couple of things you said there, data and segmentation so critical. I have a podcast next week, with a professional that I really respect. And I want no spoiler alert here, but all we're going to talk about is data and how important that is. And organizing in CRMs, integrating marketing automation platforms and CRMs. I mean that’s the entire, we’re going to geek out a little bit which is exciting. But you're exactly right that customer segmentation and personalization of messaging is the only way to deal with a complex, manufactured offering. And you guys are I think you're doing a great job of it and, doing the right thing. But for some of our audience, they might, you know, get some inspiration or find a nugget there. The other thing I'd like to pivot to is you mentioned about the nimble team you have the like the engineering and manufacturing space. One of the things I know about B-TEK, is you guys have a customization option and customization or customizability, whatever the word is.
Brett: Yeah, yeah.
Bill: That is not as, prevalent amongst your competitors. Could you maybe talk about that? One, that capability and then maybe, how you attempted to communicate that to the market in your marketing efforts.
Brett: Yeah. So, let's call it flexibility from a manufacturing standpoint. So 95 years ago started in the service business and, and through the years grew pretty well and got to let's say late 90s dozen offices and really had a need, you know, we were a distributor for everybody’s scales and we had a need for things that people did not want to make. So you have this 30 year old scale and you never thought about it. You got trucks rolling over it every day. It's in a pit. And now all of a sudden you have to replace it. And everybody said, okay, you know, here's today's version and you got to do some concrete work and you’re going to have to put it above ground. Well, B-TEK started because we came to the game and said no, you don’t, we're going to make a scale to fit that whole we're going to make a retrofit scale to fit that foundation. And we still hold true to that today, 25 years later. That is still a huge niche for us. It is still a huge competitive advantage for us. And so we've carried that really into everything that we do. So there's there's the good and the bad there. You don't want to open it up where you tell people you can have whatever you want.
Bill: Sure, that’s Pandora's box.
Brett: That’s not the way to go to market. So you have to have some standards. But at the same time, you know, when you're all across North America, you know, with our partner, we're all across the world and we see different things. And that's why I bring up adapting. If we see markets changing or we see things that are being asked or that weren't being asked for 3, 5, eight years ago, we we bid it. We do what we need to do to accommodate the customer. And so yeah, that's hugely important. And because we're not I guess set in our ways and as rigid and as older of a manufacturer, we're able to do that a lot more nimble than most.
Bill: I think that speaks to how B-TEK is, is customered focus, not, accountant focused maybe. Because I think when you look at some of the competition in this space, in the way they're trying to scale up and get volume is through standardization.
Brett: And manufacturing’s all about. Do it as fast as you can.
Bill: Yeah, make the same thing a thousand times. So I think when we look at what you guys are doing that really speaks to your customer focus and then that opportunity. Because when we look at it, okay, if someone has to do concrete work, they have to get an engineer, they have to get an architect or like permits, construction. And we all know what's happened in construction labor availability in the United States over the past ten years. You can't find anybody to do it if you can. They're six, eight months out, a year out. The expens is through the roof and concrete is insane. How much concrete costs. So when you look at the time, the cost, the downtime. As opposed to, hey, B-TEK, in six months. I'm planning on doing this. I want to pull the old one out. I want you to have your retrofitted snap in. And I know I'm oversimplifying a little bit. Snap it in and I'm back up and operating a day. Two days later. Whatever. That's amazing.
Brett: So you're saving, you know, typically our dealers do not have construction crews. So you're saving a dealer from going out and finding a construction crew whom you work with and managing that. That's difficult. And then you're saving the end user a bunch of money because you're just not bringing any of that into the fold. You're saying, look, your foundation is good, it's still intact. We're going to put a scale right here. You like it here? We're going to keep it right here. And it helps.
Bill: And not only are you like retrofitting in keeping them. Yeah. No downtime. They're back in business. Reduced investment. You're getting them into the new world of scales where they can integrate a lot of, which I think is another challenge you guys face because you don't just do scales. There's two other areas I think that are really challenging for you guys because you're kind of, you're not kind of you're in these two worlds. Number one is you are actually marketing and supporting software systems because scales aren't, you know, one side the other, and you just see it. Right. There's a lot of sensors and a lot of things. So, Brett one of the things I think that's a challenge for you and your team is not only are you selling from 1 million pounds down to 50 pound scales, this is 2024. You're also selling and servicing and supporting software as part of that because scales are very, very complicated. There's a lot of data points. Can you talk a little bit about that challenge and what you've been doing to help market that and communicate that to your distributor dealer channel?
Brett: Sure. Yeah. So ten years ago you'd sit in a conference room like this and it was talking about the deck plate, the thickness of the deck plate, how many high beams there were. And it was talking about, they're how durable and rugged sales were. And the conversation has shifted and it's shifted pretty drastically to. All right, I've got a weight, now, what do I do with the weight. And I want to send it here. I want to send it there. I want to send it to our ERP. Can you communicate with that? And that's a huge part of what we do. You talk about kiosks and unattended software. Well 2020 changes all that. So now it was the drivers not getting out of the truck. The driver needs to be able to pull to an unintended site, needs to be able to get a ticket, maybe input some information, maybe talk to somebody that's in the office through an intercom. But it was purely just stay in your truck and, you know, it. That hasn't changed. And that's not going to change. That's going to keep going. Now it’s funny. On the other side, for software, we're the world's smartest scales. That's our tagline. All right. So, talk a lot about how we build things, but then also our components very, very intuitive, the most intuitive, I like to say, in the world. So our load cells come from Italy, right down the street from Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghini. So a very progressive place. What does that mean to everyone? Well, we introduced this load cell, which for those people that don't know a load cell are the components under a truck scale. Or under any scale. But we specifically talk about our digital load cell under a truck scale. So you have this component that we introduced back in the early 2000s. And we said, hey, we guarantee it against lightning. That’s wild. It’s a huge slab of steel in the middle of nowhere. And now you're guaranteeing this thing against lightning.
Bill: You’re like Benjamin Franklin.
Brett: And that's that's crazy. And that was crazy. You really to the industry that was crazy at the time. And then we took it a step further. Again, speaking to how intuitive and the manufacturing process and the digital load cell versus an analog load cell. We had a bunch of Fortune 500 companies. We were the first one to certify this load cell to ten pound increments. So without getting too deep in the woods, you got 20 pounds are how all truck scales measure trucks, right. Well, this was the first one to say we could do it in 10 pounds. So yeah, all these Fortune 500s. We don't know what to do with this. We're going to put this in a six segment study. And we don't think that's twice the material. We don't think that's twice as accurate. But we know we're getting something out of that. And so that was that was huge. Well then fast forward to today. And we're in the technology age where now we have these diagnostics that you can have. So if you have 30 gravel pits throughout the country and you own 60 scales, well you can look at every one of your scales on your phone, on your computer and through our portal. And you could predict any upcoming failures, any issues that the scale is seeing that may end up being catastrophic. You can understand what's going on from a maintenance perspective when you need somebody to come out and that's automatically scheduled with your, service company. And then if you have scales down, you can see exactly why they're down and your service company can too. So that means they're selling the right people at the right parts and they know what to work on. And so, yeah, I went a different route with you on the technology side, but that is all hugely impactful to our business. And it's why and how we set ourselves up to bein the position we are on the growth curve today and why we're having the impact that we're having.
Bill: That's great. Well and I think that's that's a unique challenge because you have that whole good that piece of steel, right? You're pushing out of there. But then there's so much of a brain there that can interact and really work for people and help them, whether it's reducing downtime, reducing service costs, keeping out time. And then certainly I think the accuracy is just so critical because when you're weighing things that are really, really valuable, or lots of things that have any value, variation there. And there's a lot of, loss can occur. I'm sure those folks who are doing the six segment analysis, all the beam counters when they heard ten pound increments. They were just like, wow, this is the most amazing thing ever.
Brett: And we bring it to life on our website through the product loss calculator because it's been hugely beneficial for us as well. Talking about other components of the site that have helped, whether it's end users or distributors, just get the point across of hey this is what any air on your truck scale or your truck scale being down this is what it’s costing you.
Bill: So I think that's that's something that I wanted to ask you about because that product loss calculator feels to me like a great way to make people problem aware. You know, when we think about branding, super important component we talked about before and then solution aware, sometimes people don’t even know the problem they have to recognize that they need a solution.
Brett: Right, right, right.
Bill: Or opportunity, whatever you want to call it. Depending, you know, glass half empty, half full a problem or an opportunity. But those calculators to me seem like a real, tangible way for not only you and your distributor, but for that purchasing manager who is in charge of buying the scale to bring some tangibility to what they can do with an upgrade, not only of, the hardware and the scale, but then the software, the system,all those things. I mean, that's that's great. And have you gotten a lot of feedback from your dealers on the and the, through the whole cycle?
Brett: It's funny, you know, sometimes marketing guys bring you something and you're like, all right, let’s ease it back. But, we introduced that a couple of years ago on our site. And then, funny, Steve Coddington, who's our northeast regional manager. I was with him three weeks ago, and we were in a very large company, industrial gas company. And he has this in his presentation, and he's going through it, and he's got the price. Today's price of, whatever chemical or whatever it was. And I looked at that and I said, are you sure and sure about that number? Because otherwise we're going to get laughed out of the room. And he was and he was correct. And it was so impactful to the room and then also impactful to us because it was, you know, we're with our distributors in the room and it's like, what, haggle over $5,000? That's two minutes on your scale.
Bill: Sure. Let's put this in perspective.
Brett: Yeah it's so it really has. Yeah. All the credit to marketing team at B-TEK and to the salespeople use of that because I didn't even see the value necessarily. And it's very, very impactful.
Bill: Well and there's another example we talked about a little bit before, but creating that alignment between sales and marketing, because you have, you know, the problem and you're creating awareness around it. And on the website alone. And sometimes we create things in marketing that we want to be used like, okay, would it be amazing if a million people use that calculator? Well, maybe it isn't used at the top of the funnel, maybe it's users at the bottom of the funnel or in sales enablement. And either way, as long as it gets used and we're working towards the greater good, that’s good. That's a great example of finding those tools that can work top of the funnel. Because I could see in my mind you have some social posts say calculate what you're losing out your scale. So that's top of the funnel. But then, hey, we're in a presentation, we're in the boardroom and the buyer is there and we're going to show them dollars and cents. Why this is important. That's great. That's amazing.
Brett: Yeah. One of those scenarios where a marketing person is a much better salesperson.
Bill: Yeah. And sometimes you have the salespeople who have some amazing insights for marketing. So that's that's great. You guys have also developed for your dealers, a web kit, with your brand standards and developing that type of thing. What led you to create that? What was missing? What did you, like, determine was missing as to why you developed that? And what was the goal of that program?
Brett: Yeah, I think with any service company, you could go on and do the same thing over and over, day after day, and you have customers calling in, reacting to, say, the fire of the day and you're not spending just the stuff we talked about before. You're not spending all this time marketing yourself and putting yourself out there for what you are. And you know, in in most scenarios that works fine in our industry, right? But you also need to have a web presence. You know, like we talked about, the buyer is becoming more educated. The buyer wants to learn more. So you have to have something beyond just, hey, here's a business card, here's my name. Call us. So we wanted to again control how our product was portrayed, how our product was presented to the world. And, it was it was a natural progression for us with Google AdWords and some of the SEO, SEM stuff that we were doing. It was a natural progression for us to say we don't necessarily have to work quite as hard and spend quite as much money with the Google machine, if we can get enough good stuff backlinking to us, you know, again, it's helping the distributor or helping the distributor that doesn't have a lot of time to focus on those efforts, but trying to show them that those efforts are hugely important, but then also trying to help ourselves because you're you're playing that Google game all day, and that's the only thing you're doing is SEO, SEM probably not going to win.
Bill: Absolutely. So I want to shift gears a little bit here in some of our final minutes. And one of the challenges we're seeing with a lot of, our clients and with people we talked to in the market is how to attack the marketing area. Right? Because there's, this balance between insourcing, outsourcing a hybrid model. And like having enough experts available because every, like, every day, it's almost like the medical community, you go to see the primary and then they refer and 37 people and not that I want to draw a lot of, comparisons because that could go negative really quick with people’s experiences. But whenever you think about strategically approaching, the marketing function, because you're in charge of that and you're trying to get that the proper direction, what do you see as some of the tensions there with insourcing versus outsourcing and some of those ideas?
Brett: I'd say you just point number one, if you have customers that are calling your marketing department or calling you needing things. So a little bit more of the business to business model. But you know, we have dealers, great customers that are calling us needing marketing help, whether it's literature, whether it's proposals, things with the website, you know, help on there, but whether it's trade show help, trade show direction, MDF funds, all of those stuff. If you have people calling for that, you need to have that internal. You have to have somebody that they can call, somebody that they feel good talking to. My opinion on the rest of it has probably changed quite a bit in the last few years, because we have a few great companies that we work with. We have a really good web development company that is very responsive to what we need from the website. We have a great team actually, locally, we have a great team that's managing the SEO SEM stuff that we're doing. And so I would say we found more third parties. We had a content writer that's helping with some things, found more third parties that are responsive and that we enjoy working with. And so it's going very well. Three years ago, five years ago, I think my vision was we bring all that in-house, but it's hard. It's just really hard as you grow, you know, and some of the skillsets need to be tweaked or changed and things that were important today aren't important or aren’t going to be important five years from now. It’s funny, I'll give you an example. It's like, I can't tell you last time we sent literature out. I used to spend 30 to 40% of our time on literature, whether it be better pictures, better renderings, better color schemes, less text, more text. And I can't tell you the last time we have sent physical literature. Crazy. But yeah. I don't see it coming back. I don't see it going the other way. So anyway, yeah, you have to be able to adapt and you have to be able to tweak the expectations. And, tweak what you need and essentially tweak what you have.
Bill: So, just to follow up on what you said, we found that what you're describing is exactly where we're finding the most success in our space. Is that the hybrid model, what we call it, where you have that core internal team that absolutely has to be available to support your client network. Because as a as an agency, we are not we are not built to take a call from your distributor who needs that level of support, you know, but as far as helping prepare that support and then, you know, for us and for other providers to build those capabilities so that they can meet you where you have needs, that is certainly something we've seen in the hybrid model that is that is very, very advantageous. And, we've really refined our ideal client profile, where we're looking for companies that have 1 to 3 people on their marketing team internally, and that we're going to provide all that for like secondary support. And like you're saying it's changing so rapidly. You know, we've seen, the focus on search SEO those have really taken a different turn, and especially with the GA4 implementation. And then we're going to start seeing some other like imagine Google algorithmic changes like yeah every five minutes. So that that's all there. But when we're looking at the content front, that seems to be the horizon that everybody's chasing right now that is really, activating the market. So that's where we've been putting a lot of our resources. But, one of the challenges we face is that we know our business will never be the same year to year. This time last year, I had never been on a podcast. And, today is sometime in May, I don't know, what date it is even because we've been in hotels for a little bit, but it's it's a day in May and, we're up to, almost our 20th episode of our podcasts. We produce podcasts for clients. We are like, that is just growing rapidly. And the response is amazing. And then what we're doing with social media and the clips and the the reels and the shorts and all that type of thing is just like exploded. And I'm sure in five years we won't be doing podcasts. It'll be something else. So we just have to consciously be investing, kind of like you guys had to do with the load cells. And the software and the peripherals. You have to stay ahead of that curve. Because it's just really developing rapidly. So well Brett, this has been a fascinating conversation. I really loved this. We certainly did discover some things that were missing and even missing what we were thinking about. And, some nuggets we uncovered. So, thank you for the time today. Want to wish you guys, continued congratulations on your success. And you guys are doing a really great job here. And, just thanks for the time today.
Brett: Thanks for having me, Bill. Appreciate it. Thank you.