Marketing for Tier 3 suppliers and job shops: pass the five-minute screen

Job shops get on a buyer's short list by answering the screen before the call: machines with their envelopes, materials run, tolerances held by feature, special-process approvals, secondary ops, and how fast a drawing becomes a quote. Numbers give the buyer something to check. Adjectives like 'precision' and 'quality' give them nothing, and the drawing goes to the next shop.

Coaters and finishers sell the secondary op a buyer screens for. The buyer arrives with a spec on the drawing and four questions: do you run that process, to that spec, on that substrate, at a part size your line can take? Give each process its own page with the specs you run, the substrates, the thickness range, masking, and the largest part you can handle.

Example: Sawmill Brook Plating (invented, sawmillbrook.test) has a page per finish, each listing the specs called out on defense and electronics drawings.

Heat treaters and platers are bought on spec and capacity. List the processes and the specs you run them to, the furnace or tank sizes, the load weights, and the requirements your customers flow down to you. When a buyer has a part routed for heat treat, your page should answer whether it fits before they pick up the phone.

Example: Kilnhouse Heat Treat (invented, kilnhouse.test) lists each furnace with its work zone and atmosphere, and each process with the specs it runs to.

Stampers and EDM shops are screened on equipment limits. For stamping that means press tonnage, bed size, coil width and thickness, and whether you build and maintain the dies. For EDM it means wire and sinker capacity, the largest part height and weight, and the materials you cut. Put each limit in a table.

Example: Cobble Creek Stamping (invented, cobblecreek.test) gives progressive-die work its own page, with press range, coil limits and its in-house tool room.

Each rung up is a bigger order with fewer competitors. Add assembly, kitting or design help, and your buyer becomes the Tier 1 or the OEM. Every rung still needs every step below it said, so the machine and process pages stay, and new pages for the assembled work go on top. The pages change with you.

IKE, our Industrial Knowledge Engine, maps your machines, processes and approvals to the drawings and specs Tier 1-2 buyers send. It learns your shop, then your competitors, then your markets. SiteSonar, always on, names the companies reading your capability pages.

What IKE learns is manufacturing. Your record stays yours.

The paid Buyers Blueprint visits your plant and lists every machine, envelope, material, process and approval, plus the ops you send out. We also read your website and documents and sit down with your team. Nothing is published until you confirm it.