How Good is The Good Communication Between Sales and Engineering?
July 19, 2023
Selling
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We feel it's imperative that communication between the sales and engineering functions be excellent because engineering needs to know exactly what was sold. If engineering doesn't know, quantitatively, exactly what was sold, they will not be able to engineer to meet customer expectations! In many companies there is a “wall” between sales and engineering and in many cases the wall is almost impenetrable. In many companies sales and engineering do not get along to the point where there is real strife between the functions. The goal, and it is possible, is to have sales and engineering not only get along but ...
Do Your Design Teams Perform Service and Startup Calls?
In our previous newsletter we observed: “An engineering staff that is not capable of going to the field and working with your customers is an engineering staff that, we feel, is operating at 50%.” This observation is based on many years of experience working with engineering staffs in various businesses." We have worked with engineering staffs that never went to the field and other staffs that were required to start up and service systems that they designed. It is no surprise that the engineers that started up and serviced their systems were much better qualified and productive than those that did not. It ...
Are Your Engineers Engaged with Customers?
Maybe a better question is: are your engineers capable of meeting with your customers? Many times, we feel that engineers are not sufficiently trained to meet with customers. If this is the case, we suggest that we create some kind of training so that they can meet with customers and contribute. An engineering staff that does not connect with the market, your customers and your customers’ processes, really will not contribute to the success of your business at the level they should. We believe it's critical that your entire engineering staff is literate in all your products and systems and how they are ...
Does Engineering Get Completed On Time?
After a sale is completed and the project scope is defined, a project is generally turned over to the engineering department. Having engineering involved in a final quote process for a large project is crucial to be certain that engineering and the customer understand the customer’s requirements in exactly the same manner. This is a critical event in determining the customer gets what they expect. One might ask the question: “why is it important that we complete engineering on time?” Simply said, if engineering isn't completed on time, then all other functions will not be completed on time. This may not be ...
Are You Happy with the Performance of your Engineering Team?
February 21, 2023
Selling
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Do you have a basis to measure the performance of your engineering team? What I'm getting at is do you have a set of metrics that measures engineering performance? Metrics such as: • Have you defined in detail what an engineering package is? • Has manufacturing participated in the definition of the engineering package? • Does engineering deliver their product (the engineering package) to manufacturing on time? • Is the engineering package complete when it is delivered to manufacturing? These are just a few of the metrics that should be defined and agreed upon by both engineering and manufacturing. Have you defined these parameters in a manner ...
Are you happy with the performance of your operating team?
Are you happy with the performance of your engineering team? Does your engineering always get completed on time? Does your engineering always stay within budgeted hours? Are your engineers engaged with your customers? Do you have good communications between sales and engineering? Do you have good communications between engineering and manufacturing? Do you have good communications between sales and applications engineering? Do the quotations produced by applications engineering meet customer expectations? Do your quotations clearly describe transfer of ownership and project completion? Are you happy with the performance of your manufacturing team? Does manufacturing stay within budgeted hours? Does ...
Are You Happy with Your Customer Development Efforts?
The first question is: do you have an active customer development process? We use the term “customer development” in place of market development because I believe it brings more focus to the process. “Customer development” focuses on the customer rather than the much more intangible “market”. We believe people buy from people they know like and trust and if this is true, we believe focusing on the customer, as people, helps us develop a much more focused and effective process. To think of our customers as people, we must first define the people. If you have a customer development process, have you ...
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