You never know what you’ll find in the bushes.

A simple concept: Business development should qualify each lead or prospect to determine if the electronics manufacturing services company’s resources will be spent pursuing that prospective client.

The decision of “fit” should be the job of the senior business development professional, not the CEO, GM, COO or CFO. Elements of fit include the end product’s viability, the prospect’s financial standing, the tooling and capital equipment required to complete the job, the floor and warehouse space needed (in the case of a box-build program) and other elements of the deal.

How does a company know the fit is right unless properly vetted by a biz dev professional?

Case in point: When I was vice president of sales and marketing for a Florida-based mid-tier EMS, I received an intriguing call from an inventor in South Florida. I agreed to meet him at our factory to understand the product and requirements. After giving explicit directions to our visitors’ entrance, my admin called to say he arrived at the employees’ door. As an ITAR facility, specific protocols must be followed for proper vetting and sign-in. I asked the admin to let my guest in and escort him to the conference room after he executed the proper procedure and signed the appropriate paperwork.

2025 could bring demand spikes and component availability tightening. Are you prepared?

Hurricanes Helene and Milton delivered unprecedented damage throughout the Southeast US. Rebuilding efforts will take years in some locations. In western North Carolina, some people lost their homes, their families and their employers. In those cases, it isn’t a matter of just rebuilding a home; they are rebuilding their entire lives. Sadly, while everyone contributes when the disaster is in the news, those contributions stop when the news cycle moves on.

So, before I start my column on the business upside of natural disasters, I encourage everyone to remember the impacted communities. Personally, I’m budgeting to keep giving to charities helping those areas for the next several months. I’m also buying from companies in North Carolina to help local businesses stay in business.

A comprehensive website is a salesperson’s best friend. So why don’t more EMS companies have one?

I read an article reposted on LinkedIn where a buy-side (pay-to-play) consulting group demeaned the EMS industry salesperson’s communication skills and blamed them for the dysfunctions within our industry. The premise was that, because Covid prohibited face-to-face engagements, the business development person’s lack of digital communications and their inability to redirect their sales efforts digitally were a root cause for woes in our industry today.

The EMS industry has been slow to embrace the digital world. But to assert that corporate digital dysfunction is an individual salesperson’s issue implies that one’s own accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook and X (Twitter) will drive enough deals to shore up a flat or declining EMS business. While I encourage my clients’ sales teams to utilize these platforms for various communications, gaining industry knowledge, networking and infrequent lead generation, they make up a tiny element of what an EMS company should undertake to optimize its digital sales opportunities and boost a sales process that even now has somewhat limited face-to-face engagements. Does your EMS company suffer from elements of this discussion? Let’s start a corrective action process.

Communicate your improvements to keep OEMs satisfied.

My undergraduate degree is from the University of Florida and our football season has just begun. As I write this, the Miami Hurricanes have just wiped the field with the Gators in the opening game. It is our coach’s third season. The game included errors in judgment that triggered momentum-shifting penalties on the field. Overall, the plays were unimaginative and not substantially different from the previous two years.

Coaching has been a revolving door at Florida and there are two camps of fans. One camp believes in giving the new coach time and the other feels that with no measurable improvement in play, maintaining the status quo will prolong the losing. That latter camp just got a lot bigger because this season opener showed no visible improvement over last year. Social media is ablaze with discussions about firing the athletic director and head coach.