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.

Then came the panicked call: “He’s urinating in the bushes! What do I do?”

The obvious response was, “Well, don’t shake his hand.” He washed up and came to the conference room full of apologies.

Prints and a breadboard also came, and after a few minutes of my inquiries, it was clear this was not a fit for us, as were many potential deals in my 10 years there.

But how would anyone know unless you devoted a little time to vet each deal? Many of my counterparts bragged that they could discern which products are winners and losers with virtually no vetting. Where are my BS cards when I need them?

Conversely, the risk of proceeding is well-vetted when a product fits into an EMS's desired market, has a robust design, solid test verification, and a good chance to scale by filling a need. The company behind the product should also have a war chest of money and offer reasonable terms and conditions. Most CEOs don’t have the time to vet these deals. Most COOs have too many day-to-day issues to deal with each opportunity. Most CFOs have too little experience in the go/no-go decision process. And most GMs have some bias in the decision.

If the vice president of biz dev can wear the hats of both a businessperson and a salesperson, trust them to either make such a decision or, if conflicted, trust they’ll ask for help on how to proceed.

Not every decision I made to walk away or invest was the correct one. New data emerge as time passes. Provided you have a high hit rate of good decisions over poor ones, however, the EMS should prosper.

And be vigilant when a “go forward” decision is made only to be proved wrong. In those situations, take quick action to fix detrimental issues or kill the deal.

Jake Kulp is founder of JHK Technical Solutions, where he assists OEMs and EMS companies with optimizing demand creation offerings and deciding when and where to outsource manufacturing. He previously spent nearly 40 years in executive roles in sales and business development at MC Assembly, Suntron, FlexTek, EMS, and AMP Inc. He can be reached at jkulp@cox.net.