Industrial Marketing—You Want Coaching With That?

Industrial marketing coaching is something I’m asked about often, especially in the past 6 to 8 months. The headline of this post is my tongue in cheek attempt at the famous McDonald’s® age-old question, “You Want Fries With That?”

It was a simple marketing strategy that worked brilliantly for upselling and continues to make millions of dollars a year for the company. It became so popular that McDonald’s® held a contest in 2011 to celebrate it.

My strategy of turning an existing service, industrial marketing consulting into coaching is really more in response to meeting the needs of my clients rather than upselling. Either way, it is working!

The need for industrial marketing coaching

Why are manufacturing marketers asking me for coaching instead of traditional consulting? The answer can be best explained by giving you actual examples of different people who are now active coaching clients.

1. The General Manager of the US subsidiary of a German manufacturer of electrical interface products needed me to coach him to reach new customers in industries outside the German parent’s niche. He had enough in-house resources to implement tactics but needed my help and guidance with building brand awareness in North America, earning trust with his target audience and generating quality leads.
2. An outside marketing consultant for a manufacturer of protective packaging knows her client’s operations well and is very well versed in current digital marketing tactics. She needed my help to take their industrial marketing to a higher level because both the management and she felt strongly that they could and should be getting more value from their marketing spend.
3. A newly appointed Director of Marketing at a service provider of gearbox and industrial repair of heavy rotary equipment needed my help to improve her skills at industrial marketing and putting together a solid marketing plan. She’s a Mechanical Engineer herself and has experience working in various departments in a customer-facing role but was brand new to her role as a Marketing Director.

As you can see from these three examples that each client has different needs and goals, but they all need my insider’s knowledge in industrial marketing with an outsider’s objectivity to take their own marketing skills up a few notches.

What they want is my 30+ years of hands-on experience marketing to engineers and industrial buyers and not some untested, pie in the sky marketing theories.

Industrial marketing coaching vs consulting

While there is a lot of overlap between coaching and consulting, and it can be confusing for many, I think it is worthwhile to understand the difference, so you can have a more realistic expectation.

As a consultant, I use my 30+ years of proven experience and expertise in industrial marketing to provide you solutions to a specific marketing problem or problems, quickly and efficiently.

As your coach or trainer, I first take the time to ask probing questions to understand your strengths, identify areas that need improvement and then help you maximize your own skills to succeed in industrial marketing.

As a coach, I’m not there to compete with you but augment and amplify your own marketing skills to help you become better at marketing to engineers and industrial buyers.

It’s like the old proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

On-demand industrial marketing coaching and training

Over the past few months as I’ve been coaching these clients, some new ideas have cropped up in my mind based on additional questions that I have received. Most have to do with how different people learn at their own pace.

My current service is live, one-on-one coaching that is tailored specifically to each individual client. However, I have also been asked if I could provide on-demand video coaching and training that they can watch and learn at their own pace.

There are two big differences here:

1. Live coaching is specific to a client’s business whereas on-demand training is based on my experience working with different clients. It is up to you to adapt what you learn to your needs and situation.
2. Live coaching costs $2,850 for a block of 15 hours which doesn’t ever expire, and you use it as you need it. Prerecorded video training will be at a lower cost and you’ll have unlimited access to the videos and can view them whenever you need to.

The first training video I’ll be releasing this year is called Industrial Content Marketing – Practical Training. Right now, it is about 3 hours long which may grow by the time the final version is released. I’m trying to make the training videos into bite-sized modules with easily digestible information in each, instead of one long session. The plan is to release one new industrial marketing coaching and training course every quarter.

I haven’t decided yet what the price structure will be for on-demand video training. That’s where I need your feedback to help me refine my on-demand industrial marketing coaching and training videos. I’m going to add a few free valuable bonuses to the training videos so that you get more value from them. Stay tuned.

If you provide your name and email address, you’ll be the first to know when training courses are released, and I’ll probably include an “early bird discount” coupon.

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