20+ Industrial Maintenance Training Resources

20+ Industrial Maintenance Training Resources

With the ongoing concern about our nation’s skills gap, the option for choosing an education to pursue a vocational career is certainly an attractive one. With plentiful skilled labor jobs to fill, trade jobs pay very well (sometimes better than four-year college degrees) and don’t saddle students with hefty student loans.

In an article from SJVC, a private career college, they discuss more than 20 resources for maintenance training. With a variety of resources, you can expand your knowledge about the industrial market and explore your career options.

General Resources and Publications

Sometimes the best place to learn more is by reading more about it. By reading publications that correspond with the industrial market, you can learn more about what’s happening in the industry and about tips and tricks.

Video Series

Watching videos is a great way to do online training and gives insights on the daily work a maintenance worker might be doing. You may also expand your knowledge by watching training videos that can allow you to get an overview of the job and the tools you would be using.

Podcasts

Podcasts offer crucial information from someone who works in the career firsthand. Putting on a podcast is a great way to hear day-in-the-life reporting and an easy way to listen to tips.

Social Media

Social media is a valuable place to get recommendations, learn industry news and see insight into the career you want to enter. Social media can also help you look at a specific company and show you what they do in a day.

Check out the article from SJVC to see further in depth about each of these training resources.

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How to Identify The Right Price Point in B2B Markets

How to Identify The Right Price Point in B2B Markets

By: ISURUS, guest blogger 

One of the questions in B2B go-to-market strategies is: What is the right price point for our offer? This post provides a high-level overview of standard pricing research techniques that can identify the market’s willingness to pay for your solution.

For most vendors, internal and secondary data set the foundation for pricing strategy. This includes building cost models and looking at competitor pricing. In some cases, these data are sufficient to inform price point decisions. In many cases, product marketers want feedback from the marketplace to avoid common pricing mistakes, such as: their pricing does not leave money on the table; priced too high for important buyer segment; or lead to significant competitive disadvantage.

Conducting pricing research provides insights to help product marketers further refine pricing strategies and find the right price point. Isurus recommends looking at pricing through three lenses: What the market pays today; a pricing exercise called the Gabor Granger method which explores willingness to pay, and a pricing analysis called the Van Westendorp pricing sensitivity meter which helps identify the optimal price point.

What the market pays today

What companies pay today for their existing solution provides an important reference point for understanding how much the market is willing to invest in solutions like yours. It reflects the relative importance of the job-to-be done in the solution category and indicates the market’s relative perception of the ROI of the solutions they use.

When B2B buyers evaluate new vendors/product, they use their current cost to anchor judgments about how affordable or expensive are the alternative solutions. The “right” price point is subjective. Knowing this starting point helps put your solution in context – will it be perceived a premium product, a good deal, in line with everyone else. It also helps inform other components of the go-to-market plan. For example, a product priced higher than the average current solution will need marketing and sales messages that show value for the extra investment.

In addition, in some B2B sectors competitor pricing is opaque. Price lists aren’t published, or list prices are negotiated in the sales process. Asking B2B buyers what they currently pay may be the only meaningful source of competitive pricing data available.

One important guideline to keep in mind: When asking B2B buyers what they pay, don’t apply an artificial level of precision to the data. B2B buyers are human and people often understate what they pay. They think about the main license costs but omit fees for enhancements and add-ons. Their data are accurate when treated as a scope-of-magnitude estimate, and you should then use judgement and inference to refine it from there.

The next step to identify the right price point is to collect direct feedback on your pricing. There are some advanced trade-off modeling techniques such as conjoint that can help refine costs. However, for most B2B offerings, two standard and straightforward pricing research methodologies provide the insights needed.

Willingness to Pay: Gabor Granger Method

The Gabor Granger method is a common approach to identifying the market’s price tolerance. In the simplest design the first step is to identify three price points for your solution/service: The lowest you can realistically price your offer at and still make a profit, the price-point you think is a realistic price, and a stretch price point, the most you feel you could charge for your offer.

Once these three price points are selected, ask the market to rate its willingness to pay for an offer like yours at each price point, starting with your stretch price point. Those unlikely to purchase at your highest price point are presented your realistic price and again asked their willingness to pay. Those still unwilling to invest at that price point are asked about their willingness to pay at the lowest price point. Adding additional price points along the continuum (e.g., asking about four or five price points instead of three) helps identify nuances along the continuum.

The results are used to plot demand curves and calculate price elasticity.

Demand curves and price elasticity calculations are needed to identify the right price point.

The analysis provides two insights into the marketplace’s willingness to pay. The first is an estimate of the percent of the market that would be willing to invest at any given price point. The second is where pricing elasticity is flat – an increase or decrease in price has minimal influence on willingness to pay. In the example above, moving from $1,000 to $1,250 has minimal impact on the percent of the market willing to pay for the solution. The vendor would be leaving money on the table if they priced the solution at $1,000.

Optimal Price Point: Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter

The second standard pricing methodology Isurus uses is the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) which focuses on price expectations and acceptability rather than willingness to pay. In the context of a specific offer, the PSM explores the price point in four scenarios: When it is a bargain, getting expensive, so cheap it raises quality concerns, and prohibitively expensive.

The resulting data are plotted to calculate the optimal price range in terms of acceptance to the broadest percentage of the market. Prices above this price range will be acceptable to an increasingly narrow slice of prospects.

PSM explores price point in four scenarios to identify the right price point.

Isurus typically combines the Gabor Granger method and Van Westendorp in a study to mitigate the challenges associated with accurately measuring price elasticity. It is also important to note that both approaches assume that the audience is familiar enough with the products or product category to make reasonably informed judgements on the value of the solution and their company’s willingness to pay.

Insights and Use Cases

The data provided by types of questions will inform your pricing and go-to-market strategies by identifying:

  • How your pricing compares to competitors and the market’s expectations
  • Which market segments to avoid and which segments are most likely to find your pricing acceptable
  • Potential ways to optimize your price point to gain market share or skim the market
  • The sales and market challenge you face: Will you need to educate your buyers to help them justify the cost?

The framework outlined above can be explored qualitatively or quantitatively and managed internally or with the help of an external research firm. The Product Marketing Alliance also has some good recommendations for how to create an effective pricing strategy.

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Traditional Marketing Is Not Dead

In marketing, there’s a lot of different forms of marketing as it keeps evolving. However, traditional marketing is not going away.

Following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post. 

Traditional marketing is not dead. Take for instance something a bit old-school such as a plane pulling a banner through the sky. If you are ever in Cleveland over the summer, you will more than likely spot one flying over Progressive Field during a Guardians game. This past summer it was Geico.

Given the shot-gun approach of aerial advertising, we may not have been the target audience, but some definitely were. According to ESPN, the average estimated crowd size during an Indians (at that time) home game in 2019 was about 21,000 (that’s a bit sad in itself). 77% of auto insurance customers were either actively shopping or experienced an adverse event that triggered shopping (e.g., poor service or a rate increase) in 2020 according to . J.D. Power. It’s a good assumption then that Geico is reaching at least 6,300 people that may be their target at each game, plus the much larger number in the city that will also see the sign.

IT’S NOT THE MEDIUM – IT’S THE OBJECTIVE THAT MATTERS

Prior to World War II, aviation pioneer Arnold Sidney Butler, the owner and operator of Daniel Webster Airport in New Hampshire, created banner towing. That was then, and in our digital world today, it almost seems quaint and somehow out of place. However, in this example, the medium is a smart decision for Geico if their objective was to increase brand awareness and potential consideration. Plus, they didn’t have to pay for the naming rights to the stadium like their competitor. In the increasing world of digital marketing, it’s important not to decide on your tactic (your medium) before you first define your objective and understand your target audience.

KNOW HOW YOUR AUDIENCE CONSUMES CONTENT & WHAT’S RELEVANT

As digital continues to grow and in some cases dominates access to certain target audiences, it has also created an equal need to better understand your target audience. It’s more imperative than ever to know how they consume content and to deliver an authentic, on brand message that is relevant. Surprisingly, not many companies do a good enough job at understanding who their target audience is or their purchase decision journey (why they buy from you). It’s not just about demographics (see our other amazing article on this topic, Demographics Are Outdated).

DO YOUR RESEARCH!

If you don’t have the internal resources to conduct your own research, then find a reputable agency that has a clear and solid process to conduct the research first and not just sell you a solution. Don’t let them sway you with just secondary data either. It’s a good start, but those are often generalities of a market or segment. Conduct your own primary research that is tailored to your company. Think of it as an investment that will provide you better returns down the road through improved campaign performance.

So, don’t just settle for a tactic, traditional or digital unless you do your homework first. Remember it’s not the medium or the platform, it’s your objective that comes first. Understand who is buying from you, why, and what matters to them. Who knows, maybe you will be flying a banner behind a plane in addition to that digital banner across the screen.

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Sonnhalter Wins PRSA Rocks Award

Sonnhalter Wins PRSA Rocks Award

Sonnhalter wins a gold award in “Trade Media Relations” category on behalf of Franklin Electric.

CLEVELAND – January 2023 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, received a gold award in the “Trade Media Relations” category at the 20th Annual Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) Cleveland Rocks Awards competition recognizing excellent communications programs and tactics.

Sonnhalter received the gold award in “Trade Media Relations” for Franklin Electric’s proactive media program that maximized its effort to increase knowledge of its products among end users, distributors and media.

Sonnhalter worked to develop a proactive, strategic media relations program to leverage the knowledge and expertise within Franklin Electric and take advantage of key opportunities to spread awareness about the company, its products and technologies, and its expert sources.

The Sonnhalter program included an editorial audit that identified and outlined potential editorial opportunities,

a consistent press release program, ongoing media pitches to place bylined feature articles, technical articles, and case histories, pitching Franklin Electric experts as sources for trade editors’ round-up articles covering industry trends, issues and products and arranging one-on-one media meetings at key trade shows

“We are honored to see our work get recognized by other public relations professionals around Cleveland,” said Matt Sonnhalter, Vision Architect at Sonnhalter. “We are proud to have a collaborative effort between Sonnhalter and Franklin Electric to expand their media relations program, and we couldn’t have done it without them.”

Annually, the PRSA-Cleveland Rocks Awards acknowledge Northeast Ohio’s outstanding communications programs, which incorporate research, planning, execution and evaluation. PRSA Cleveland Rocks Award winners demonstrate leadership in public relations and contribute to advancing the profession locally.

About Franklin Electric

Franklin Electric is a global leader in the production and marketing of systems and components for the movement of water and fuel. Recognized as a technical leader in its products and services, Franklin Electric serves customers around the world in residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, municipal, and fueling applications. Franklin Electric is proud to be named in Newsweek’s lists of America’s Most Responsible Companies and Most Trusted Companies for 2022

About Sonnhalter

Established in 1976, Sonnhalter is the leading B2T marketing communications firm to companies that target professional tradesmen in construction, industrial and MRO markets. Sonnhalter is located in the historic Brownell Building in the heart of downtown Cleveland. Sonnhalter’s brand identity highlights its expertise in marketing to the professional tradesmen. Its tagline, “Not Afraid To Get Our Hands Dirty,” promotes the employees’ willingness to roll up their sleeves and dig deep into clients’ businesses, also, it refers to the market it targets: the tradesmen who work with – and dirty – their hands every day. Sonnhalter developed the acronym “B2T,” which stands for “business-to-tradesmen” to capture the essence of its specialty. For more information, visit the company website at Sonnhalter.com.

About PRSA

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals with nearly 32,000 professional and student members, and more than 100 Chapters nationwide. Serving nearly 300 members, the PRSA Greater Cleveland Chapter brings together public relations, communications and marketing practitioners throughout Northeast Ohio. Among the Chapter’s most important activities and duties is coordinating networking events and activities, developing and hosting professional development activities for members, serving as a resource for public relations students and providing recognition of excellence and best practices in all facets of the field of public relations. www.prsacleveland.org

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The Manufacturing Skills Gap: What Is It and How to Solve It?

By: Kylie Stanley, PR Technician 

Certainly, you are aware that we are in the midst of a manufacturing skills gap. Currently within the industry, manufacturing jobs remain empty and companies are unable to find workers who have the knowledge.

Not to mention, the pandemic also contributed to manufacturing jobs vanishing, and now the manufacturing field will be set back decades from the loss.

Propel developed an article and a resource tool to give some insight into the issue and how we can solve it.

The top four causes of the manufacturing gap include:

  • The false job perception
  • Lack of technology skill sets
  • Retiring baby boomers
  • Blue collar work avoidance

When it comes to manufacturing, many people have varying perceptions of what it entails. With these perceptions, people have an idea of what a manufacturing job looks like, but it’s not always accurate. Perceptions of the job can lead to young people not wanting to work in the manufacturing field.

After the perception comes the lack of technology skills. In today’s job market, companies are wanting workers who have several skills to bring to the table. In most cases, workers who are already in the manufacturing field can’t afford to learn additional skills.

A lot of baby boomers are starting to retire, which leads to jobs being empty, and it doesn’t help that younger people don’t want to work in blue collar jobs. Today, there is a stigma surrounding blue collar jobs and most people view it as people who are less educated, however, that’s far from the truth.

Check out the complete article from Propel to learn more about the manufacturing gap and tools to help.

Want to read more about the skills gap?

Matt Sonnhalter Offers Advice on Motivating Plumbers of Tomorrow in Southern PHC’s “Work Force Training.”
Skills Gap Awareness: Are We Making Progress?
Skills Gap: We’re Between a Rock and a Hard Place
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