When Alistair Brixey became the company's Vice President of Sales and Marketing in early 2009, he was tasked with growing sales by 35 percent in three years, without increasing the cost of sales – an especially daunting goal in the face of harsh economic headwinds.

Complicating the assignment was that many of the company's sales and marketing processes were still paper-based. Thousands of different bearing designs, customer drawings and other data collected during the course of a century resided in multiple places. That made the entire sales cycle – from lead generation, to handling requests for quotes, to processing an order – slow and cumbersome for the sales rep, the customer and any distribution partner.

Further, while the company had built a strong brand among veteran engineers and purchasing agents over the course of decades, the Bunting Bearings brand had little or no brand recognition among a new generation of prospective customers. It was clear that this next generation customer was spending more time online searching for new suppliers, researching products and submitting orders. If Bunting Bearings were to achieve its aggressive sales goals, Mr. Brixey and his team acknowledged that they needed to shift more of their sales and marketing processes online – and do it quickly.

Unfortunately, Bunting Bearings' website lacked the comprehensive data, organization and back-end technology it needed to attract leads and close sales. "To pull this off, we needed more than just a new website, we needed an overall online strategy that would drive sales," recalled Mr. Brixey. "We needed a partner who understands the Internet and how to leverage it to reach our customers, with the technology and industrial expertise to make it happen."

Solution: Building a central, online repository for product and customer data to attract leads and drive sales In need of help, Mr. Brixey called ThomasNet for its recognized expertise in creating online strategies to find qualified leads and build sales for industrial companies. "Thomas Net doesn't just offer products," he said. "They offer a solution."

Working hand-in-hand with ThomasNet's engineers, industry experts and web technology experts, the team implemented a new web solution, at the heart of which is the Navigator Platform, a proprietary technology that gives Bunting Bearings the tools and functionality to help prospective customers make intelligent buying decisions online.

They began by building an online catalog. The project was no small task as the ThomasNet team had to pull a century's worth of information and data from different places within the company, compile it and host it in one place. The result is an online catalog that serves as the central repository of the most up-to-date information detailing the full breadth of Bunting's 30,000 products.

"For real estate, the value is in location, location, location. But for a good engineering website, it's data, data, data. And that's what ThomasNet put together for us," said Mr. Brixey. The online catalog is easy for visitors to use, with Bunting Bearings' products organized according to nine different categories (such as cast bronze bearings, engineered plastic bearings and custom machine products), all searchable by key word or part number. The high quality of detailed information describing the products and company capabilities also helps Bunting Bearings to rise to the top of online searches, the common mode of research for today's young engineers and purchasing officers.

Further appealing to the engineering prospect, the Bunting Bearings website now has an online CAD library of 2D and 3D drawings. The ability to download and spec parts directly into projects lessens the customers' chance of errors and saves them time. Instead of investing hours in drawing a part, an engineer can now earmark a specific part drawing so Bunting Bearings can either find it in its inventory, or custom produce an exact part.

"The ability to deliver this level of confidence to customers is important to us. Our bearings are spec'ed into very expensive machines," said Mr. Brixey. "It takes a brave purchasing agent to swap a ten cent bearing for a six cent bearing when it's going into a $30,000 dollar machine. He needs us to demonstrate that we have the right part."

Bunting Bearings new web strategy makes it easier to not only initiate, but to close a sale. Each page offers the visitor a path to submit a Request for Quote. That saves the engineer and purchasing agent time, while bringing the bearings manufacturer one step closer to fulfilling an order. It also makes it easier for the company to know its customers and prospects better. Each time an engineer or purchasing agent requests a CAD download or submits an RFQ, Bunting Bearings captures his name, email, company information and phone number, all key information to help develop a longer term relationship.

Bunting Bearings' new web strategy also includes a mechanism to help its distributors better represent the bearing maker's products. The manufacturer is now syndicating product data to one of its major distributors, sharing the latest information, in real time, directly through the distributor's website. Previously, when the distributor was asked for a CAD drawing or had a question about a Bunting bearing, it would have to pass the request through to the manufacturer. Now, that information resides on the distributor's website, providing the answers right away to move prospects closer to a buying decision.

Results: New web strategy creates as high performing sales channel, generates exponentially more qualified new leads Bunting Bearings' new online strategy has achieved results well beyond what Mr. Brixey anticipated. Within the first four months, the company increased sales by $64,000, all directly attributed to the new website. Visitors have downloaded more than 430 CAD files, and submitted more than 180 requests for quotations, 20 percent of which have already become orders with the prospect of continued business.

"When our website went live, it was like Christmas for us," said Mr. Brixey. "We had orders for over $1,400 dollars for plastic and polymer bearings that had been sent to us over that first weekend alone."

As expected, the website's detail-rich content pushed Bunting Bearings to higher search engine ratings, attracting qualified inquiries from companies far outside the company's typical markets – including requests for quotes from Asia and the Middle East. One new customer that found Bunting online because of the new web strategy is an oil company based in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Brixey also examines the data he now collects from visitors to the online catalog. How many inquiries are coming in? How many downloads are there? How many requests for information?

With ThomasNet it's simple for him to pull those answers to examine how his web strategy is working. With such fast results, Mr. Brixey and his team are confident their new online strategy has propelled Bunting Bearings on a trajectory that positions them to realize their long term goals.

If you are interested in learning about the successes of other ThomasNet clients, go to www.promoteyourbusiness.com or call (800) 879-6757.

July 2010

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