Solenoid valves for car washes are just one of hundreds of different kinds of valves manufactured by Conant Controls. Since 1856, Conant Controls has produced a complete line of high quality precision selector valves, stack valves, and control vent valves (like the kind used at the car wash). There are as many different industry applications for Conant's products as there are valves. Such valves are especially critical in the food, oil, gas, power and chemical industries, where there is no room for error when transferring fluids and air under a wide range of pressure, temperature and corrosive conditions.
In addition to working closely with design engineers to create custom valves, Conant also maintains a large inventory of standard design parts. Company President Patrick Hollis oversees a staff of four engineers and two sales people from the company's offices in Medford, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb.
Challenge: How can a small company, with limited resources, compete?
2009 was a difficult year for the manufacturing industry, and Conant was no exception. Sales were down, as many of their customers hit by the recession put projects on hold. Furthermore, few if any leads were coming from outside of the US. And with a small sales staff, Conant had limited resources to proactively target new prospects to make up for the downturn.
Further hindering Conant's outbound sales process was the extra time it took to service custom orders. Forty percent of Conant's business comes from custom orders, yet the company's staff engineers still were drawing technical designs by hand. "We had no AutoCAD library at all," Mr. Hollis lamented. "Some of the prints we were using were circa the 1950s and '60s. Each new request meant redrawing by either me or another engineer before it was faxed over to a customer three, sometimes four days later. The process was very time consuming, inefficient and not very professional." As a result, the company could not compete with larger firms that had larger marketing budgets and could deliver specs faster.
Solution: Conant builds a new web strategy with precise product detail and a deep CAD library to attract design engineers Knowing that design engineers typically begin their research online, Mr. Hollis determined that Conant needed an Internet strategy if the company were to emerge strongly from the down economy. He tapped Thomas Industrial Network and its ThomasNet Web Solutions team to help. Thomas Industrial Network's Navigator Platform has the suite of web-technology to deliver the content and functionality that would power up Conant's business.
Teams from both organizations focused on two key tasks: building a detail-rich online catalog of Conant's suite of valves; and transferring Conant's library of 500 Auto-CAD drawings into the company's new website. According to Mr. Hollis, this effort would have taken two to three years without ThomasNet's expertise.
With the Navigator Platform in place, the precise product descriptions used on the new website help Conant rise to the top of online searches. Now, engineers using a search engine to find 150 PSI multiport stack control valves, for example, immediately see that Conant Controls can service their needs, and they can link directly to Conant's online catalog. There, visitors can continue their search by keyword or by part number. They can also compare results side-by-side, evaluating specifications like pressure range, body material and drillings. In addition, prospects can request a quote or more information any time.
For the engineer in the market for a custom valve order, the new CAD library makes it easier than ever before to work with Conant. "Today's engineers want AutoCAD drawings that they can incorporate into their specs, and drop them right into their prints," Mr. Hollis explained. "The best thing we can hope for is to get spec'ed in a job, because once you're specified, you're almost guaranteed to get the order."
The CAD library helps bring that goal closer to fruition. Conant's part numbers are included with every CAD drawing, so that when the engineer is creating a bill of material for a particular piece of equipment, it has the drawing, the critical dimensions, and most importantly, the Conant part number. "It's the perfect world," Mr. Hollis added.
The CAD library has an extra benefit as well. While website visitors can look at the drawings any time, they must register with Conant in order to download them. That gives Conant qualified sales lead information: the name of the prospect, the company where the prospect works, and the valve application. The company never had such a valuable prospect list building capability before.
In addition, Conant's staff has access to back end tools that let them make changes directly to the website. Now internal staff can add new products, pricing and technical information on their own schedule, and be faster to market new valves. Thomas Industrial Network's online tracking tool, Web Traxs® gives the team better visibility on how visitors use the site, allowing them to make modifications based on customer behavior.
Results: Rebuilding its book of business with a steady stream of qualified, new leadsConant's new Internet strategy has paid excellent dividends: new project quotes are up forty percent from last year, and companies needing any variety of valve applications are coming to Conant at a pace of ten new inquiries a week. Half of those are converting into orders, and many of those are becoming repeat customers.
Multi-national, high volume new customers such as Conoco-Phillips, Motorola, Exxon and Chevron, Mr. Hollis boasts, are now coming to Conant and may never have found the company had their valve inventory not been recast more strategically online. "Having CAD drawings on our website has helped us tremendously," he said. "It's actually leveled the playing field when we compare ourselves to our bigger competitors. The CAD library has improved our credibility and expertise in the field, allowing us to earn the business that previously we might have lost because we didn't present the right image."
Conant is also seeing improvement in international business, representing a variety of applications from around the globe. For instance, an ink cartridge supplier in India hired the firm to develop a custom valve, and a Belgian company tapped Conant to make hoses for the carwash industry. Conant Controls, which had little international business to speak of during the economic downturn, now reports international sales make up 15 percent of its business.
"The qualified leads that we receive through ThomasNet's Online Catalog provide us the opportunity to find new markets that we probably would not have found on our own, or as quickly," said Mr. Hollis. "The leads save us a lot of time and energy." Those new customers range from a U.S. manufacturer of carnival games to a Milwaukee company that paints lane stripes on roads and highways.
With the successful online strategy firmly in place, Mr. Hollis has the confidence to proceed with developing a new line of valves made from thermoplastics. These two-stack and three-stack valves are providing the company an entrée to reach deeper into chemical and semiconductor applications.
"All of our new business is coming to us as a result of our internet strategy with ThomasNet," Mr. Hollis said. "We are very excited about our prospects for 2010 now that we've got our website working as an always-on member of our sales team. The online catalog and CAD library have freed our engineers to be more strategic and customer-service oriented, and that is the key to our future growth."
If you are
interested in learning about the successes of other ThomasNet clients,
go to www.promoteyourbusiness.thomasnet.com or call (800) 879-6757.
June 2010.
If you are interested in learning how ThomasNet can help you achieve similar success and grow your business, click here or call 1-866-585-1191