About Industrial Grinding Incorporated
Located in Dayton, Ohio, in the heart of the Rust Belt, Industrial Grinding Inc. is a custom machine shop specializing in precision grinding and metalizing. Using state-of-the-art technology, the company grinds large pieces of steel, cast iron and other materials into blades and machine components with exceptional precision. They are notable for their ability to hold close tolerances, up to 1/10,000ths of an inch. Industrial Grinding also provides chroming, welding, turning and milling services for a diverse industrial customer base. Some key markets include paper, petro-chemical, aerospace and defense. President Dick Wick purchased Industrial Grinding in 1985. Today they employ 17 people, including many highly skilled machinists working in an 18,500 square foot facility. A family owned business, Mr. Wick works closely with his son-in-law, Marcus Wendling, who serves as the company’s Sales Manager and Vice President.


Challenge: Finding qualified customers beyond its home base
For most of their existence, well over 90 percent of Industrial Grinding’s new business was acquired within a 100-mile radius. Still on their feet after surviving the recent collapse of the U.S. auto industry and more recently the broader economic downturn, Mr. Wick sought new ways to grow his customer base beyond his traditional geography. Yet he faced a common challenge for small custom manufacturers: finding qualified customers. For Industrial Grinding, this challenge was exacerbated for several reasons:

• First, unlike manufacturers of standard or commodity products, his customers don’t order “off the shelf” or from a conventional catalog. Instead, as a custom manufacturer, Industrial Grinding markets something less tangible- its suite of services, capabilities and expertise. How could the company best represent its work given these constraints?


• Second, running a small family business means that the company’s resources are often stretched too thinly. “We are committed to finding new customers but with a small sales force, we are only able to reach only so far,” Mr. Wendling said.


• Third, as with many custom manufacturers, the sales-cycle can be complex and lengthy. The goal is to get an RFQ (Request for Quote). Yet the RFQ is only the start, not the end of the sales process. The RFQ kicks-off a collaborative discussion with a team from the customer company. Industrial Grinding’s staff works closely with the prospect to co-develop a product expressly for them - a process that can take weeks or months to complete.

“For a custom machine shop like ours, it’s all about getting requests for quotes. The challenge has always been having the time and the wherewithal to build a solid prospect list and just as importantly, engage the prospect at the same time he has a need, so that we can fulfill it.” said Mr. Wick


Solution: A sophisticated and easy-to-use website that can serve as an experienced salesperson and 24/7 resource center
Mr. Wendling believed that his company could surface new customers if it used the Internet more strategically. In his search for a solution, he turned to Thomas Industrial Network because of its proven track record helping industrial companies grow. The timing was right, as Industrial Grinding became an early adopter of a new Thomas Industrial Network product, Custom SPEC, created expressly for custom manufacturers.

Custom SPEC combines strategic website development with a powerful search engine presence to help businesses like Industrial Grinding to generate more sales opportunities. The process began quickly, as Mr. Wendling worked directly with a team of trained engineers to write, design, and develop a new website.

With a deep understanding of how Industrial Grinding’s prospects operate, the team zeroed in on creating a series of portfolio pages. These pages are critical in highlighting the depth and breadth of the company’s past work experience in machine breakdown repair, metalizing ceramic coatings, stock plate surface grinding and other specialties. Each page clearly conveys their capabilities, noting cutting methods, processes and tolerances for each industry they service. The portfolio has become the centerpiece of the new website.

Further enhancing the new website, the team uses the same vocabulary and keywords that any prospect in search of custom grinding services would. This allows Industrial Grinding’s website to appear at the top of search engine results for specific terms like “vertical grinding turbines.”

Another important traffic driver is Industrial Grinding’s presence on ThomasNet.com, the Internet’s pre-eminent product sourcing and supplier discovery and selection platform. Engineers searching for custom shop services often turn there first to seek suppliers.

“Thomas Industrial Network led me through every step of the way to develop a hard-working web site. We gathered key data and information clients would need to see on our site in order to feel confident about submitting an RFQ. Thomas’ web design team created a clear, easy-to-use design,” Mr. Wick remarked.

Mr. Wendling and his team now enjoy tracking reports too, where they can examine which content and keywords attract the most web-traffic, and where those visitors come from. That knowledge helps with continual site improvement.

“The new website, in many ways, is even better than a stellar new sales-person,” Mr. Wendling said. “It takes the place of cold calling and condenses the first several steps of our sales process – taking us right to the RFQ stage, which is exactly where we want to be.”


Results: Growing demand requires new hires and an increase in production capacity
Industrial Grinding’s new website has exceeded expectations. The company is now receiving an average of 10-15 qualified RFQs each week from throughout the United States and Canada. In addition, in-bound new-business inquiries by phone are even higher - over 20 calls per week. This is a record number of inquiries for the company.

Notably, the RFQs generated by the site are from high-value, high-quality leads that are converting to clients at an unprecedented pace. As a result, Industrial Grinding has had to increase its capacity and productivity levels, and recently hired three new machine operators to meet the demand.

Since launching its Custom SPEC website, Industrial Grinding received an RFQ from one of the Íworld’s largest machine manufacturers for seven different parts. After meeting personally with the prospect, Industrial Grinding left their plant with several parts for trial. This relationship now holds the potential to produce over $200,000 a year in revenue.

It’s also opened doors to another prospect the company has been trying to penetrate for over two years. In addition, one company that Mr. Wendling has long been pursuing found the new Industrial Grinding website and placed an RFQ.

“The experience and know-how of Thomas Industrial Network has taken our website, and subsequently our custom business, to a whole new level,” said Mr. Wick. “It has more than paid for itself. Our lead-generation and customer-acquisition processes are more efficient, attracting and engaging prospects that are in need of the specific services Industrial Grinding offers. We are empowered to penetrate new markets, and can handle expansive projects that would not have previously come our way.”

August 2011

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