Specializing in a specific industry helps you stand out in a crowded field, turning you from just another vendor into a trusted insider to high-value clients. In our Industry Deep Dive series, we’re drilling down into the ins and outs of targeting specific verticals, getting firsthand advice and tips from MSPs who are succeeding with specialization—and providing guidance on how you can too. We started with healthcare (see Tapping into the Pulse of Healthcare: How MSPs Are Finding an Rx for Growth), followed by nonprofits (see Purpose Meets Profit: Discover Why MSPs Can Win Big with Nonprofits).
In this installment, we get some firsthand advice and tips from MSPs who are serving the manufacturing sector.
If you prefer working with no-nonsense, blunt people, especially those who appreciate the value of your expertise, specializing in the manufacturing industry might be for you. While the niche has its complexities just like any other, manufacturing clients tend to make loyal customers who are happy to pay for quality.
Here are the nuts and bolts of what it takes to support manufacturers.
Why Specialize in Manufacturing?
Just like many niches, manufacturing clients typically have the same software in place, so your technicians don’t have to learn a lot of different systems. This brings down your costs and increases efficiency. “Most likely, they don’t have a bunch of one-off [software], because of compliance [requirements],” says Aaron Wyant, president of Dispatch Tech (pictured right). “It’s pretty straightforward.”
Manufacturers in the defense industrial base (DIB) that must follow CMMC guidelines also understand the importance of cybersecurity, says Wyant. “They’re meeting guidelines, and you need to have cybersecurity [to meet CMMC requirements],” he says. “It’s protecting them, so they’re going to follow along. It’s easier, [especially] compared to other niches without as many requirements [to follow], who will try and use their personal computer at work, etc. That’s not going to happen in our industry.”
The culture fit is also a defining factor for some MSPs. When they were initially choosing a niche to specialize in, Real IT Solutions identified manufacturers as their favorite people to work with, says CEO Matt Kahle. “It came down to culture fit. We take [our] work very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. I think manufacturers are similar in that way. There’s a lot of hardworking guys that like to get the job done, but to have a good time in the same breath.”
“They also understand the need to spend money to make money,” Kahle says. “A lot of them have capital expenditures for equipment; they understand you need to purchase, maintain, and insure good equipment. So, spending money on your technology infrastructure isn’t necessarily a hard sell for them, unlike in some other industries.”
Mark Adair, managing member of Adair Technology (pictured right), agrees, saying: “I’ve never had an issue getting paid. It might take us forever to close [the sale], but once we do, we’ve had some [manufacturing] clients for 10 or 15 years. They don’t bring on business that they can’t afford to do. We’ve had some ups and downs with price cuts, but they pay us on time and they’re loyal.”
Key Things to Know about Manufacturing—and What Their Pain Points Are
Working with manufacturers comes with its own unique set of challenges and concerns. “One of their biggest pain points is uptime,” says Kahle (pictured right). “They need all their equipment to be working well. You don’t want their production lines to be affected by an IT outage of any kind.”
“[They] can’t go down,” says Adair. “That’s a common thing I hear. A lot of them have multiple shifts, like over weekends, when management isn’t always there. So, reliability is a big business outcome [for them]. We have some solutions we put into place for that, like high availability and redundant power and hardware. They’re willing to pay for it if they know why.”
“Make sure you have a plan of action in place so that if something goes wrong, you can fix it pretty quickly,” advises Wyant, to help keep clients’ lines rolling. “Have really good backups and really good cybersecurity [in place].”
You’ll also likely need to be prepared to maintain legacy systems. “A lot of times, they have legacy machines that MSPs [don’t want to] support because it’s not up to the standards. But when they have a million-dollar paint line that runs on a Windows 98 computer, they’re not going to replace the paint line because you told them they need Windows 11. So being able to support legacy systems I think is a big pain point for them,” says Kahle.
Tips for Finding Manufacturing Clients
Marketing to manufacturing prospects isn’t that different from marketing to other industries, with a few notable exceptions. First, when working with or selling to manufacturing clients, be sure to cut the crap. “In my experience, you want to be very upfront and blunt,” says Kahle. “They don’t need to hear the sales pitch typically. They just need to know what it is that they’re paying for and why. Speak to them like a human, one person to another, without marketing fluff or industry jargon. Just be upfront and factual; they typically respond well to that.”
Also, it’s time to swap out your stock photos for some industry-specific ones. “Some of the images [we use] are more equipment related,” Adair explains. “[Pictures with] metal buildings, CNC machines, concrete shop floors, and people wearing safety glasses [are more relatable to manufacturing prospects] than a suit and tie and an office conference table. They’re more likely to be standing out next to the machine, wearing jeans and safety glasses, than having suits on.”
Tailoring your marketing to their pain points and business objectives—like demanding timelines, avoiding downtime, irregular work hours, and environments—tends to pay off. That said, “uptime is of paramount importance, [but] everybody’s going to tell them that they can help with that,” says Kahle. “If you add value in another way, that’s helpful in the marketing. [For example], some sort of shop floor intelligence, or camera systems to help with workers’ comp claims. Also, if you specialize in manufacturing, that’s a good way to get your foot in the door. Being able to sit across from a CFO and say, ‘I’ve got 42 other customers exactly like you. I understand your problems and your concerns, and here’s 10 other people that can vouch for how well we do servicing your business’—that’s helpful.”
Keep an Eye Out for the Decision Maker
Finding the right decision maker can be a challenge, so keep that in mind. “We have law firms too, and I know who to go for there. With manufacturers, we generally have to dig [for the right person] because the titles aren’t consistent,” explains Adair. “We see a lot of vice presidents, but we’ll go into the company and they’ll have six vice presidents—of manufacturing, of finance, etc.—and none of them are the owner. I don’t have an easy title to go for, like a legal administrator or office manager. We have to ask.”
In Kahle’s experience, it’s usually “the CFO, [or] rolls up somehow under the CFO,” he says. Wyant advises at least talking to the general manager to start, since they’re likely to either be the decision maker or able to direct you to them.
“Size matters,” Kahle says. “The more users they have, the more people you’re going to have at the table making a decision. [With a] smaller company, you might have one person who can say yes.”
Challenges of Working with the Niche
As with any niche, your business will be affected by economic downturns that affect that particular industry, says Kahle. “It’s not quite boom and bust, but if you’re specialized in one industry, when that industry feels pain, you’re obviously going to feel the pain as well. The biggest challenge is being prepared for and having strategies to mitigate those economic downturns.”
The manufacturing industry is heavily affected by fluctuations in the oil and gas industry. “When oil prices drop and people start turning off wells and pumping less oil, that affects the entire chain. For example, [we work with] a plastics manufacturer who makes plane parts. COVID was a big deal for them; people weren’t flying, planes weren’t moving, and no one was buying planes and building planes. If their industry’s hit, we will feel it to some degree,” says Adair.
The way manufacturers’ money flows is also atypical, says Adair. “Some of the challenges come with whether they have the money for upgrades when they need it. Instead of a regular monthly income, they seem to have spikes.”
To cope with this variable technology budget, Adair Technologies has put some billing strategies in place. “We focus more on capital expenditures with them, where some equipment can be paid for over time [if needed], like hardware as a service. These companies tend to want to buy their own stuff. They don’t want monthly recurring expenses—or they want to minimize them. Basically, when they have the money, they want to spend it and buy things [outright],” Adair explains.
Mastering CMMC in Manufacturing
Another significant challenge of working with the manufacturing industry is CMMC, which is a critical regulatory standard to know if any of your manufacturing clients have defense contracts. “It’s a full process, and there’s no room for error in the CMMC world,” says Wyant. “The complexity of it [is the biggest hurdle]. Making sure the encryptions are right and the customer is really safeguarding that [Controlled Unclassified Information] and classified information, and that they are not storing that data in a cloud that’s not meant for CMMC, that’s critical.”
Adair adds that more and more subcontractors down the supply chain are recognizing the need to comply with CMMC. That said, IT doesn’t mean every client is ready to hop on the CMMC train. “Their compliance can be a tough conversation,” Adair continues. “We have to convince the client or at least ask to see their contracts and figure out if they do have compliance [requirements]. It can be difficult because the clients can view us as trying to upsell them on security that they may not need, since they never had to have it before.”
Adair says he shifts the conversation to risk, and the implications of not protecting themselves. “There’s risk on both sides of the coin,” he says, “one being compliance that’s driven by their clients. That’s going to affect their billing and ability to get work in the future. The other side is that they need [to be compliant] anyway. There are implications to not implementing the security that they should want on their own, without someone else having to tell them.”
Wyant advises MSPs who want to start offering CMMC services to find an experienced partner to help with the auditing process and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
How to Get Started
“Make sure you do your homework,” says Wyant. “Make sure you study up on CMMC and find some partners to work with—people that can help you achieve the goal, so you can make sure your clients are a hundred percent satisfied.”
Adair adds, “Know the software pieces that they use. See if you can’t find someone who’s already in there that has something to do with that software—supporting it, selling it, whatever—and start a joint venture with them. That would be a leg up on getting in the door, because pulling a list of names and trying to start calling companies is really tough.”
“My advice would be to get your hands dirty; go out there,” says Kahle. “I meet with a manufacturing prospect and usually ask for a tour, and they’re more than happy to show off their facility. Get in there, see what they’re making, how they make it, and if that strikes your fancy. When you’re excited about what your customers do, it makes it more fun and easier to support them.”
Want more niche content? Stay tuned for our next industry deep dive, which will take a closer look at the government/public sector vertical.
