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B2B Approaches for Different Economic Cycles 127

ance would it take to buy from us? The large manufacturer
told them that it would take a manufacturing run of 50,000
engine blocks without a tool change to get their business.
With their new tools, they were able to boost that produc-
tion run to 200,000 engine blocks without a tool change. It
would have been an embarrassment for them not to buy
their tools.

Create good products in good times and
great products in tough times

A US tool manufacturer strategy wants to make products that
have a good value proposition in prosperous economies and
a great value proposition in tougher economies. The CEO
commented that this strategy “saved their bacon” when the
economy contracted. Their strategy was to be the easiest
business to do business with. For this organization, that
meant creating products that were tailored to a diversity of
customer applications, not biased toward how much it
would cost to produce this particular product. They targeted
60% of their business to specialize in tools that had
multiple applications and could reduce their clients’ manu-
facturing costs significantly relative to more generic one-use
products.

In creating their products, they would look at their
customer’s business, figure out what was the most cost-
effective way for them to run their business, and then
create the tools that would enable that for not only one type
of machine but multiple machines. In prosperous times,
this approach had obvious benefits but when the economy
contracted, the advantages of this type of approach had
a far bigger economic impact and therefore helped
sustain revenue growth not only for their client but for
themselves.