I know it sounds pretty brutal but hey I have to use any method I can to get your attention, because the fact is if you don’t change your ways you will go out of business in the next twelve months.

Don’t get me wrong, there are opportunities out there, more of them than there has been in quite a long time but the problem is that you have to first of all recognize those opportunities and then do something about them.

The market is opening up. I spoke with someone the other day who mentioned that the average difference between Chinese prices and American prices is under 30%. That’s a long way from the days when you could pay the Chinese two bucks for a board that would cost ten bucks in the good old USA. If you consider all of the hassles of doing business with a country all the way around the world a differential of 30% is just not worth it.

There are also, as I have been saying for months now, reasons for our customers to want to buy more American. Ranging from new product introduction, to sheer convenience to just plain old American nationalism companies are spending more of their PCB dollars with domestic board shops.

So there is opportunity if you choose take it. But hey if you want to just keep doing what you’ve always done well good luck with that.

So with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek here are eight ways to make sure you go out of business in the next year:

1. Believe in the “build it and they will come” theory of sales and marketing or rather lack of sales and marketing. Face it, once and for all they will not come if they don’t know who you are and what you can do…so if you want to go out of business…don’t tell anybody what you can do.
2. Don’t hire any sales people, but buy a piece of equipment instead. We all know how much new business that new etcher will bring in don’t we?
3. Stick to your guns when it comes to high prices. Look it worked once on that customer last year who needed boards so desperately that he paid you ten times what they were worth. So keep it up, price all of your boards that way. You never know that customer just might need that board again sometime in the next couple of years.
4. Forget sales people altogether. All they are is a pain in the neck, always complaining, always making stuff up about the customer being angry because your boards are consistently three weeks late. Get rid of that person, who needs to hear that stuff. Everyone knows a great sales person is the one who can sell what you build: crappy boards that are always late. Keep judging your sales people by how well they can apologize rather than how well they can sell.
5. Get rid of your reps too. Yeah don’t forget that one after all, what have they done for you lately? So what if they got you that million dollar a year account two years ago, your team is able to handle it now so what do you need them for? Besides, think of all the money you can save if you don’t have to pay them anymore? And by the way why do they need that commission check every month send them the check when you feel like it, let them complain why should you care?
6. Marketing? Who needs that? I don’t see any evidence of that working, why should I spend any more money on that? If you don’t believe me refer to item #1, If you build it they will come. They’ll find you somehow.
7. And social media? Why should you get involved in that key’s stuff? It’s just a passing that will go so why should you care about it anyway. Just let it pass you by.
8. Don’t pay any attention to that performance stuff either. That just doesn’t make any sense at all with the industry average for on time deliver at 83% same as yields what does it matter what your performance is. After all remember your motto, “We’re no worse than anyone else.”

And one more always under promise and over deliver. Or maybe if you really want your company to fail it should be the other way around, but anyway the bonus way to make sure your company fails in 2018 is:

9. To remember that whatever happens it’s not your fault, not at all. Everything would be great if it wasn’t for those darn Chinese, and Canadians and IPC and the US Government and of yes of course everything would be much better if it wasn’t for those darn customers!

There you have it, if you promise to follow all of these special guidelines in the coming year, you too could become one of the twelve hundred American board shops who have failed in the past twenty years.

It’s only common sense