The Manufacturing Automation Podcast

Matt is back from two weeks on the road with big news: Develop has signed its first dedicated salesperson. He shares why the last three trade shows were record shows for lead quality, and why he credits better processes more than the shows themselves. The two also talk about why small business data is often unreliable for the first few years, how proposal tracking can turn in...

Matt is in a holding pattern on several large machine builds that are now waiting on board approvals, some after scoping since Automate 2025. He explains when Develop charges for proof-of-concept engineering, and why quoting nearly everything for a couple of years, even with a terrible conversion rate, is what eventually lifted their close rate about 4.5 times. Michael, meanw...

Matt is finalizing a 13-page lending story and three-year forecast ahead of meetings with lenders, while Michael is deep in post-IMTS follow-up and caught in the pinch of being big enough to have big-company problems without the headcount to fix them. Michael shares what diving into the data revealed: a 29-day average time to close, a floor of four turnkeys a month, and the f...

Q4 quoting season is here, and both hosts are running on empty. Michael is only 10% through IMTS follow-up and already booked solid for two weeks, while Matt had just over two hours of open calendar all week. They open with price increases (Develop is on its sixth in two years, and Gimbel adjusts pricing on the 15th) and why your products and processes getting better justifie...