The Business Prenup

One of my recent columns in Circuits Assembly focused on contracts. A contract or manufacturing agreement is a lot like a prenuptial agreement in that with a happy marriage you can throw it in a drawer and forget about it. And, business divorce without a contract isn’t much different from marriage breakups without a prenup – there is a lot of latitude to behave badly. Check out the article to learn the 5 worst reasons for not having a contract and negotiating strategies that will help you quickly get one in place.

Thoughts on Differentiation

Years ago when I was giving a seminar on EMS Competitive Advantage at SMTAI, a person working at an OEM had also signed up. When I asked why he was registering for what was essentially a marketing class for EMS companies, he told me he wanted to hear what I was telling EMS companies about marketing. He’d been disappointed by companies who couldn’t walk their talk and basically wanted to see if I was telling companies to overstate their capabilities. The short answer was that I wasn’t. The EMS industry is selling a service-based relationship. Marketing efforts that focus on undeliverable promises do more harm than good. My February article in Circuits Assembly looks at the challenge of providing points of differentiation that track to deliverable customer benefits.