Customers found on internet good or bad?

[Dualkit]

Just curious, how many percentage of new customers found from internet bidding lead to good business relationships? I guess good would be defined as repeat business with someone who is easy to work with. Share your good and bad about these relationships here and what we can do to improve them.

[Dualkit]

Curious how come 57 views and no votes? No one willing to vent or discuss?
I found a company that has been a pleasure to work with, they were making
parts for their own products with a manual lathe, even though they also used
a machining center to produce parts. Good for me they didn't feel like adding a CNC Lathe, so when volume grew too large for turning lathe handles they put an
RFQ up. I think it was good timing as I believe they accepted my price against only a few other quotes. I have probably done a dozen jobs for them in the past
year and a half, only once did they want me to lower a price. They were my first job I got from online bidding, it gave me a lot of encouragement. It has been all downhill since. My biggest problem has been when I quote a second job
from someone I won previous work from. It seems they will ask for lower volume
on a similar part and expect them to be priced the same. I do my best to explain
that program and set-up time are the same for one as it is for a thousand.
It seems they could care less about my explanation, and these aren't parts that you could make a few manually quickly. They seem to think I am trying to gouge them and then the relationship is over. Knowing this internet bidding is tough, I pick my battles, I have learned not to bid on certain types
of parts to lessen my frustration, still it is hard to overlook how negative it is
getting.

[ImanCarrot]

Yes, you have to know when to "no bid". My experience is about 50/50- some customers expect your shop to be an extension of their business, ie: drop everything and do their job at once, for no profit even though they're a week late with the drawings (which are all wrong anyway) and won't give you a letter of intent so you can order the material. Others I've had won't even quibble the price and come back regularly, I'll work with them to iron out design issues- like "you know if you had a radius in this corner I could save you 50 quid per part" etc.

I had one chap sho sent me half a dozen drawings to quote on- no probelm, looked alright, he'd send the blank material (even better), I quote, he sends the blanks along with totaly different drawings- it was impossible (really) to make one of them. "But I've got the order he said"...

[justice25]

I have been trying the Internet thing for a while now and have not had any luck. It seems a lot of times when RFQ's come up and you bid on the job (knowing your low) the poster will come back with they are having the parts done already, but they will keep you in mind for the future. This is just my experiance as everyones is different, however I am still plugging away at it as I am sure one day it will pay off.

www.ultimatetool.us

[ImanCarrot]

It's paid off for me on a couple of occasions. The customers wanted small quantities, experimental stuff, hassle jobs which I did for little or no profit. Eventually they started placing larger orders on which I could make a decent profit. I even make profit on the experimental stuff now cos they trust me to make it right- others might do it cheaper, but it won't be right or on time.

's like fishing I guess, you gotta catch a lot of tiddlers before you land a biggie

[cncjunky]

Yeah have'nt really got much work out of it yet. Is there any other places on the internet that you can bid on jobs? There just isn't enough of a flow of jobs on here to bid on.

[ImanCarrot]

I beleive that if you bid on a job then you should be prepared to commit yourself 100% to completing the customer requirements.

If you get a customer that is probelmatic or who patently doens't know what he's on about then "no bid".

It's a watse of your time trying to figure out how to solve "their" problems when you could be making stuff for other customers that make you money.

Saying that though... if you do solve one out of twenty customers' problems then they'll come back. It hapened to me... just got a big contract for a customer that I made a few prototypes for about a year ago. No-one else could make it apparently.

And I quoted high 'cos it was a bugger of a job.

I got plenty of work on at the moment.. too bloody much actually. Getting to the point where quality is being compromised, which is NOT a place I want to be in.

[cncjunky]

Originally Posted by ImanCarrot I beleive that if you bid on a job then you should be prepared to commit yourself 100% to completing the customer requirements. If you get a customer that is probelmatic or who patently doens't know what he's on about then "no bid". It's a watse of your time trying to figure out how to solve "their" problems when you could be making stuff for other customers that make you money. Saying that though... if you do solve one out of twenty customers' problems then they'll come back. It hapened to me... just got a big contract for a customer that I made a few prototypes for about a year ago. No-one else could make it apparently. And I quoted high 'cos it was a bugger of a job. I got plenty of work on at the moment.. too bloody much actually. Getting to the point where quality is being compromised, which is NOT a place I want to be in.

Oh thats too bad, you really should be thinking about shippin to your mate over here in the U.S.A., help us both out of a rock and a hard place. Catch my drift, eh ?

[SBC Cycle]

Service is what I sell, not parts. I look for long term partnerships with mutual benefit. No company I work for presently would ever look to have their stuff made on the interweb. It doesn't fit their business model. I don't like it sometimes but they want to know everything about me:

How long we've been in business
Are my machines newish or older but well maintained
How many employees and what is the rollover rate
Personal problems
etc, etc

Some of them may sound out of line but it's all relative. If you were wanting a product manufactured, are you going to count on an anon from the interweb to deliver consistently, no matter how good the price is? I wouldn't. Our customers have customers too. And promises must be kept.

I don't internet bid. Lose/Lose. It works for a lot of people though.

[Mariss Freimanis]

I don't know if our experiences apply to the question asked but I'll go for it anyway.

We run an "internet only" manufacturing company. That means we don't use any other means of advertising our company or for garnering business. It follows our original business plan from the outset without any subsequent modification.

Our experience has been heartwarming. People are as honest as the day is long and then some.

Our customer breaks down into individual and OEM accounts. We extend net 30 terms to our OEM accounts. Our experience is 90% of our OEM accounts pay on time. Of the remaining 10%, 90% pay promptly when they are reminded they are in arrears. That leaves 1% of the total that require more aggressive measures like turning them over to collection agencies or lawsuits. Again, 90% of that number ultimately pay or return the product.

The remaining 0.1% is difficult or cannot be recovered from. Their accrued damage adds $0.10 to the average $100 cost of our product. Altogether a very manageable and minimal cost.

Mariss

[SimonArthur]

Almost all of my quotes are done automatically through the website. Our website has all the information needed for the people who are just curious. It also forces the ones who are more serious to come up with a workable design.

Occasionally, somebody will want something unusual that I quote the old fashioned way. Of these, I get maybe 1 out of 5 jobs.

[Dualkit]

I meant those people bidding on work posted on sites such as this, sorry I should have been clearer. I was curious if my bad experiences were due to my perpetual bad luck. The poll with over 50% calling the customers a waste of time confirms I am not alone, and that is unfortunate.