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USTEK

Small Custom Manufacturer Advertises On Thomasnet.com
And Achieves Big Sales Growth

Increase Your Sales

Growth Challenges For A Small Business

USTEK is a provider of custom electrical and mechanical technical components and the small team (like many other small U.S. manufacturers) wears many hats — operations, quality control, and customer service, just to name a few.

Since being founded in Ohio in 1987, USTEK has stayed true to its mission — deliver solutions that enrich every customer’s experience. However, the shop’s leadership team, including Operations Manager Amy Holbrook, also wanted to enrich revenues. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the time, resources or perhaps most importantly, the plan required to make it happen.

For a small manufacturer like USTEK, balancing the need to deliver great customer service with the desire to attract new customers can be tough.

“It’s kind of like keeping an airplane level,” Amy explained. “You’re going from side-to-side trying to make sure that you satisfy the customer by giving quotes and providing all of the service that they require for every order while also trying to be strategic about your business.”

The company put so much time and energy into the customer service side that they couldn’t focus on the strategy side. “It’s great to have goals,” Amy said. “But if you don’t do something literally every day to move yourself toward that goal, you’re never going to achieve it. And we were really guilty of having goals but not doing much to actually achieve them.” Without a plan, USTEK’s sales efforts proved fruitless. “We would try and call people, with very limited success,” Amy recalled.

Challenged with not enough time for sales and strategy, USTEK sought a way to maximize revenues without detracting from other priorities. 

The Thomas Network Helps Small Manufacturers Grow

USTEK-Thomas-Testimonial

A phone call from Thomas started USTEK down the right path. Thomas took the time to really understand USTEK’s goals by creating a detailed roadmap that would help the company finally grow at an accelerated rate. It included a fully customized advertising program, always-available support, and an entire team of Thomas application engineers ready to respond to any challenge or question.

The approach really resonated with USTEK.

The Thomas Network offers different options for small to medium-sized manufacturers looking to grow with a limited budget. Regardless of budget spend or company size, Thomas works with U.S. manufacturers to help increase their brand awareness, grow their businesses, and get more high-quality leads.

Learn more about a Thomas Network solution for your manufacturing or industrial company.

A prospect contacted us, they asked for a quote, and I remember joking with my boss saying, ‘We'll never get this’ and the next thing I know, after I sent the quote off, the purchase order came through. As it turned out, it was enough profit to almost pay for our whole Thomas program for the year.

— Amy Holbrook, USTEK Operations Manager

Online Advertising Brings USTEK New Customers

USTEK Company Profile

The Thomas partnership yielded immediate results for USTEK. “The very week that we went live with Thomas we had three calls from potential customers,” Amy said.

“Over the past 18 months we’ve quoted 37 new RFQs, for brand new customers, which is fantastic,” she said. “Every single one of them came from Thomasnet. That was something that we would never have had the opportunity to do if it wasn’t for our program.”