©2024 MakingChips – Equip and Inspire Manufacturing Leaders
By Jennifer Dubose
How to Grow Existing Accounts, Win New Customers, and Take Control of Your Revenue | Ep. 547
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You can hold tight tolerances, nail a complicated setup, and deliver beautiful parts—and still find yourself staring at a shrinking backlog. Most shop owners didn’t get into manufacturing because they loved making cold calls. But being good at the work doesn’t guarantee there will always be work to do.
Gabe Draper learned that the hard way. After buying his family’s machine shop, he ultimately had to close it, and he points to a lack of control over revenue as a major reason why. That experience led him to co-found Factur and help other manufacturers build a more intentional approach to bringing in business.
In this episode, Mike and I sit down with Gabe to discuss two levers every shop owner needs to understand: increasing revenue and decreasing costs. We explore why your existing customers may hold more opportunity than you realize, how shops quietly lose ground even when purchase orders keep coming, and why buying more capacity deserves a clear plan for filling it.
We also get into who should own sales, the difference between “hunting” for new customers and “farming” existing relationships, and how compensation plans can reward the wrong behavior. If sales keeps getting pushed aside until the backlog looks scary, this conversation will challenge you to treat it with the same discipline you bring to the shop floor.
What’s Covered in this Episode
- (1:29) Why most shop owners aren’t naturally sales driven
- (2:32) What Factur does to help shops take control of revenue
- (4:19) The two levers: increase revenue or decrease costs
- (6:02) Machine buying after IMTS with no clear financial impact
- (7:34) The margin squeeze from carbide, coolant, labor, and price breaks
- (8:39) The post-COVID buying frenzy and the debt hangover
- (9:45) Stretched OEM payment terms and lost control of cash flow
- (12:00) Automate FAI and PO review with GroundControl
- (12:40) Fill the capacity you already own before buying machines
- (14:39) Step one: farm your existing customers
- (18:12) High-end machining and automation with DN Solutions
- (19:21) Why two of Mike’s biggest customers didn’t know half of what Hill does
- (22:01) Set growth goals and align incentives with the revenue you want
- (24:28) Forecast revenue by customer and plan for churn
- (27:20) Increase spindle uptime with Hennig Workflow
- (28:12) Who should sell: the owner can’t abdicate it
- (30:05) Three phases: owner, one skilled seller, then hunters and farmers
- (32:09) Why hunting is the least precise part of the business
- (35:07) Runaway commission plans that reward coasting
- (36:18) Let your website answer buyer questions with Navu
- (37:30) Traditional reps vs. Factur’s flat retainer model
- (40:35) What hunting costs and the shift past farming
- (43:37) A simple KPI: booked orders vs. shipped orders
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Gabe Draper of Factur
Connect with MakingChips
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©2025 MakingChips – Equip and Inspire Manufacturing Leaders