If your robot integration company develops turnkey solutions, marketing and sales is probably at the top of your mind. You know you can sell the same pre-engineered solutions many times… but only if people are willing to buy them!
Turnkey solutions are becoming an extremely popular way for companies to add robots to their processes. And this makes sense — the risk is lower than with custom integration projects, the deployment time is shorter, and customers can immediately see the value of robots for their application.
But how do you market off-the-shelf solutions effectively?
Are there differences from selling integration services?
And why even offer turnkey solutions?
At RoboDK, integrators often use our robot programming software as the core software for their turnkey solutions.
Let’s look at how you can market and sell your turnkey solutions…
Why Add Pre-Engineered Robotic Solutions to Your Offerings as an Integrator?
If you are only just getting into selling turnkey solutions, you might wonder if it’s really worth the work.
Product development includes a whole range of challenges that you might not have encountered when you were just selling integration services. It takes time and resources to create a reliable product before you can start selling it. By comparison, you can sell services with very little upfront time.
But products can also be easier to sell than services. While the sales process is not as different as some people think, turnkey robotic solutions can significantly streamline your sales and deployment process.
Ready-to-deploy solutions enable you to provide faster, more predictable outcomes for your clients and customers. They reduce the development time and costs associated with custom projects, which you can pass on as savings for your customers. This means you can attract customers who might not have the resources to invest in custom integration projects.
When you create a catalog of pre-engineered solutions, the marketing and sales process can become much simpler. Instead of having to assess every project, you can easily propose options to customers based on common problems and applications.
Who Will Buy Your Pre-Built Solutions? Techniques for Identifying and Reaching Target Customers
When developing new products, it’s common for companies to focus immediately on how they can find and sell to new customers.
After all, isn’t the benefit of offering a turnkey solution that it will allow you to bring in new business?
Yes, new business will come. But don’t neglect your existing clients and customers. Often existing customers are the easiest people to sell to because they already know, like, and trust you.
Selling your new product to people who already trust you can help to smooth some of the teething problems with your new turnkey solution. You can also use these early deployments to generate case studies, testimonials, and videos to help you market to new customers.
Beyond your existing customers, you might also market your solution to:
- Companies within your core industries that you know through your business networks.
- People you have met previously at trade shows… or you could hire a booth at a trade show to display your solution in action!
- Contacts from the suppliers or partners that you used to create the turnkey solution.
There are many places you can find potential customers once you have created an initial version of your turnkey robotic solution.
5 Marketing Strategies for Turnkey Robotic Solutions
Marketing off-the-shelf solutions can be easier than marketing custom integration services because you can gather a lot more information about the solution upfront. This information becomes very valuable for marketing.
Here are 5 marketing strategies you could use:
1. Use Robot Simulations to Showcase the Solution
Your robot programming software is a vital component when developing, marketing, and selling turnkey solutions.
During development, a good simulator allows you to showcase and start marketing your solution before you have developed the physical prototype. During sales, you can then use the simulator to show the customer how the solution will fit in their process.
2. Create Case Studies from Target Industries
Case studies are a powerful marketing tool for any product or service, but especially for turnkey solutions.
When shopping for robotic solutions, your potential customers are trying to visualize the robot in their workspace. Case studies allow them to imagine this while also giving social proof from your successful deployments.
3. Thoroughly Test and Proudly Display Data
Objective data is highly valuable for marketing your turnkey solutions. Metrics like cycle time, throughput, and time to deployment can give confidence that the robotic solution will work for them.
Throughout your product development and beyond, test your solution with your robot simulator and prototype to gather this useful data.
4. Create Content to Show How Easy It Is
With robotic solutions, your marketing content and sales discussions often include an element of training.
If your customers haven’t used robots before, you need to help them see how easy it is to use the robotic technology in their situation. For example, our extensive free training resources for RoboDK users are useful for both existing users and potential users!
5. Make the Most of Your Partnerships
You will probably have partnered with suppliers and other companies to create your turnkey robotic solution. These partnerships will, hopefully, be long-term relationships that build long into the future.
By showcasing your collaborations, it benefits everyone — you, your customers, and your partner companies.
Getting Sales: Using RoboDK to Support Your Marketing and Sales Efforts
At RoboDK, we value the collaborations we have with integration companies.
Our popular robot programming software sits at the center of some of some of the most successful turnkey solutions. For example, the modular plug-and-play cells from DIY Robotics have gone from strength to strength.
If you are using (or considering using) RoboDK for your turnkey application… let us know and we’ll feature you on this blog!
What questions do you have about marketing turnkey solutions? Tell us in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or in the RoboDK Forum.. Also, check out our extensive video collection and subscribe to the RoboDK YouTube Channel