The Manufacturing Automation Podcast

Matt is back from two weeks on the road with big news: Develop has signed its first dedicated salesperson. He shares why the last three trade shows were record shows for lead quality, and why he credits better processes more than the shows themselves. The two also talk about why small business data is often unreliable for the first few years, how proposal tracking can turn into noise if no one acts on it, and what separates a valuable industry panel from a scripted one.Michael opens up about the saying that between a service business and a product business lies death, and how Gimbel is working in that space by alternating focus weeks between B2B turnkey sales and e-commerce. He explains the vibe-coded mini CRM he built for IMTS follow-up and the difference between working warm trade show leads and hot inbound ones. The highlight is his new approach to ad attribution for considered purchases: measuring marketing efficiency ratio by product line. That analysis showed the CoolantClear ad he turned off, which looked like a 2x return on ad spend, was actually part of a 30x product-line MER, meaning Gimbel had been underspending. He walks through rebuilding the CoolantClear page around real customer objections and setting up separate prospecting and retargeting campaigns. Matt shares the hiring sequence that worked for Develop: a top-of-funnel marketing hire first, then a salesperson once the process was documented.On engineering, Matt covers facility planning, including retention pond design, core drilling for the bridge crane, power distribution for machines that each need different power, and how to size air compressors without overbuilding. Michael shares his plan for small backup compressors at the machine, and the two compare compressor brands that have held up. Michael also previews the bar-fed mill workflow and the new AxisMount Duo, with two opposing AutoVises on a fourth axis. In continuous improvement, Michael explains Gimbel’s full kanban audit and why system compliance matters as much as the system itself.

Matt is in a holding pattern on several large machine builds that are now waiting on board approvals, some after scoping since Automate 2025. He explains when Develop charges for proof-of-concept engineering, and why quoting nearly everything for a couple of years, even with a terrible conversion rate, is what eventually lifted their close rate about 4.5 times. Michael, meanwhile, is on pace for roughly 40 proposals a month when 15 to 20 would cover his goals, and the two dig into what both have noticed lately: founders love novelty, but profit comes from doing the same thing with flawless execution over and over.In sales and marketing, Matt previews Pack Expo and TLMI, and shares how an intense internal interview process produced Develop’s best e-book yet, written for label converters. He tells the story of a site visit where the real automation opportunity was hiding in the back corner of the plant. Michael breaks down what hurt his top of funnel this summer, rebuilding Meta lookalike audiences, building searchable answer documents for CoolantClear and TumbleBlast, and why moving upmarket means giving internal champions the case studies and materials they need to sell automation to their own leadership. The two also discuss why machine tool dealers may not be the right distribution partners for lower-ticket automation, CRM choices, website heat maps, and a friendly disagreement over how far UTM tracking should go.On engineering, Michael shares a dual AutoVise trunnion setup finally getting a real customer application, and walks through vertical bar feeding on a fourth axis, including how it compares to a Swiss. Matt explains why he pushed back on a customer who wanted a cobot with area scanners instead of a fenced industrial robot. In continuous improvement, Matt covers his crane quote, SOPs down to edge cases, and his strategy for NIST and CMMC: complete the audit now, but wait to get listed until a customer requires it.

Matt is finalizing a 13-page lending story and three-year forecast ahead of meetings with lenders, while Michael is deep in post-IMTS follow-up and caught in the pinch of being big enough to have big-company problems without the headcount to fix them. Michael shares what diving into the data revealed: a 29-day average time to close, a floor of four turnkeys a month, and the fear of overselling. Matt’s advice: sell like you will oversubscribe, put first come, first served in your contracts, and have the conversation if it happens.In sales and marketing, Matt is down to two sales candidates, preparing an e-book for the printing and converting space, and heading into a run of Pack Expo, TLMI, and a speaking panel. He explains why his network built over the last decade still drives more revenue than every trade show combined. Michael talks through e-commerce volatility after a Google update, sending 46 hardware quotes in a single week, and the attribution problem of not knowing whether LinkedIn, Google, or something else earned the sale. Inspired by the book Oversubscribed, he admits founders will try anything but sales, and lays out a shift toward enterprise customers, distributors, and complete solutions, with Shopify treated as upside instead of the foundation.On engineering, Matt shares a bridge crane lesson that saved real money: one 5-ton bridge with two 2.5-ton hoists instead of a 10-ton system. He also has senior and junior controls roles open. Michael admits to feature creep in his proposal software, compares Loom video walkthroughs against formal proposals, and previews fourth and fifth axis bar feeding.In continuous improvement, Michael explains how logging B2B orders as $0 Shopify draft orders streamlined fulfillment but fed bad conversion data to Google and Meta, contributing to a roughly 30% drop in return on ad spend, and why unwinding a process the whole team loves has to be done carefully. Matt covers ClickUp, SOPs that are finally being used, an aftermarket recurring revenue model, a decision authority table to keep routine questions off his desk, and why he will rent a 3D scanner before buying one.

Q4 quoting season is here, and both hosts are running on empty. Michael is only 10% through IMTS follow-up and already booked solid for two weeks, while Matt had just over two hours of open calendar all week. They open with price increases (Develop is on its sixth in two years, and Gimbel adjusts pricing on the 15th) and why your products and processes getting better justifies charging more.The core of the episode is a question Michael has been wrestling with: should a product-focused automation company take on projects that are a 75% fit? Matt shares how Develop handles high-risk, bespoke work, borrowing from large construction: listing assumptions, assigning risk categories, using allowances instead of fixed bids, and pricing every off-standard request as its own line item. The takeaway is simple: price for asymmetric upside, or do not take the project.In sales and marketing, Matt narrows his sales hire to three strong candidates and explains Develop's push into the label printing market after joining TLMI. Michael gives a practical walkthrough of UTM links, why untracked Instagram, LinkedIn, and PDF links all show up as "direct" traffic, and why Facebook and Instagram ads are underused in B2B manufacturing. He also shares early Bing ads setup.On engineering, the two talk about posting innovations before patents are finished, playing offense versus defense with IP, Gimbel's upcoming mini pallet tending system, and a new automated 16C collet with an external rotary union for bar pulling. In continuous improvement, Matt's ClickUp rollout hits 80% and he plans a mobile integration van, while Michael explains why Gimbel is consolidating out of its second building and moving from waterjet to laser.

One week after IMTS 2026, Michael breaks down what it actually cost to bring a Robodrill to Chicago: $40K to $50K before labor, from rigging and freight to hotels and ads. He shares how a 10x10 booth pulled in 350 leads, how 22 of 25 CoolantClears sold right off the floor, and how a geo-targeted Instagram ad reached a buyer in his hotel room who sent a colleague to the booth.Matt explains why moving his vacuum fixture product onto its own domain took it to the top spot for its main keywords, and how he built a Claude project that drafts technical customer emails with near-perfect accuracy. The two dig into hiring a senior salesperson, why Matt went senior-only and is open to hybrid candidates, the risk of a single point of failure in sales, and whether agencies or a dedicated growth manager overseeing freelancers get better results.On the marketing side, Michael shares what happened to Google performance after turning off Meta ads, why blended ROAS and MER may be the better metrics, and why he is betting on Bing ads for a 40 to 60-year-old buyer. He also admits that 30 phone calls drove more revenue than 3,000 emails.In operations, the two cover booth lead capture rules, kanban compliance ("technically solved but not culturally solved"), taking IntraLoad orders from existing customers to fund better unit economics, and why Gimbel is raising implementation pricing to bring average deals from around $30K to $35K to $40K. Plus Matt's team taking over weekly resource planning without him, and a friendly SOP showdown between OneDrive with Copilot and Notion with Claude.