Do Research – You May Find Something You Didn’t Know

We all get ‘blinders’ on after being in a business or industry for an extended period of time. We think we know what everyone is thinking and saying about us. But do we really? Try taking a short survey from some of your customers, vendors, and even new job applicants. Ask them to tell you what they know about your company. You may be surprised.

I recently asked every applicant applying for a job at our company if they knew what we did. The job they were applying for was not packaging industry specific and all but one applicant had never worked in packaging or a related field. Most applicants had ‘done their homework’ and looked us up on the internet to find out about the company before the first interview. (A practice I highly recommend to anyone before going on a job interview.) However, it was enlightening to me to discover that in some ways we were not getting the message across correctly.

Individuals in the packaging industry are always telling us they love our website, it has all the great information they need and is easy to navigate. But take someone from outside the industry and they are getting a different message. As opposed to making the machinery that unscrambles containers and puts the caps on them, several of the applicants thought we made containers and caps. Oops, wrong message. I know now that we need to correct that misconception and make sure the correct message is obvious.

My advice to all is not to take for granted your website it projecting the message you think it is, ask a stranger to see what they think.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.