The Badge of Honor That's Costing You Customers
Aug 25, 2026 · 49 min · 11 segments
Most manufacturers did not decide to be invisible. They grew on referrals, landed a handful of customers who covered the bills, and never had to explain themselves to a stranger. Dave Crysler sits…
Most manufacturers did not decide to be invisible. They grew on referrals, landed a handful of customers who covered the bills, and never had to explain themselves to a stranger. Dave Crysler sits down with Curt Anderson, founder of B2Btail and author of Stop Being the Best Kept Secret, to talk about how that quiet approach stopped working and what to do about it. Along the way they get into the part most marketing conversations skip: what happens when the phone finally rings and the shop cannot carry the work. What You'll Discover: • Why "we're the best kept secret" started as a badge of honor and quietly became a growth problem • The buyer who flew in to tour a plant, loved it, and admitted he almost cancelled the trip because of the website • How the Digital Game Plan actually starts, with strengths and opportunities rather than a new website • Why "we can do it for anybody" is almost never true, and how to find the niche a shop is already in • The rounding the bases exercise, and the contract manufacturer who learned half their customers added up to less than four percent of the business • What "out-teach the competition" means in practice, and the football coach line that answers the secret sauce objection • Why a 40-person steel company outside Buffalo is building a real audience on Instagram • What happened when Curt turned the marketing on for a manufacturer whose office could not absorb the RFQs • The teeter totter effect, where cutting lead times and freeing up capacity can feel exactly like failing • The first thing to do on Monday morning if you already know you are the best kept secret in your market If you have ever looked at a slow quarter and realized nobody in the building knows how to make the phone ring, this conversation is for you. It is also for the operations leader on the other side of that problem, the one who knows what happens when demand shows up before the shop is ready for it. Curt and Dave work opposite ends of the same growth problem, and this episode is about where those two ends meet. Connect with Curt Anderson: b2btail.com | LinkedIn
Most manufacturers did not decide to be invisible. They grew on referrals, landed a handful of customers who covered the bills, and never had to explain themselves to a stranger. Dave Crysler sits…
- Show signals
- SuitabilitySafeBiasNot politicalAudience≈2k followers
