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Weekly selected highlights in flow control, treatment and combustion from the 
many McIlvaine publications.
·        A Good Sales Lead or a Reliable 
Purchase Forecast
·        Market Forecasting by Type of 
Purchaser
 3700 Large Purchasers of Bags and Cartridges
3700 companies will purchase 50 percent of the bags and cartridges used for dust 
collection and gas turbine inlet filtration. They will spend $1.75 billion for 
these products in 2019. Large cement and power companies’ individual 
expenditures will exceed $1 million.  The average large purchaser in the 
miscellaneous industry category will spend just $150,000. The average among the 
3700 will be $470,000.


Since the purchases of these 3700 companies are predictable a direct sales 
program can be set up to address them.  Each will spend enough to warrant a 
special effort.
Purchases by the 200 largest customers are included in the 
N021 World Fabric Filter and Element Market
Purchases by the other 3500 are available as part of a business program 
explained at 
www.mcilvainecompany.com
A Good Sales Lead or a Reliable Purchase Forecast
Which would you rather have? A good sales lead for a hot project with the name 
of the purchasing agent and the project manager or a reliable forecast as to how 
much of the products you sell will be purchased by the customer over the next 
two years.
You would want to choose the hot sales lead if you sell a general performance 
product such as a 2” water intake valve.  If your product is a 36” diameter 
lined valve you would want to choose the reliable forecast.  Here are the 
reasons.
·      
The selling task for high performance products starts months or years before 
purchase. The chances of last minute persuasion are not high.  If you have 
a reliable long term forecast you can devote the requisite sales effort.
·       The project manager and purchasing contact 
are valuable but with a high performance product the decision may have been 
already made by engineering.  Companies such as BASF, IP, ConAgra, or 
Arcelor Mittal have thousands of LinkedIn contacts.  So finding the right 
people is not a problem. Part of a long term campaign is to establish rapport 
with the decision makers. A last minute introduction is a poor alternative.
·       The reliable purchase forecast allows you 
to wage an organized sales campaign.  Responding to sales leads is a 
chaotic modus operandi.
Find out about the McIlvaine program to provide reliable purchase forecasts at
www.mcilvainecompany.com
Market Forecasting by Type of Purchaser 
Forecasts for pumps, valves, scrubbers, filters and other combust flow and treat 
(CFT) equipment are typically divided into new equipment and repair/service. 
However, with further divisions by use it is possible to forecast purchases by 
individual customers.

When a system supplier provides a new system at an existing plant, the plant 
owner is likely to provide a preferred bidders list.  If a unit is going to 
be replaced or for normal service and repair the plant will be the purchaser.  
Only a few percent of purchases will be for greenfield plants not owned by 
companies already operating CFT products. Expansion at existing plants is more 
common. Replacement of equipment is likely to be a bigger potential than 
purchase of equipment for a new system. If the industry growth rate is 5 percent 
and the CFT product life is 20 years, the replacement market will be the same 
size as the new system market.
Segmentation in this manner shows that the end user is making most of the CFT 
decisions. Since there is consolidation and centralization of purchasing in 
industries buying CFT products most of the purchases will be made by less than 
35,000 companies.  

The energy and utilities sectors have the most large purchasers. Other 
industries have fewer large purchasers but in the case of the food or metal 
working industry there are many very small purchasers.  However their total 
share is small.
The ability to forecast most of the purchases provides a foundation for a whole 
new marketing approach.  Details are found at 
www.mcilvainecompany.com