Last week the GroundControl team exhibited at IMTS for our first ever manufacturing trade show. It was an action-packed week, where we spoke to over 150 manufacturers in the aerospace supply chain and received incredible responses to what we’ve built over the last 3 months.
Here are the insights that stood out to us:
After speaking to over 150 manufacturers who deal with first article inspections daily and showing them our software, we prepared for questions about every feature that our initial batch of customers really resonated with:
but more often than not, the “feature” that led us to book demos (and even land a customer!) was our support policy. Unlike the status quo of this industry, paying $200/hr for support (and waiting a week to hear a response), we offer unlimited training and support — including a live chat option directly in our app that sends a message to our support and technical staff’s cell phones.
At the end of the day, our users want to know that they’ll be taken care of and won’t be penalized with fees for wanting to learn more about the software and help them complete reports faster.
Trade shows are what you make of them. IMTS is the largest manufacturing conference in the US, bringing in over 100,000 visitors and 1,600+ exhibitors! Folks are constantly overwhelmed by exhibits everywhere, from Boston Dynamic robots to a literal crane swinging a corvette 50 feet in the air.
You can’t expect anyone to come to your booth and immediately ask questions — especially when we were the literal last company to sign up as an exhibitor in the entire show, placing us in the farthest back corner of our entire wing. Despite our booth placement, we chose to bring the energy and make the most of our situation. So we chose a one-word qualifier that we asked to every single person who walked by our booth.
“Aerospace?”
If they said yes, we instantly knew they were in our ICP and began a conversation, which 95% of the time led to further engagement.
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As you can see from the images above, our booth was as no-frills as it gets. While some booths had multiple floors, beer kegs on tap, and even supercars, we came prepared with a laptop and plenty of bananas.
While others may have had the biggest and flashiest booths in the conference, it really comes down to energy at the end of the day. And we had no shortage of that, standing in that booth from 9am-5pm every day, asking our qualifier question to anyone that walked by. We must have said “Aerospace?” to over 2,500 people over the course of the conference — and it paid off big time. We spoke to over 200 manufacturers in our ICP and generated over 150 warm leads, something that would have taken months without this conference.
While the vast majority of marketing and attention is for customers at these events, that isn’t the only value one can gain from a trade show. We met some incredible entrepreneurs, investors and companies innovating in the manufacturing space, leading to powerful conversations about the future of software in manufacturing and opportunities to collaborate.
Talking to industry media leaders like Practical Machinist, fast-growing startups like First Resonance, and quality partners like GD&T Basics brought no shortage of interesting conversations and ideas flowing about. The energy was palpable and the possibilities are endless!
Most booths had swag, ranging from mints to pens to tote bags. We chose a different approach — bananas. Whether someone was a lead or not, a healthy alternative felt like some good karma to spread to the world as folks spent the entire day walking around McCormick Place.
All in all, IMTS was an amazing event that brought together a large swathe of the manufacturing industry. We had a blast meeting hundreds of manufacturers, suppliers, software startups, and more. We can’t wait till IMTS 2026!
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