Machine Shop Growth
The Machine Shop Growth Podcast gives a fresh perspective to help you grow your shop by focusing on 3 key factors - Sales, Marketing and Efficiency. For decades the machine shop industry was build on a “good-ol-boys” mentality and was full of great machinists and engineers that made great parts. What has been discovered is many of those amazing shops have plateaued or are starting to decline - because they didn’t put enough emphasis on getting more work and making more money with the work they had.
On this podcast you will hear first hand advice from machine owners and mangers how they are getting more work and how they are making more money. Now let’s Grow Your Shop!
Machine Shop Growth
Episode #33: Stop Underquoting—How Smart Machine Shops Price for Profit
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Most shops quote aerospace work the same way they quote everything else. That's the problem.
In Episode 33 of the Machine Shop Growth Podcast, Kirk Phelps gets into the tactical details of how to stop underquoting and make aerospace work actually profitable — from choosing what to chase to pricing it right.
Kirk introduces the Ideal Part Profile framework: a three-tier system to define the work your shop is best at, decent at, and capable of but not built for. He breaks down why variable margins matter — factoring in payment terms, material cost, workload, and critical features — and why your win rate is one of the most honest signals about whether your pricing is right. He also cuts through the noise on ITAR and CMMC, explaining who really needs to worry about each and why spending a quarter million on a cert you don't need is one of the worst strategic moves a shop can make.
Key topics covered:
• Building your Ideal Part Profile (3-tier framework)
• Variable margin strategy for aerospace quoting
• The PITA Factor: pricing high-risk, critical-feature parts
• Why a 30–40% win rate is your target, not your ceiling
• ITAR compliance: what's at stake and what to do
• CMMC: separating policy from fear-mongering
• How lead time and payment terms affect your true margin
"If you're winning over 40% of your quotes, you need to seriously rethink how much you're charging." — Kirk Phelps
Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms.