20.12.2013

Link Belt boosts product marketing

Link-Belt has promoted Pat Collins to director of product marketing with overall responsibility for the product management activities reporting to Bill
Stramer vice president, marketing, sales and customer support.

Collins has been with Link Belt for almost 30 years, starting out with the company’s service team in its Cedar Rapids, Iowa facility. He served as district service representative for Link-Belt in the Rocky Mountain region and has been involved in a number of new designs and innovations for both telescopic and lattice cranes.
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Pat Collins

“Pat is well prepared to take on this new challenge with his vast experience within our marketing, sales and customer support organization,” said Stramer.

The company has also appointed two product managers - Scott Knight has been promoted to the product manager, lattice and telescopic crawler cranes, with responsibility for current and new product development. He began his career in the heavy equipment business with Link-Belt in 2007 as a product specialist for lattice and telescopic crawler cranes.
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Scott Knight

Collins said: “Scott has been deeply involved in every phase of marketing our products, new product concept to field research including voice of the customer, trade show planning and setup, day to day customer support issues and plant visits and played a key marketing role in the development and introduction of our highly successful TCC-750. His hard earned and highly regarded reputation with both distributor and customers will make this transition into his new role successful and seamless.”

Brian Smoot has been promoted to product manager, Rough Terrain cranes, he began his career with Link-Belt in 2007 in the product support team, before moving to his most recent role as product specialist.
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Brian Smoot

“Brian’s product knowledge, product development experience and strong history of interaction with our distributor and customer base, make him the logical choice to lead the ongoing advancement of our Rough Terrain cranes, worldwide,” said Collins.

Vertikal Comment

This move is overdue, Link Belt makes some excellent cranes, several of them world class, but it often fails to manage their product marketing and development as well competitors such as Manitowoc or Terex, particularly outside of the Americas.

Hopefully giving these product management roles a higher status and hopefully greater importance within the business, is just a first step towards the company getting more serious about its international product marketing and exploiting the full potential of its product line and brand.