Guides / Winning Work
The Checks a Buyer Runs on Your Shop Before You Ever Hear From Them
September 22, 2026
By the time a buyer emails you, they have usually already decided you are plausible. The shops they did not email were removed earlier, quietly, from a website or a phone call that never happened.
Understanding that filter is worth more than any amount of follow up.
The four physical checks
These run first because any one of them ends it.
Table and travel. Actual X, Y and Z travel and the table surface dimensions, not the machine’s marketing size. The buyer adds fixture and tool stack and compares to their part.
Rated table load. And, if they are experienced, what you would actually load for a tight tolerance rather than the plate maximum. A buyer who has been burned before will ask this specifically.
Crane capacity over that machine. Not the biggest crane in your building. The one in that bay, with its hook height.
The door and the route out. Trivial until a finished part cannot leave, which is why buyers on very large parts now ask.
Every one of these is a number. None of them is on most heavy shop websites.
The three trust checks
Process steps under your roof. Welding and its qualification, stress relief oven and its internal size, heat treatment, grinding, painting, balancing. Buyers count how many steps leave your building, because every one is a transport cycle and somebody else’s queue. See lead time on large machined parts.
How you measure a long part. On a four metre part a coordinate measuring machine is not the answer. Buyers want to hear in-process probing, a laser tracker or portable arm, and a written plan that says which feature is measured how and at what temperature. A shop that only mentions hand tools on a part with a tight span requirement has answered the question badly.
Whether you talk about sequence. This is the quiet one. A buyer who mentions a welded blank and hears nothing back about stress relief has learned something. A shop that immediately asks about the blank and the allowance has passed a test the buyer did not tell you they were running.
Where they look
Your website, first. Specifically a capabilities or equipment page. If it says “large CNC machining” with a stock photo, you are out. If it lists machines with models and numbers, you are in the consideration set. More on this in the capability page that gets a heavy shop shortlisted.
Search, with their constraint in it. Buyers do not search “machine shop”. They search the thing that is blocking them: a part size, a bore diameter, a weight, a machine class. If your site never states those numbers, you never appear.
Photographs. One picture of a part of comparable size on your table does more than a page of adjectives. Buyers are trying to answer “have they done something this big before”, and a photo answers it instantly.
Other people. Trade contacts, an engineer who used you once, a machine dealer who knows who owns what. This is still how a lot of heavy work moves, and you cannot control it directly. What you can control is being easy to verify once your name comes up.
What buyers are not checking
Worth knowing so you stop spending effort there.
They are not counting your years in business. They are not reading your mission statement. They are largely not impressed by a quality badge on heavy structural work, though it matters in specific sectors. They are not comparing hourly rates at this stage, because they do not have them yet.
They are trying to answer one question: can this shop physically make my part, and do they understand what makes it hard.
The fix, in one afternoon
Publish a table. Machine, model, table size, travel, rated load, crane capacity in that bay, spindle taper and power, whether a right angle head is available, maximum bore you produce, and your longest part to date.
Then add one line per process step saying in house or partnered.
Then one photograph per machine with something large on the table.
That page will be the most valuable page on your site, and it takes an afternoon. Almost no heavy shop has one, which is exactly why it works.
What to do next
Open your own website and try to answer the four physical checks from it. If you cannot find the numbers in under a minute, neither can a buyer, and they will not email you to ask.
Related for shops: how buyers actually find a shop for an oversized part and why shops lose large part quotes.
Frequently asked questions
Do buyers really check crane capacity before making contact?
The careful ones do, because a shop that cannot lift the part cannot make it. It is also the number most often missing from a shop website, so the shops that publish it get contacted by people who already know they fit.
Does certification matter on heavy work?
Less than on aerospace or medical. Most heavy buyers care more about welding procedure qualification, material certificates and how you measure a long part than about a quality system badge.
What single change gets a shop contacted more?
Publishing machine models with table dimensions, travel, rated load and crane capacity. It is the cheapest change available and almost nobody does it.
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