A practical business guide by Arun Agrawal
Before the Buyer Calls
What industrial buyers check on your website, and how to win the enquiry
Your orders come through relationships, approved vendor lists and tenders. Before the purchase manager, the contractor or the consultant picks up the phone, he is likely to open your website.
What does he find?
- 76-page book
- Free PDF
- No registration
- Technology entrepreneur since 1986
- Founder & CEO, EbizIndia
- M.E., Jadavpur University (Gold Medal)
- TiE Charter Member
- Speaker at NASSCOM, TiE, ICAI and MCCI events
Written for industrial manufacturers: those who supply industry and government projects, directly or through contractors
Before the Buyer Calls is built around the three questions such a buyer is settling: do you make what I need, can you handle my size of job, and who has trusted you before. Thirteen short chapters cover products, capacity, record, contractors and consultants, the look before a tender, buyers who do not know you yet, and the route from a visit to a quote request.
Your orders come through relationships, approved vendor lists and tenders, and the guide says so. Nothing in it promises a ranking or an enquiry. Every check can be done on your own phone, and the brief at the back is written for your own web team.
Particularly useful for
- Structural steel fabricators and pre-engineered building makers
- Foundries and forge shops
- Machined and sheet-metal component makers
- Makers of pumps, valves, material handling and process equipment
- Transformer, panel, cable and cable tray makers
- Industrial packaging makers
- Any manufacturer whose buyer is a purchase manager, a contractor or a consultant
The idea at the heart of the guide
The Buyer’s Three Questions
A purchase manager with a new requirement, a contractor choosing whom to propose and a consultant asked to accept a make are settling the same three things. Do you make what I need? Can you handle my size of job? Who has trusted you before?
Most manufacturers can answer all three well. The answers sit in the plant, in the order book and in the owner’s head. The guide shows how to write them on the website: capacity in the buyer’s unit, the machine list, past supplies with a year and a quantity, approvals with the body named, and a quote request a buyer can attach a drawing to.
- 14 of 30
- websites stated production capacity as a number, on the pages read
- 2 of 30
- described a past project or supply in any detail
- 2 of 30
- let a buyer attach a drawing or file to an enquiry
A check of 30 websites of Indian manufacturers who supply industry and projects, run for this guide on 6 October 2026. Up to four pages per site were read, as text. A fact not found on those pages may be elsewhere on the site. Method and limits are at the back of the guide.
Don't just read it. Use it.
The guide is built to be worked through. It comes with the checks, plans and sheets a business owner can use without outside help.
What's inside
- Before You Start
- 1The Look-Up
- 2Ten Questions About Your Own Website
- 3The Buyer’s Three Questions
- 4Say What You Make
- 5Prove Your Size
- 6Prove Your Record
- 7When the Contractor Is Your Customer
- 8Before the Tender
- 9Buyers Who Do Not Know You Yet
- 10Your Website Beside IndiaMART, GeM and LinkedIn
- 11From Visit to Quote Request
- 12Case Study: The Shed Maker
- 13What One New Buyer Is Worth
At the back
- A Brief for Your Web Team
- About the 30-Site Check
- About the Author
- Work With EbizIndia
Inside the guide
- What a buyer does in the first five minutes after he hears your name
- Product pages with sizes, grades and standards, in words
- Capacity, machines and plant, stated the way a buyer measures them
- Clients, projects and approvals, and what to do when you cannot name the client
- What a main contractor and a consultant need from your website
- What a website can and cannot do before a tender
- A quote request route, and how fast it should be answered
- A case study: one manufacturer’s website before and after
About Arun Agrawal
In 2007 he founded EbizIndia Consulting Pvt. Ltd., which builds custom software and websites for companies in India, the UK and the USA, and runs its own SaaS products, WedPlan and CTRACKER. He holds a Master of Engineering from Jadavpur University, where he was awarded the Gold Medal, is a Charter Member of TiE, and has spoken at events hosted by NASSCOM, TiE, the ICAI and MCCI.
His work today covers custom business software, SaaS applications, workflow automation, AI-enabled business systems, and how businesses get found and chosen now that buyers ask Google and AI assistants before they ask anyone else.
His guides set out the frameworks he uses in that work, in plain language for business owners.
Kept up to date
The guide is revised as Google and the AI assistants change how they choose which businesses to name. The PDF always stays at the same address, so the copy you download, or a link you share, is always the latest edition.
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First edition
- The first edition. Facts, portal rules and platform details checked in October 2026.
| Title | Before the Buyer Calls: What industrial buyers check on your website, and how to win the enquiry |
|---|---|
| Author | Arun Agrawal |
| Publisher | EbizIndia Consulting Pvt. Ltd. |
| Edition | First edition, October 2026 |
| First published | 7 October 2026 |
| Pages | 76 |
| Format | Book (PDF, free) |
| Language | English |
Questions about the guide
Is the guide free?
Yes. The full guide is a free PDF on this page, with no form to fill in and no registration.
Which manufacturers is it written for?
Indian manufacturers whose orders come from other companies: large manufacturers, industry, government bodies and large projects, directly or through a main contractor. The examples include fabricators, foundries, forge shops, component makers, and makers of valves, pumps, transformers, panels and industrial packaging.
Most of my orders come through vendor lists, tenders and references. Why would a website matter?
Those routes will continue to bring your orders, and the guide says so. What has changed is that a buyer who has your name is likely to look you up before he calls, invites a quote or proposes you to his client. The website is where that look happens. A tender is scored on the documents you upload, not on your website, and the guide is plain about that as well.
What are the buyer’s three questions?
Do you make what I need, can you handle my size of job, and who has trusted you before. Chapter 3 sets them out, and Chapters 4 to 6 show what evidence answers each one.
Do I need technical knowledge to use it?
No. It is written for owners and directors, and every check can be done on your own phone. A Brief for Your Web Team at the back turns the website work into a list your web team can work through.
Does it promise that Google or ChatGPT will recommend my company?
No. Nobody can promise that. The guide does not promise a ranking, an enquiry or a tender result. It shows which facts a buyer looks for and how to write them where a buyer, a search engine and an AI assistant can read them.
What is the 30-site check?
For this guide the websites of 30 Indian manufacturers who supply industry and projects, across seven kinds of manufacturing, were read on 6 October 2026. Up to four pages per site were read, as text. The results and the limits of the method are at the back of the guide. The sites are not named.
Are the buyers in the guide real people?
No. The short scenes showing a buyer at work are imagined and are not reports of interviews. The guide says so on its copyright page. The case study in Chapter 12 describes a real company, which is not named.
I sell through dealers. Is this the right guide?
If most of your sales go through dealers to builders and households, AI Search for Manufacturers at ebizindia.com/books/mfg/ is written for you. If you also supply projects and industry directly, this guide covers that side.
Want to know where your own business stands?
You can run every check in the guide yourself, with the sheets above.
If you would rather have an outside view of your website and online presence, EbizIndia prepares an AI Search Visibility Blueprint: a detailed report on where your business stands with Google and the AI assistants, where it is being left out, and what to fix first.