Q&A Blog: FABTECH Preview with Mark Frasco, President and Founder of COACT Associates

As the manufacturing industry prepares to gather in Las Vegas for FABTECH 2026, many business leaders are asking the same question: how do we build stronger pipelines in a market shaped by complexity, technology, and tighter buying decisions? To explore that question, we sat down with Mark Frasco, President and Founder of COACT Associates, to preview what attendees can expect on the show floor and why this year’s conversation matters.

In this Q&A, Mark shares why relationship building remains the ultimate competitive advantage, how AI can help sales teams become more effective without replacing the human side of selling, and why his October 21st session is designed for leaders who want a more disciplined way to grow in today’s industrial markets.

A: AI is not the first technology to hit the sales and marketing scene, but it may be the most consequential. For years, new tools have helped sales and marketing professionals become more efficient at outreach. The problem is that efficiency has not always improved quality. This session is important because it focuses on how leaders can use AI to make their teams more effective, not just faster.

I think what’s interesting about this technology is that it has the potential to help salespeople be more effective. Better at research, understanding prospects’ preferences, and understanding the difference between targets, how they think about buying, and who they think about buying from. Artificial intelligence isn’t going to replace sales and marketing people, but sales and marketing people who leverage artificial intelligence are going to replace those who don’t.

Over my career in industrial/technical sales, selling has been about identifying strategic targets, developing relationships with those targets, and converting those relationships into working relationships. Technology has had a major impact over the years. But one thing that will always remain true, regardless of technology, is our ability to develop important relationships for our organizations. That will always remain clear, and it is still the most important thing sales and marketing people do.

If you are responsible for growth, sales leadership, marketing strategy, or building a stronger pipeline in an industrial business, this session will give you a practical way to think about where AI fits, where human relationship development matters most, and how to bring the two together.

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A: The more technology-based sales and marketing becomes, the more relationship development stands out as a core competency. The key is balancing the Jetsons and the Flintstones: using advanced intelligence and automation tools without losing the human interaction that creates trust. The technology should make those interactions stronger, more relevant, and more efficient.

The most important outcome of our session is to learn how to leverage these tools in order to make our human interaction more meaningful.

A: I can’t remember a time when there has been more uncertainty in buying and selling markets. Still fresh from the pandemic’s supply chain disruptions, suppliers are reconfiguring their business models to respond to on and off policy changes.

The ability to do more with less is our call to action. There’s so much information that’s out there. Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good. I think it’s important for people to know what tools are available to them. I also think it’s important for people to stay focused because there’s so much going on. You can get distracted easily when you start diving into this. You start to think that AI can do more than it should or could, and I think sometimes too much information is worse than not enough.

A: I think the greatest conversation with technical people is to give them hope, to let them know that really they don’t need to be salespeople. You don’t need to be slick, have a firm handshake, or tell a good joke. What you really need is knowledge of your product and service, and knowledge of the markets you’re proposing to serve. Then you need to commit to designing, building, and executing a process of developing relationships and managing relationships in the market, and there is a very specific way to do that.

The conversations I love are the ones where I can teach people the elements of building social capital that leads to revenue growth in small and mid-sized companies. It’s not a tactic. It’s not a tool. It’s not a project. I think a lot of people come at it like that. Business growth is a multi-discipline, process-based approach that requires daily discipline.

A: If you stop by the booth or attend my session but we do not reconnect at the show, COACT has a team ready to continue the conversation. We can talk with you about your growth goals, your target markets, the relationships you need to build, and the process required to turn those relationships into measurable revenue opportunities.

There is a lot of useful learning at teamCOACT.com, but the best next step is a conversation. If you are interested in building a stronger, more disciplined approach to growth, we would welcome the opportunity to spend time with you and talk through your strategic growth architecture.

A: If you stop by the booth or attend my session but we do not reconnect at the show, COACT has a team ready to continue the conversation. We can talk with you about your growth goals, your target markets, the relationships you need to build, and the process required to turn those relationships into measurable revenue opportunities.

There is a lot of useful learning at teamCOACT.com, but the best next step is a conversation. If you are interested in building a stronger, more disciplined approach to growth, we would welcome the opportunity to spend time with you and talk through your strategic growth architecture.

A: At the core, what we’ve learned during our 22 years in business is that buyers don’t buy until they trust you. And the only way to build trust in human systems is through quality interaction. Quality interaction can’t be sending them a Christmas card once a year. Quality interaction helps the buyer explore and learn more about what you do and why they should care about you. Through that journey, your organization and the buying organization interact in ways that are important, meaningful, and critical to building trust.

The COACT process is built on these pillars: proactively, regularly, creating quality interactions with high-value targets that, over time, allow us to build trust together.

There’s a lot of single-discipline digital marketing, social marketing, email marketing, even telesales campaigns that people engage in. I really don’t think any of them by themselves work. I think the key is a multi-discipline, multi-modal approach: an email, a phone call, a note card, a social post, a video—and cycling those cadences, those frequencies in the market that are quality interactions with buying systems that help them develop a trusting relationship with the brand, and then later with the people who work in the selling organization.

That’s what COACT does on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis for our clients across the country.