Sales and Marketing Efficiency for Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry sure has changed. And not just a little. The entire market has undergone a radical transformation in a very short span of time.

Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, is convinced we are now in The Fourth Industrial Revolution. This fourth phase is being driven by technology, automation and robotics, and the Internet of Things.

What isn’t changing during this Manufacturing revolution is the importance of customers

Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and manufacturing is no exception. As the fourth industrial revolution reshapes the way American manufacturers work, a growing number of them are discovering how a CRM platform can enhance their account management, marketing and sales activities, enabling them to drive greater revenues.

A CRM platform allows you to segment clients by the products they currently buy, identify clients who have stopped buying or are buying less than they used to, and understand your share of wallet with each of your customers. You can quickly identify the health of a particular customer. These insights can improve your account management strategy, drive better decision making and identify where to focus your marketing and sales resources. It can also influence your production schedule and your product development strategy.

In the same way CRM, combined with Marketing Automation allows you to send personalized emails to connect with prospects and customers at all stages of the sales cycle. You can view response rates to quickly identify successful tactics and determine how well each marketing campaign is performing. On your website it gives you valuable insight by tracking visits, so you can easily allocate leads to the right team or channel and encourage the sales team to respond accordingly.

For that sales team a CRM platform helps them produce quotes and then process and track the status of orders, invoices and payments. It gives them a view of the entire ‘lead-to-cash’ process, giving vital insights, helping them prioritize actions and making them far more efficient.

Deliver intelligent engagement everywhere

In short, for American manufacturing firms, a combined CRM & Marketing Automation platform is the tool for personalized marketing and selling smarter, focusing on the right opportunities at the right time, and so driving revenue growth. For the most advanced firms, CRM platforms can offer an enterprise-wide solution so they also integrate the customer service function, ensuring that is aligned with sales and marketing. This means that not only do they win more customers, they also retain them and do so more profitably.

This is a shift that is happening right now. The US manufacturers who plan to grow over the coming decade are investing in the right technical infrastructure, in particular CRM platform. They recognize that just as the manufacturing process itself is being automated in this, the fourth industrial revolution, so too are the sales, marketing and customer service processes. And at the heart of that lies CRM.

Download our eBook ‘CRM for Manufacturing’ to find out more about how CRM can help your organization improve productivity, deliver greater value to customers and remain competitive.

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