CRM for Manufacturers
In manufacturing, my experience has shown that spreadsheets are the tool of choice in small and medium sized enterprises for managing the sales team and customer relationships.
Actually I’ve seen worse. The number of manufacturers that have no process around the sales process at all and relying on hand written or even mental notes to get by.
The sales function isn’t given the focus it needs as most of the management and tuning of the business is done in the production and operational functions. As long as orders keep rolling in, it’s assumed to be working.
At REV4 we believe there is significant upside to managing the sales end of the business beyond just managing sales better.
We also believe CRM is no silver bullet. It may make your sales team happier and more productive but any CRM solution should be built around software, tools, and strategy integrated into broader business processes.
With REV4 we can help you with the software, but also help you on your journey to make sure it’s moulded around your business, integrated with other systems and data while making sure the processes are in place to help your business develop a mature sales capability that actually translates into a better more profitable business.
REV4 approach to CRM
Imagine this:
- A firm process in place that frees your sales team to work on the important parts of their work, not on admin and management.
- Account reps are all on the same page, working with the same data, where no intel or opportunities are lost.
- Sales activity that is easily measured and continually improved.
- Ability to forecast with increasing accuracy
- Tune the interaction between sales and planning to better strike the balance between capacity and demand
- Get smarter at automating the interaction with customers, including service and support
CRM is not just a tool for the sales team.
There are three key pillars within the business that a CRM platform should be supporting.
Our Solution
Built on the Salesforce platform.
Our aim is to help you start small, with the ability grow the solution around the requirements of your business and level of maturity in a way that makes sense for your business.
If just starting out with a CRM we recommend keeping things simple. Focus on creating an easy and steamlined workflow for your sales team, supported with straighforward processes and our REV4 training to get everyone up and running quickly and unobstrively as possible.
Beyond this, we can help incrementally leverage the CRM more broadly across the organization to automate and streamline access to more sophisticated functions and reporting as needed.
And beyond this again, we can take you right through to the higher end solutions like Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud.
From Our Blog
Why manufacturers need a CRM
I think I’ve seen nearly all the many innovative and out of the box ways companies come up with to get around using a CRM - I could write an article on it. It begs the question though. Why try and get by without a CRM? That’s not a question I’ll even try to answer as...
Plain English S&OP for SME manufacturers
If you are a president or plant manager of a manufacturing company, you have likely heard the buzz word “S&OP” thrown around a few times. If you are the curious type, you’ve probably even gone a step further and decided to do a couple searches to see what this...
Do manufacturers need a sales team?
As an owner of a SME manufacturing business, I'm sure you’ve asked yourself this question many times over. Reality is, most manufacturers rely on repeat business and word of mouth so it’s a totally valid thought to ponder especially as right now your sales team are...