Optimizing CRM for The Manufacturing Industry

Transformed by digitization, the manufacturing industry is changing how manufacturers design, produce, use, maintain, and transform supply chains and factories’ processes, operations, and energy footprint.

However, many manufacturers prefer the traditional methods of planning and operating their plants. They usually focus on their supply chain, production, and distribution, leaving their customers as figures on a spreadsheet.

But that traditional approach can close many marketing and sales opportunities. Thankfully, there’s a better way: use a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Benefits of CRMs to Manufacturers

You probably have Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP) systems, which help you with your production, purchase planning, and shop floor control processes.

In most cases, ERP systems include CRMs, but that’s not enough for deep customer management. Getting a dedicated CRM can help you operate more efficiently by:

• Delivering clear insights into whether your pipeline performs well or poorly, which helps you spot the problems and opportunities at every stage.
• Offering a comprehensive view of historical customer data across marketing, sales, and support so you can craft targeted marketing campaigns attuned to the audience’s needs.
• Providing accurate demand and sales forecasts, cutting the time you need for product development. You don’t have to guess how many sales you’d make, which products sell the quickest, which ones deliver the highest ROI, or those that should be continued.
• Giving you customer feedback from multiple sources so you can reduce process errors while measuring customer satisfaction.
• Tracking product delivery and other after-sales services, like repairs or warranties and others, keeping your customers delighted.

So how can you optimize your CRM to enjoy these benefits? We discuss more in this post.

How to Optimize Your Manufacturing CRM

Your CRM gives you the prospect and customer information you need to close sales and retain customers. Let’s look at some best CRM optimization practices you can use today.

Perform Regular Data Audits

Your data is the most essential part of the CRM, but it also loses its freshness at a rate of 30%-70% per year. Therefore, bad data can cost your company between 15%-25% of total revenue and increases the cost of acquiring customers.

Cleaning up your data through regular audits saves you time and money by improving your marketing campaign deliverability. Good data also ensures your sales team doesn’t spend time hunting down the info they need, infringing on their time to sell.

Increase User Adoption of the CRM

Having a CRM in place doesn’t do any good if no one uses it. So, if your team isn’t using the CRM, increase user adoption by having them start with simple tasks like entering sales contacts, and then they can start tracking sales using the new system. Do this regularly until they’re using each function of the CRM in their daily routine.

Create Clear Guidelines for Data Entry

When everyone is in charge of their own data entry methods, it’s harder to find what you want. On top of that, individual data organization makes reporting more difficult. Plus, duplicate entries will clog up your CRM.

Creating a uniform system for data entry gives you actionable results, clearer reports, and deeper insights into where you can improve your sales process.

Good, clean, and consistent data helps you evaluate your performance, showcasing where your team succeeds (or underperforms) while revealing the trends in your sales process. These trends can include average deal size, overall win rate, reasons for lost deals, total pipeline value, and more.

Tie Your Marketing and Sales Data in the CRM

You can know a lot about leads even without contacting them. However, by marrying your marketing and sales data in your CRM, your sales team will know who to contact early and often, thereby helping your team prioritize leads.

Improve Your Productivity

As a manufacturer, you want to use your CRM to connect all departments and make data accessible across the organization. With more clarity and transparency, you can better manage your leads, contacts, and accounts.

With an optimized CRM tool, you get an efficient and easy-to-use solution that lets you manage and maximize vital customer data, quickly boost sales, and manage costs properly.

At Faye we understand your unique pain points. We can help you choose, implement, and optimize your CRM to enhance your product offering while quickly addressing quality issues strategically.

Find out how we can help you optimize your CRM and start reaping all these benefits for your manufacturing company today.