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How to Grow Your Manufacturing Sales — the Digital Way

Seventy-four percent of sales leaders in manufacturing say that digital transformation is accelerating for them, according to our latest State of Sales research. They’re investing in technology to do a very human thing — deepen relationships — and they’re growing as a result. Our manufacturing customers report an average of 34% ROI since implementing Salesforce, according to a 2020 survey of more than 3,000 customers around the world.

Watch the video below to learn how the top manufacturers are going digital-first. Then read a rundown below of how they’re using Salesforce to do it.

Transform your manufacturing sales process one step at a time

Digital transformation is a journey you can take one step at a time. Start small and gain momentum as you go. Think: “Crawl, walk, run”

Let’s look at how this approach applies to the best of what Sales Cloud and other Salesforce solutions have to offer: skilling up your people, speeding up your revenue, and scaling up your processes.

Skill up your people

Salesforce can help you prepare for the future of work and give your people the right tools to succeed.

To skill up your people, you need to:

First: Unify all of your sales activities on a single platform.

Building the next generation workforce relies on capturing human knowledge in digital places. Single platform tools, like Salesforce, can help you boost productivity at every stage of the sales cycle.

Then: Base your coaching on data.

The right tools will help you adapt to remote collaboration and coaching, and inspire your team and ignite your sales. Use conversational intelligence to gain insights from sales calls and coach your reps to get even better.

Finally: Use AI to help your reps prioritise and sell smarter and faster.

Humans are good at a lot of things, but making sense of a mountain of leads is not one of them. Use machine learning to highlight the leads that are the most likely to close, so that sales reps can prioritise. Then, identify the best practices that make reps sell more and put them into motion faster than ever.

Leading manufacturer Armstrong Steel uses intelligent coaching to focus on key call moments and make sales more agile. Since implementing Salesforce, Armstrong Steel has experienced:

increase in saved revenue

3.5

daily hours saved tracking call recordings

50%

fewer mistakes made during quoting

Be the leader your sales team needs. Inspire your team, ignite your sales, and help all your reps meet their full potential. Discover how Sales Cloud can help you skill up your people faster than ever.

Speed up your revenue

Salesforce can also help you open up new revenue streams and new routes to market.

To do this, you need to:

First: Build one single view of the customer.

Connecting your sales process to customer relationship management (CRM) means everyone can see the same data. When you put the customer at the centre, you can focus on deepening relationships, improving experiences, and propelling steady growth.

Then: Transform the buying experience.

Fragmented customer buying experiences frustrate customers and stall innovation. Connecting and personalising touch points across the buyer journey, including quoting and billing, will transform buying.

Finally: Go to market with what your customers want.

Connect the front-office with the back-office and capture customer insights from across the entire lifecycle, including transactions and external data sources like your ERP. Then, drawing on these insights, you can take the flexible platform that’s in your hands and seize the market with offerings and revenue models that meet customer desire.

Customers want new ways to buy and pay for products and services. They are interested in subscription models and usage-based pricing. But others still prefer one-time payments. It’s essential to offer customers the flexibility they want. Salesforce Quote-to-Cash makes this possible.

Global manufacturer Saint-Gobain uses Salesforce to close deals faster. Since using Salesforce, Saint-Gobain has experienced:

79%

decrease in days to close

85%

increase in quote value

35%

accelerated time to close

Fine-tune your revenue performance and sell into the future. Sales and finance need to work together to create better buying experiences and more predictable revenue. Learn how Salesforce Quote-to-Cash can help you take control of revenue growth across every channel.

Scale up your processes

Salesforce can also help you make more decisions based on real-time data from your channels, products, and customers.

To scale up your processes, you need to:

First: Gather your data in one place.

Integrate, cleanse, and visualise your sales data across every system. Manufacturers struggle when data is spread out across multiple systems, such as internal data sources and external sources like your ERP.

Then: Accelerate decision-making.

Clean and healthy data gives you solid ground — you can only manage what you understand. Analyse the performance of your products and channels to continuously refine your sales process and find every opportunity to grow your revenue.

Finally: Use advanced analytics to drive predictable revenue.

With your data on one common operating platform, you’re ready for the fun stuff. Use machine learning to predict your forecasts. Use analytics to connect with the right buyers. And use advanced software to take your territory planning out of spreadsheets.

De Nora Water Technologies is a leading provider of equipment, systems, and processes for water disinfection and filtration. It used AI and dashboard visualisations to get products where they were needed — despite the pandemic. With the help of Salesforce, it has experienced:

25%

increase in partner performance

108%

opportunities compared to 2019

92%

reduction in sales cycle length

Sales leaders and sales operations need visibility into the customer and the business to make data-driven decisions every step of the way. Read our brief on how to scale up your processes.