As manufacturing businesses roar back to life post-pandemic, many are now facing unique challenges in their sales process.
In our experience, many of these challenges are fueled by:
Not having a strategic marketing & sales alignment.
Not maintaining regular and consistent contact with prospective and current clients.
The painful results of these challenges can be felt in weakened sales team performance and, most importantly, a drop in profitability.
Not Having a Strategic Digital Marketing & Sales Alignment
Marketing in the manufacturing industry is complex.
Like most other B2B businesses, it often experiences a much longer sales cycle than what’s commonly seen in B2C.
Most of the selling process has gone online, where prospective buyers are more educated. They know more about your business, products, and competitors long before they reach out to speak to you.
A Forrester study found that B2B prospects complete as much as three-quarters of their buying journey before making themselves known to a salesperson.
To stand out, you need a formal marketing and sales strategy that focuses on the value, features, and quality of your products and services.
Plan out your buyer’s journey with your sales and marketing teams, accounting for each stage of the sales funnel the prospect is in:
Awareness: The buyer discovers your brand, your products or services are, and how you can potentially help them.
Consideration: When a buyer takes further interest in your products or services. They will have likely already spoken with a sales rep, and are weighing their options.
Decision: The final stage when the buyer is ready to commit to a purchase.
Determine the responsibilities of each team member, from qualifying the lead to closing the deal, and formalize it to eliminate confusion. Most importantly, make sure your marketing and sales departments are communicating regularly!
Ways to Improve Your Digital Marketing and Lead Generation Efforts:
Optimize Your Web Pages
Your web pages must be visually appealing, informative, and, most importantly, streamlined.
To achieve this, ensure all web pages focus on values and benefits for your visitors, displayed in an easy-to-read/skimmable way.
From top-to-bottom, some immediate web page updates you can (and should) make include:
Whether you call them banners, headers, or heroes, the top of your web page is prime real estate. Make this section clear and simple, and avoid being clever, using industry-lingo, or being wordy.
Ditch lengthy paragraphs. No one wants to read a novel about your company and your products. Get to the point quickly. Use a maximum of one to two sentences per paragraph.
Ask yourself, “What do I want my prospect to do here?” Each web page has a purpose, and if that purpose is to book a call, download a guide, or submit a request for a proposal, keep that Call To Action (CTA) simple and straightforward. Do not overwhelm your visitors with too many CTAs; one to two max.
Share Client Testimonials
Showcasing your clients’ success stories is a powerful way to promote your products and services.
We recommend sharing two to three testimonials on each page of your website, keeping the message short and relevant to the product, service, or industry you’re targeting.
Avoid the generic “Working with Bill was a great experience” type of quotes, and focus more on your business’s impact on your clients.
Example: “Since working with Acme Co., we’ve been able to ship our products faster, increasing revenue by 25%!”
Utilize Free Lead Generators
It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get creative!
Using lead generators to share the details and benefits of your products or services is a great way to educate your prospective clients and establish authority.
Lead generators also serve as a great way to collect email addresses, which is critical to familiarizing prospective clients with your products or services.
Ways to Align Your Sales Efforts With Your Marketing:
Utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator
From prospecting folks who are not in your pipeline (yet) to qualifying leads, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool your sales team should be using.
Some valuable ways your sales team can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator include:
Saving and monitoring key prospects and accounts.
Identifying similar prospects using LinkedIn’s “View Similar” tool.
Organizing your prospects with tags and notes.
Developing a Hybrid Sales Strategy
In the post-covid world, many people don’t want face-to-face interactions with a sales representative, preferring a virtual exchange instead.
In fact, a 2021 survey by McKinsey found that only 20% of clients say they hope to return to in-person sales!
Hybrid selling leverages the best of in-person and virtual sales, benefiting your business with:
Faster response times and shorter sales cycles.
Easily recorded sales calls for training and development.
Saved travel expenses.
Most importantly, it fits the way your clients want to buy!
To learn more about hybrid selling, we recommend “Selling in a Hybrid World,” an online course developed by HubSpot and Sandler.
How To Maintain Consistent Contact With Prospective And Current Clients (Without Being Annoying)
According to Sales Hacker, 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months. Twenty percent will take more than 12 months to buy.
This makes the quality and consistency of your communications critical to your success.
Based on the stage of the funnel your prospect is presently in, these are the types of content you should consider:
Awareness Stage
Content
Blog posts
Email newsletters
Whitepapers
Checklists
How-to videos
Guides or tutorials
Consideration Stage
Content
Testimonials
Catalogs
Case studies
Free samples
Demo videos
Product spec sheets
FAQs
Decision Stage
Content
Free consultations
Pricing pages
Free trials
Estimates
If “Content is king,” then “Quality is the kingdom.”
We strongly encourage you and your team to take your time when planning a content strategy. Ensure you are delivering value to your current and prospective clients!
As you develop each piece of content, consider how it can be used to nurture your prospects and keep your current client list up-to-date on your products and services.
Maintaining regular newsletters, sales emails, and posting organic and boosted posts on social media is a great way to raise awareness in both groups.
That said, make sure everyone in your organization, from admins to managers, is aware of the content you’re publishing and that they’re active in helping to spread the word.
With an uncertain future on the horizon, between rising inflation and possible recession, now is the time to push your marketing and sales efforts harder than ever before.
