Manufacturing companies rely on building strong connections with leads and customers to outshine their competitors and sell more of their products and services.
Manufacturing CRMs help you keep track of every lead that enters your sales pipeline, collect and analyze customer data to gain valuable insights, personalize audience experiences, and much more.
And, if you’re looking to find the best customer relationship management (CRM) platform for your manufacturing company, you need to find the CRM that has all the features your team needs. A CRM that has everything your company needs will help you sell more of your products to your customers and clients.
In this article, you’ll find out why your manufacturing company will benefit from a good CRM and the features that every CRM in the manufacturing industry needs. This will help you find the perfect platform that fits all your company’s needs.
1. CRMs help you track and manage every lead that enters your pipeline
As a manufacturing company, you’ll have several leads rolling in and moving through your sales pipeline. With so many prospects in various stages of the buying cycle, it can be easy to lose track of them and forget to follow up.
But with a CRM for manufacturing companies, you won’t have to worry about missing out on any potential product sales. For example, a CRM like Nutshell allows you to get a bird’s-eye-view of your entire sales pipeline.
That means you track every lead from when they first discovered your manufacturing company to when they finally purchase one of your amazing products.
Plus, Nutshell automatically moves your leads to the next stage in your pipeline once they meet the criteria you set, like filling out a contact form or asking for a quote for a custom product.
Nutshell also identifies “hot leads” or leads that will provide the most value for your company, so you never have to worry about missing out on a high-value sale.
2. CRMs enable you to easily store and manage contact and communication information
Is your manufacturing company rifling through multiple spreadsheets and notes to find the one phone number or email address you need? Well, you can kiss this time-consuming problem goodbye with manufacturing CRM software.
A CRM for manufacturing companies like Nutshell is your central repository for customer and lead information and data. In other words, you can access all of your customers’ and leads’ contact details from a single dashboard.
Nutshell also enables you to store and view email conversations, call notes, and more for every lead and customer.
Have a prospect asking a few questions about your products? Store notes about what they asked in Nutshell, so the next team member that speaks to your prospect knows exactly what you discussed!
Is a customer in contact with your customer services team after purchasing your products? Keep a record of their inquiries and what they discussed with your team, so the next customer service rep who contacts them knows exactly what their query is and how to help them.
3. CRMs allow your team to work together flawlessly
When it comes to nurturing prospects and closing sales, your sales team needs to work together and collaborate seamlessly.
That’s another major benefit of a CRM for manufacturers. A CRM in manufacturing that comes equipped with handy team collaboration features makes working together on product sales a piece of cake.
For example, with a CRM for the manufacturing industry like Nutshell, you can store all of your team’s communications and lead notes in the platform for everyone to access.
Your team can also comment on deals and tag team members for assistance when needed. Nutshell also provides a handy mobile app so you and your team can collaborate on important product sales on the go.
4. CRMs enable you to analyze the results of your strategies and processes
To boost your product sales, drive conversions, and generate continuous leads, you need to constantly improve your strategies and processes.
The best way to optimize your processes for better results? With a CRM for manufacturers, of course!
A CRM for the manufacturing industry like Nutshell gives you detailed reports on the performance of your sales and marketing strategies.
For example, with Nutshell, you can view reports on your sales performance, lead generation sources, lost deals, and more.
Plus, you can analyze how customers advance through your sales pipeline to better understand which channels and messages encourage the most conversions.
The result of accessing these informative reports? You can see which strategies drive sales and which don’t, so you can optimize the ones that do for a higher return on investment (ROI) and more revenue.
5. CRMs help you personalize audience experiences
Did you know that personalizing audience experiences can lead to a 10% increase in conversions? That’s because people love having their shopping experiences tailored to their unique interests and needs.
And that’s exactly what a CRM in manufacturing can help you do. With a CRM for manufacturers like Nutshell, you can access a plethora of knowledge about your current leads and customers.
You can store data about their interests, location, company industry, and much more. Armed with that information, you can begin crafting content tailored to your audience’s unique pain points and needs.
And as a bonus, Nutshell allows you to expertly segment your contact, and email lists to group together leads and clients with similar interests.
You can also use Nutshell to send automatic, personalized emails so you can start nurturing your prospects toward conversion with little effort on your part.
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If you want to enjoy each of the potential benefits of using a CRM for your manufacturing business, you need to make sure it has the necessary features you need.
Check out this list of the best manufacturing CRM features that will help your company sell more of your amazing products below:
As a manufacturing company, you need to interact with several new leads, current prospects, and customers. That’s why contact management is one of the best CRM features for manufacturers.
To reach out to new leads to nurture them toward purchasing your products and stay in contact with current customers to keep them coming back for more, you need access to their contact information.
Ensure that your chosen CRM platform enables you to store the information of your leads and customers so you and your team can easily access them when needed.
For example, Nutshell allows you to automatically collect lead information, like names, email addresses, and phone numbers, directly from your website with customizable web forms. Then Nutshell stores this information in one single central location for easy access.
2. Lead management
To increase your product sales, you’ll need to successfully manage your incoming leads. That’s why lead management is second on our list of CRM features for manufacturing companies.
A CRM with lead management and tracking capabilities will help you identify, score, and monitor each lead that enters your pipeline until they convert. As a result, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting to follow up with an important lead and missing out on a sale.
Our CRM software helps you not only track leads as they enter your pipeline, but it can also identify your “hot leads”, or the leads that are likely to provide the most value for your manufacturing business. Then, you can easily identify your most valuable leads and reach out to them immediately, leading to more sales and revenue for your company.
3. Pipeline management
Similar to lead management features, pipeline management functions give you a complete bird’s-eye-view of your entire sales pipeline.
By choosing CRM software that offers pipeline management features, you can:
View each prospect’s current stage in your sales funnel
See how many total leads are in your pipeline
Understand how and where leads entered your pipeline
View where leads dropped out of your pipeline
Analyze the interactions that led to a prospect making a purchase
Nutshell’s pipeline management features enable you to gather insights into which strategies and messages drive the most leads and conversions for your business. That means you make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategies to drive even more sales for your manufacturing business!
4. Sales automation
Nurturing prospects toward purchasing your products is a time-consuming but valuable task. CRM workflow and sales automation capabilities can make this process infinitely easier for you and your team, which is why it’s number four on our list of must-have CRM features for manufacturers.
Automatically collect lead and customer data and store it in your CRM
Send automatic, personalized email messages and drip campaigns to nurture leads and upsell current customers
Receive alerts whenever a lead or prospect takes a specific action, like filling out your product information request form
Send automatic follow-up messages to leads that haven’t responded in a while
And more
Nutshell can help you automate a plethora of time-consuming tasks and help you streamline your selling processes.
For example, with Nutshell, you can automatically assign new leads to your sales reps, collect and store lead information from your website forms, send reminders and guidance to your team at every stage of a prospect’s buying journey, and much more.
5. Email
Next on our list of must-have CRM features for manufacturing companies is email. As a manufacturing business, you’ll need to stay in contact with your leads and customers through frequent email messages.
Typing emails and sending them to long lists of prospects and customers is incredibly time-consuming.
Ensure that your chosen CRM platform comes equipped with email capabilities to help you streamline, automate, and improve your email marketing and lead nurturing messages.
Access a long list of pre-designed email templates
And more
6. Team collaboration
Sixth on our list of manufacturing CRM features is team collaboration. Every manufacturing business needs to keep its sales team on the same page when it comes to selling products.
That’s why your chosen CRM platform should come equipped with team collaboration functions to help your sales team collaborate on sales so you can sell more of your amazing products.
With Nutshell, your team can tag each other on deals to ask questions or get assistance and view previous call and email messages your team had with a prospect, so you always know what deals need your attention and understand what leads previously discussed with your team.
7. Reporting and analytics
If you want to improve your processes and strategies to drive growth for your manufacturing company, you’ll need to understand which strategies currently drive the best results.
And to gain those insights, you need a CRM platform with reporting and analytics features. With these features, you can understand which strategies generate leads for your company, understand what messaging causes leads to drop out of your funnel and which ones encourage them to convert, and much more.
With reporting features in a CRM like Nutshell, you can:
As a manufacturing company, you likely already have software that you rely on to run your business regularly. So, when introducing a CRM to your tech stack, you want to ensure that it enhances your experience without hindering it.
For example, if you already use your preferred ERP and MES applications, your CRM should complement these technologies without slowing down your business processes.
Additionally, Nutshell offers AppConnect, which allows users to integrate with the tech stack of their choice, supported by our integration engineers, without having to take on the cost of a Zapier account.
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Your manufacturing business’s sales reps often need to be on the road, visiting locations to develop working relationships with clients.
That’s why it’s important that they stay informed about lead and customer updates on the go and keep the rest of the team informed about any new developments.
A mobile CRM can also be helpful when attending conferences and other events—crucial places to generate new leads—especially when you have business card scanning capabilities to ensure you’re always up-to-date on new contacts and leads.
With Nutshell’s CRM mobile app, you can view and edit account information for every prospect, quickly log your meeting and call notes, and create new leads on the go with business card scanning.
10. World-class customer support
Even the most simple-to-use, intuitive CRM needs a period of adjustment for complete adoption.
That’s why, in the first months after implementing your CRM, it’s crucial to have comprehensive technical support from your CRM provider. You should have access to onboarding and support materials–such as articles and videos– and live support from people who understand how to best use your CRM to fit your manufacturing business needs.
All Nutshell plans come with free customer support at no extra cost. Our dedicated support team can assist you and answer questions through live chat and email whenever you need – for the lifetime of your subscription.
Enjoy manufacturing CRM benefits and all the features you need with Nutshell
Ready to enjoy all of these fantastic benefits with a CRM for the manufacturing industry? Nutshell can help you access the features and benefits mentioned above– and much more!
When you use Nutshell, you’ll have access to all the best CRM features for manufacturers, including sales automation capabilities, lead tracking features, contact management functions, and much more.
With hassle-free features, Nutshell enables every member of your team to maximize your manufacturing company’s product sales and revenue with no previous experience necessary.
Plus, our friendly team is always available to help you drive revenue with every feature Nutshell has to offer.
Start your free trial today to how Nutshell powers growth for manufacturing companies!
