Manufacturing Sales Growth: How to Increase Manufacturing Sales Leads

In an ever-changing landscape of digital trends, consumer behavior, and shifting policies, access to information, data, and customer intel has never been more accessible—but this constantly evolving landscape can lead to other challenges. Namely—how can a business, and more specifically, a manufacturing business, compete when it comes to gaining and retaining customers?

It all starts with awareness, acknowledgement, and action when addressing the key challenges faced when building a lead pipeline for manufacturing growth.

How to Determine Your Target Audience for Manufacturing Sales

It may seem like a given—if you are a manufacturer specializing in specific parts for machinery or a distributor that has been producing the same product for decades, it may seem like your target audience is pretty set in stone. However, if you are looking to gain additional insights into how consumer trends and technological advancements could impact your business, it is vital to dig deeper and ask yourself what conditions may lead to a shift in who your audience is or how they choose to approach business decisions. 

Understanding Generational Shifts for Manufacturing Sales Growth

Perhaps you have sold to small business owners for years. You’ve run a successful manufacturing company that operates on word-of-mouth and trust. The systems you use have never been updated or changed because your customers like what they know. 

Now consider this: a shift in recent years to younger generations taking over family businesses. 

Now, instead of dealing with your long-time client, you (and your business) are in contact with their millennial children. They’ve grown up in the age of technology, and it’s possible that they are more inclined towards digital trends or automated systems that have never been part of your business model. So, while your audience hasn’t changed in the type of companies that you work with, the audience demographic may be shifting.

The Impact of Technology on Manufacturing Sales Leads

Perhaps you have successfully operated your business on paper invoices and spreadsheets without much issue. Your business model relies on your strong reputation in your industry, which in turn has allowed for stable business operations. In a world driven by technological changes and advancements, it can be easy to fall into a comfortable place before coming to the realization that competitors and consumers are leaving you behind. If you find yourself losing customers or having trouble gaining new ones, it is important to take stock of the things that may be driving people away. 

Are they moving on to a manufacturer that has promised lower prices or faster turnaround? 

Are they being swayed by the promise of real-time insights and analytics to help them make smarter business decisions? 

Being aware of a shift in thinking can help you to make decisions that will set your business up for future success. It could be time to consider switching to a more robust ERP system to run your day-to-day operations, or it could be an indicator that you may need to branch out and get more creative with how you target potential customers. Either way, focusing your attention on the way your audience thinks and how their behaviors change is the first step toward gaining valuable insights into manufacturing lead growth.

How to Set Yourself Apart for Manufacturing Sales Growth

Once you’ve become aware and attuned to the shifts and changes to your target audience, your key demographics, and your technological hurdles, you can make more informed decisions about how you want to tactically approach those challenges. 

The key to developing a strategy for building a manufacturing lead pipeline is to ensure that the audience that you are targeting is aware of your strengths and what sets you apart from the competition.

Competing for Manufacturing Sales Leads: The Grass Isn’t Always Greener

Perhaps you’ve developed a strong manufacturing process that customers find reliable and steadfast. Your prices are fair, your software is up-to-date, and your customer retention rate is high. Then imagine a competitor comes along to tempt your customers over with promises of reduced costs and improved timing in the supply chain, extensive reporting and process simplification, and other “solutions” that you don’t have the capacity to replicate. 

How do you compete with that? Maybe you can’t directly, but you can always rely on your strengths. 

Appeal to your customers and your target audience by focusing on what you do best. That can mean that while you can’t necessarily match a competitor on price, you can beat them when it comes to accessibility and customer satisfaction. It can also be a matter of specialization—maybe a major competitor doesn’t have as flexible of an approach which can diminish their ability to customize processes or batch orders. The thing is, nobody knows your business as well as you do, so take note of your strengths and use them to your advantage when building your lead strategy.

Leveraging Technological Advances for Manufacturing Sales Growth: The Shift from the Status Quo

Perhaps your manufacturing business has grown in recent years, thanks to some of those technological advancements and trends towards simplified and automated processes. Your customers spoke up and you listened. You’ve transitioned to a full-service ERP for manufacturing or implemented easy-to-use automation tools that your customers wanted. You have a customer base that is steady and retainable, but you’ve realized that because of these updates, you now have room to grow. 

So how do you go about it? By playing to those strengths that got you this far. 

If you’ve managed to grow and retain clientele by offering specialized solutions, simplified processes, or a focus on local sourcing—use that to your advantage. Key in on what keeps your customers coming back to you and use that to pitch to new potential customers. If your system or processes have been updated and you have addressed key pain points, that can be the start of a lead generation strategy when you are determining how to position your business for future growth.

How to Build a Pipeline with Actionable Insights for Manufacturing Sales Leads

Now that you’ve taken stock of your target audience and any potential shifts or roadblocks and made strides to set your company apart from the competition and play to your strengths, you can make more informed decisions on how to position your business. Building that awareness of your target audience and acknowledging your strengths will give you the initial insights needed to gain more customers by allowing you to craft a strategy that will allow you to take action to generate more qualified leads and continue to build towards sustainable growth. 

It’s important to note that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to generating qualified leads in any industry—and this is especially true when it comes to manufacturing. The intricacies and niche focus that come into play can make some processes and strategies obsolete—but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution out there that will work for your business model. 

Crafting a Strategy to Increase Manufacturing Sales

By taking note of your target audience and your strengths, you can take some of these strategies and make them your own—creating a strategy that hits on potential pain points for customers or that addresses a functional need. 

Crafting a strategy for generating qualified manufacturing leads can seem like a tall task, but you can utilize some of these ideas to help jump-start the process and get a handle on your growth strategy.

• Focus on customer pain points to pitch yourself as a viable solution. If your manufacturing process is specialized or has any sort of stringent requirements, you can use that to entice customers that may struggle with those issues.
• Think outside the box in how you market your company. If you have previously relied on word of mouth or outdated marketing strategies to approach new customers, you should explore new ideas and strategies that may get you in front of relevant customers that you otherwise wouldn’t be aware of.
• Keep your current customers aware of updates and changes. If you are making updates to processes, changes to software, or advancing production tools—make sure your customers are aware of it. This can help you gain positive reviews, improve customer satisfaction, and even lead to customer referrals.
• Stay up to date on industry trends and technological advancements. Not every new functionality or feature update is going to be relevant to your business, but by keeping up with the trends and changes in your industry, you can ensure that you are aware of it when a relevant change does come about. 

How to Overcome Challenges for Manufacturing Sales Growth

Manufacturers across the globe are dealing with different versions of the same problems. Whether you have run into issues with heavy competition in your industry, have fallen behind due to technological advancements, have hit roadblocks due to policy changes or supply chain issues, or have faced any other manufacturing challenges in recent years—it may be time to really dive into how those challenges can be addressed. 

By being aware of the challenges you face as a manufacturer, you can build a roadmap to face those challenges head on and take action to find solutions. By doing so you can turn that awareness and acknowledgement into action and develop a winning strategy for gaining more qualified sales leads and setting your business up for success.

Increase Manufacturing Sales & Grow Your Business with CAI Software

At CAI, we create purpose-built software to help our customers across a variety of industries streamline business processes and optimize their manufacturing environment. Our goal is to provide you with industry-leading solutions that improve your daily business operations, all with excellent service and support.

If you’re looking to increase sales and grow your manufacturing business, CAI can help. Contact us today for a free consultation.