How Manufacturers Automate CRM Activities to Improve Sales Performance | Episode 123

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In IndustrialSage Episode 123, Cassie Nettles of Ad Victoriam Solutions joins us to explain how automating your CRM activities can improve sales.

Danny:

All right so let’s jump into today’ episode. I have a very special guest today.

Cassie:

Hey.

Danny:

I have Cassie Nettles from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you so much for coming on.

Cassie:

Hi, of course.

Danny:

How are you doing today?

Cassie:

Happy to be here. I’m great, doing great.

Danny:

It’s going to be an awesome episode, are you ready?

Cassie:

I’m very excited.

Danny:

Okay. So all right, so for those that aren’t familiar with Ad Victoriam, what do you guys do?

Cassie:

So we are a platinum partner with www.salesforce.com. If you’re not familiar with SalesForce, SalesForce is a CRM, customer relationship management software. It’s known for giving businesses a 360 view of their client, everything from service, support, opportunity, pipeline growth, things like that. So we are a development firm or partner. You purchase the license from SalesForce, and then we go in and implement it.

Danny:

That sounds super cool, right. So all right this is the big topic right, around digital transformation.

Cassie:

Yep.

Danny:

And typically, you kind of hear it around the actual manufacturing plant, and so obviously people have had the ERP for years, but IOT platforms, and industrial automation, and all these great things. But then something funny kind of happens, like when you get into like the whole sales and marketing piece, it’s just kind of like that gets left off the bandwagon. Is that something that you have experienced and heard?

Cassie:

Yeah. So one of the things that I think is really important out of this, we engrain ourselves in the manufacturing industry, because we do specialize in manufacturing. We put a lot of focus on what’s happening in the industry, and from that we’re able to look at all the pain points of what’s going on with the manufacturer. And sometime it is the IOT stuff,

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

A lot of times it’s the sales and marketing stuff. So we take a look at what’s trending out in the market, what manufacturer’s are seeing, what pain points are common across the board, and then we figure out ways to build that into the platform, and help with those pain points, and release some of the pressure. I think in the sales and marketing space, specifically, it’s a lot of lead generation, it’s hard to generate leads as a manufacturer when you’re just working with dealers and distributors.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

Versus something that’s more B2B, or I’m sorry B2C, where you’re out there looking at end users, who are clearly looking to purchase something.

Danny:

Right.

Cassie:

Versus dealers who are looking to go out and sell something.

Danny:

Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned there’s a lot of common pain points. What would you say are the top, couple pain points that you’ve seen across the board, where they say yeah, we’re struggling with this, that might be a clue into we need to look at some CRM type solutions.

Cassie:

So I think a lot, the biggest thing is always data management. Most of our manufacturers are in the dark age, where they’re still doing things on Excel Spreadsheets. Their entire world lives on Excel. It’s hard to drive revenue from that. It’s hard to determine what your APIs are. It’s hard to really just figure out how your business is running. So that’s one of the first things. We’ll have clients come in and they’ll say take these Excel documents and figure out how to automate them so I don’t have to touch it anymore.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

We do a lot of that. We also see a lot around self-service. As a manufacturer you go and you work with dealers, distributors, and they want to be able to go onto your website, and pull manuals. Or they want to be able to ask questions, or reach out to support without having to pick up a phone, or write an email. So being able to build community platforms where these people can go in and self-service, and they can, I have a warranty claim issue. I want to register that warranty claim, and never have to speak to a support rep, until it gets to the part where that rep has to respond or take action. That’s huge, that’s huge.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

Self-service has changed the industry I think, because now manufacturers aren’t having to invest time and money in supporting these people, and they can do it on their own. And people nowadays on their phone, they want to be able to just click a button to see the results.

Danny:

Exactly.

Cassie:

That’s huge.

Danny:

Yeah. We want to do it on our own. We don’t want to have to call and talk to somebody.

Cassie:

Right.

Danny:

And be like okay. And be put on hold and whatever.

Cassie:

It’s such a millennial thing too right. Like all of the millennials are like I don’t want to answer the phone. I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just want to Google it.

Danny:

But I think too, yes I think, okay, part of it is, yes, definitely millennial, but I think everybody as a, maybe not everybody, but most going opinion over that Gen X, and I even think going beyond, that there’s definitely, there’s a reasonable expectation.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Danny:

That I can do it when I want, how I want. It could be at three in the morning, or it could be at, whatever, I just think we’re predisposed to that because, and that trend, whether it’s a B2C product, or I think in particularly B2B, expectation that we have over here has now been moved to over here, and I think that can create a lot of frustration, if you don’t have that in place.

Cassie:

Yeah absolutely. We see, I think to your point with the building of the communities, it’s made a huge difference for our manufacturers, but it’s also given them the data points that they need to go out and figure out what other features they need to be looking at.

Danny:

Yes.

Cassie:

We had a client recently who had this community, realized that they were getting a lot of rebates or requests or warranties or service tickets for a particular part that they were manufacturing, and then they decided, okay well maybe we should start looking into that, and identifying if there’s a recall that we need to go and look at.

From that, they’re able to go send service tech’s out using what SalesForce calls Field Service Lightning, where the reps can schedule their entire day and follow a map on where they need to go. So it really is just building this 360 view of not just the customer, but of your workspace. As a manufacturer, you’re able to take care of service and support. You’re able to, you know you have your service tech team you have your knowledge base. You have the ability to go out and sell and see what your incoming leads are. You’re generating new content, and then you’re able to go and market to that.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

So I think pulling all those data points in, and then being able to see results, and grow your business more based on the results that you’re seeing, is just, you can’t beat that.

Danny:

No you can’t. I mean, so it just, and I think that, the big thing is, yes, you’ve got spreadsheets, or whatever, the key thing is unlocking all kinds of data, and I think that’s what is making the whole digital transformation piece so exciting. I read a stat somewhere that they said that the manufacturing space is the most data prolific industry, like the most.

Cassie:

Oh yeah.

Danny:

Or the most, or however you say it, right.

Cassie:

Yes.

Danny:

And if you think about all the processes, I never know how to pronounce that word. How is it? Processes or Processes?

Cassie:

Processes? Processes.

Danny:

It’s like niche and niche.

Cassie:

That’s a good question. I feel like I say it a lot, so maybe I should learn the right way to say that. Processes, processes.

Danny:

Yeah I don’t mean to, that’s like now the new episode, is we’re going to talk about what is the right word.

Cassie:

What is the terminology?

Danny:

Is it processes or processes niche or niche? Anyways, I digressed.

Cassie:

That’s okay. We have that class, when we bring on new consultants we’re like this is how you consult, these are the things you shouldn’t say. Yes.

Danny:

Yeah but a little sidebar, with all the process, I’m going to call it processes, because that’s how I don’t know you heard that.

Cassie:

It sounds right.

Danny:

So all the processes that are happening with inside the organization, primarily in the operations from the manufacturing standpoint, I mean that’s where again, you get all the, but I’m not, all of touch points, and all the different things, you mentioned on something that there’s definitely a parallel with you hear a lot about predictive maintenance, where okay we’re rolling out IOT sensors so we can detect abnormal vibrations in a motor, and okay now we know that we’re going to deploy a ticket because we can go get that motor replaced, so that our downtime is minimized.

Well you mentioned, a really great pain point in a use case where maybe there’s predictive maintenance in the sense of understanding through rebates or like if there’s issues, warranty issues. Hey wait a minute. We’re keying in on something, or from a product development standpoint, hey we need to make a change to this, or there’s a whole new complementary product or service that we can roll out with that we had no idea about, until we had that data.

Cassie:

Yeah, so I love telling this story because I think it shows you what building a CRM or a 360 view is really capable of, but if you think about the manufacturer, and let’s say they manufacture trucks, and they have product X, truck X, and they work with partners or dealers. And so these dealerships they need information on the vehicle. So a client comes in and they say hey I bought truck X, five years ago and now my blinker’s not working. You need to tell me how to fix it.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

Well the dealer doesn’t know right off the bat what the problem is, so they go to the community. They look up the knowledge article, or they start to put in a ticket or a case, what we would refer to as a case, to the support team to say hey, there’s an issue with this blinker, and they start typing in and then all of a sudden, knowledge articles pop up, and these articles say oh there’s a recall on blinker ABC for truck X. So then that guy goes oh a recall, well I guess I need to put in a warranty claim for this end user, because, we want to repair their blinker, process the recall.

So then what happens is the dealer, let’s call the dealer Joe, Joe goes in and he puts in the warranty claim, he puts the end user’s name in, their contact information, and all that goes to the support team, and the support team goes and processes it, and does their operational stuff to get the warranty process. Meanwhile, Joe has the knowledge he needs to fix the blinker. He knows he’s going to get refunded for doing the work. And now the manufacturer has the warranty claim, but now they also have the end user’s information.

Danny:

Which is huge.

Cassie:

Which is huge.

Danny:

Yes.

Cassie:

So then everything gets taken care of the warranty’s process and marketing grabs a hold of it. And they say oh wow, we’ve seen, there’s 10 rebate requests or warranty requests that came in, let’s take all of those contacts, because we know truck X is at least five years old, they’re coming up on the end of their warranty, let’s go market to them to see if we can sell them a new vehicle.

Danny:

Right.

Cassie:

And it’s just building this full circle cycle that you can’t do from looking at a bunch of spreadsheets, then going okay where are we gathering this data?

Danny:

You might be able to, but…

Cassie:

But you’re going to struggle, and it’s going to take you three weeks versus 10 minutes to do it.

Danny:

Exactly.

Cassie:

And I think that’s the other big piece is how do we build automation processes,

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

And keep those processes efficient,

Danny:

Right.

Cassie:

So that, we eliminate wasted time.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

Wasted time is, time is valuable. It’s money, right. So how do we put the time and the money back into these manufacturers’ pockets by…maybe there’s an investment up front, to build out the process in the automation, but once it’s built, it’s just dollar value that’s coming back in.

Danny:

There’s another thing that I think that to add on to that use case and sort of example that you rolled that I think that is really critical as well, and that’s that customer experience.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Danny:

Because that end user customer because you’re able to increase the efficiency of the communication between the manufacturer, the dealer, and then the end user, you’re getting that end user back on the road, you’re getting that issue solved so much faster, but not only are you creating a better customer experience for the end user, but also, and I think it’s very important for organizations to look at it this way, that dealer as a customer as well.

Cassie:

Yeah.

Danny:

So you’re creating those two touch points by facilitating a great experience as well, so instead of saying ah, these people, like I’ve got to call, then I’m on hold, then I’ve got to do this, meanwhile,

Cassie:

They’re going to put me on hold, and then I’m going to have to listen to elevator music.

Danny:

Right.

Cassie:

Absolutely, things to pass time.

Danny:

I’ve got all my stuff that I need to be getting taken care of, and I’ve got all these other issues and these other customers, so oh man, you’re solving this challenge for me, so that I can better do what I need to get done, and I’m not dinking around with all this stuff over here. So it’s really I think just a monumental win just across the board.

Cassie:

Absolutely. I mean and you could even take it further than that to say well now we’ve noticed that we’ve had 17 warranty claims against the same product, is there a reason for us to go out and build a recall because of those claims, or do we need to start sending service techs out in these areas to teach the dealers, and build certification programs, or help apply that knowledge to our programs, our training programs, based off of what we’re seeing, from the warranty claims that are coming in. So to your point, yeah data, if you’re filling the system with good data, good data in, good data out.

Danny:

Exactly, yeah. And end of the day, you can’t fix what you can’t measure.

Cassie:

Exactly.

Danny:

Or duet, so you’ve got to be able to do that. So if I were to wrap everything up, who needs a CRM tool?

Cassie:

I think everyone. But I don’t, I think it depends. Not everyone needs everything. It’s definitely a growth period. You can’t, this is a process. You can’t go into the process assuming that you’re going to have it all in one magical piece.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

There’s a lot of thought process that goes into building a good CRM. And you can throw something up, but unless you’re looking at your business, the way that you run these processes, the way that people interact throughout the business, and then having, I’m trying to think of the word, but like having everyone agree upon what it is that you’re trying to accomplish, you’re not going to build something that sufficient or time-saving or money-saving. At the end of the day, you have to have full agreement. You have to have the business buy-in.

Danny:

Right.

Cassie:

And then from that, going out and implementing something that truly makes sense for your business.

Danny:

Yeah.

Cassie:

But the way to start is always to slice it up. Slice it up, what are the most important things for you, and your why, what are the most important things for you in your deal. And that way you can really focus in on what’s important, building a roadmap, and then in five years, maybe you do have your perfect world.

Danny:

Yeah I love that. Building a roadmap, making sure that you, I mean you can’t substitute process for software. That’s not going to happen.

Cassie:

Right.

Danny:

You’ve got to have that right, and build that into that roadmap, so you can down the road and that.

Cassie:

We see it all the time. And we have clients come in and they’re like, I want the big picture. I want everything to be perfect on day one, and we have to say look you need to slow down, because this is a lot. This is a lot to take on, and you can build it, but are you really going to be happy with what’s built because you made rush decisions, or people didn’t agree, but we said go ahead and do it anyway. It has to be slow. And not walking pace, a nice little gallop, but make sure you have your roadmap there first.

Danny:

Exactly, not fire, aim, ready, do it the other way around.

Cassie:

Exactly.

Danny:

Well Cassie, I really appreciate your time.

Cassie:

Yeah, absolutely.

Danny:

Thank you for coming on IndustrialSage. I love CRM and sales and process, and customer experience and all that stuff, so we could probably go on for four hours, but I think we may wear some people out, but thank you so much for coming on.

Cassie:

Absolutely anytime.

Danny:

If anybody would love to learn more about your solutions, what you guys do, what’s the best way of learning more?

Cassie:

So you can reach out to us on our website, www.advictoriamsolutions.com, and we’re happy to talk to anyone who wants advice or information or just help building a roadmap, we’re happy to do that.

Danny:

Excellent. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Cassie:

Absolutely, happy to be here.

Danny:

All right. Okay so another great episode here with IndustrialSage. A lot of things to unpack. As we move into this whole, this is a theme we talk about all the time, digital transformation, don’t let this escape outside, don’t let it just stay inside your four walls of your manufacturing plant. This transformation is happening as well within your sales and marketing, and when it comes to your Sales Op, when it comes to having touch points with your end user and creating a better experience for them, and a better experience for your dealers, really think about this.

If this isn’t something that you have rolled out with or you’re not using CRM, you’re using a spreadsheet, A, it’s okay, but it’s not okay for the long-term. You’ve got to start making that pivot. You’ve got to make that change.

So think about some of those pain points, those ways that adopting solutions, a software, a platform, relative to your process, which we can’t substitute, with a solution, a CRM tool, is really the way you really need to be thinking, so I challenge you for 2020, if you haven’t done that, to start thinking about how you’re able to do that, and maybe a company like Ad Victoriam Solutions could help you out. Check them out if you have any questions.

And if you have any questions for us, you’d like us to answer on the show, you can do that, IndustrialSage.com/questions, happy to answer them on the show. So thank you so much for listening and/or watching, if you happen to be listening on a podcast. I’m done for the day, thank you so much, and I’ll be back next week with another episode. I’m Danny and I’m signing off, goodbye.

 

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