Equipment manufacturing plays a key role in the economy. Equipment manufacturing companies’ products are almost too many to name. They make it possible to perform medical procedures, run automated distribution facilities, produce electronics and food, motor vehicles and rocket ships – and so much more. EM customers use these products to fuel their own success, whether it be by making, distributing, or servicing their own customers. As individuals and as companies, we all benefit when EMs do well and suffer when they don’t.
Many equipment manufacturers specialize in a certain kind of equipment for a particular market segment. Often, they commit large investments over many years to innovate and create Intellectual Property, secure patents, and deliver value in a unique manner. Over many years, many of them also build teams of account reps and service organizations of industry insiders who know how to win customers and maintain productive and profitable relationships with them.
In this blog, we consider the critical role of customer relationships in the equipment manufacturing industry and how equipment manufacturers can use CRM technology to maintain their health.
Today, some equipment manufacturers find that workforce turnover and changing global conditions expose their customer relationships to the liabilities of discontinuity and competitive takeovers. The pandemic accelerates and intensifies many of their challenges that were already present.
The traditional equipment manufacturing approach to selling and serving customers is relationship-based. Some of the most successful sales reps travel along with customers for many years. Much of the insight regarding these customers and their needs lives in the heads of long-term account reps and field service managers.
Due to the large-scale generational change that is underway right now, many of these customer-loyal employees are about to leave the workplace. When they take their experience with them, they may force their successors to start from scratch and make it difficult for sales and service execs to get a firm handle on the business. These departing professionals likely have an excellent understanding of customer motivations and their buying journeys. However, they might never have taken the time to document their expertise, and now they may lack an effective way to pass it on.
Globalization has made the management of customer relationships more difficult for equipment manufacturers. When customers can be almost anywhere in the world, it’s much harder to get to know and work with them in the traditional, face-to-face manner. This has driven some to set up global sales organizations with local reps in key geographies or establish international dealer networks, thereby pushing the manufacturers one step back in the supply chain—and further away from their customers. Finding ways to work with their far-flung teams and business partners and keep trading relationships alive without the risks and costs of travel—or with convenient travel being curtailed during the pandemic—can be a challenge.
CRM software can enable equipment manufacturers to manage all customer relationships, communications, buying histories, customer preferences, and commitments in one single resource. CRM applications also give managers and executives a way to consolidate and review account data, see how their reps and teams perform, offer assistance, and make timely course corrections.
If seasoned reps in your equipment manufacturing business are about to leave, your first step should be to bring their notes and insights into the CRM environment. Equipment manufacturers we know have created various practices to overcome new-user hesitancy. Sometimes, the new software tool is so attractive and easy to use that even reluctant technology users won’t balk at recording insights and customer data. Sometimes, equipment manufacturers reward their reps for documenting their knowledge and account histories. Other organizations find embedding processes critical to the reps job (like pricing or quoting or accessing promotional material), or to their performance measures, is the most effective way to drive consistent user adoption.
No matter how and where customers prefer to do business and interact with their equipment manufacturer, you can manage the entire engagement consistently in the CRM software. Invitations and records of past virtual meetings, phone conferences, and face-to-face meetings. Emails, instant messages, shared documents and contracts, photos and diagrams—you can attach all these things to a customer record and keep them easily accessible. Your customers might not know that you’ve brought a new set of tools into your business, but will anything at all change for them?
For one thing, communications from your company might be more timely. A response to a sales or service inquiry may arrive faster than before, because the equipment manufacturing company’s employees could act and coordinate their steps immediately instead of researching the account or waiting for somebody else do to so. Even promotions can be more meaningful and compelling, because it’s easier to incorporate known customer interests and plans into your marketing.
Sikich recommends Microsoft CRM solutions that we deploy and support, and which we can help you evolve as needs change. We use a proven, nondisruptive approach that follows your priorities for productive change.
CRM may be easy to use, but it’s still a complex software product. Technology providers can take missteps if they are not deeply familiar with their customers’ industry and business model or with CRM technology. Poorly planned and managed CRM projects can fail or may never deliver the benefits companies hope for. Some customers invest in technology that is too difficult to use. Or, they omit one key step—getting buy-in from sales leadership. In those situations, user adoption typically starts small and stays that way, eventually causing a CRM project to fizzle out.
Sikich makes use of industry-best practices that incorporate our experience from many successful CRM projects for equipment manufacturers, and we also bring our project management expertise to bear. Our teams follow a simple, predictable, step-by-step approach to bring CRM into your equipment manufacturing business.
For many equipment manufacturers that want to focus on managing and growing their business without distractions from complex technology deployments, Microsoft CRM solutions are the best fit. They are designed for real people in businesses who need to get work done, not expert users who have the time for experimental technology. Sikich relies on several proven Microsoft products to deliver CRM and customer insight capabilities:
Suite is a multi-module cloud solution that provides sales, customer service, field service, and marketing functionality in a consistent, intuitive, highly usable manner. You can deploy these capabilities in a sequence that reflects your priorities, adding apps anytime. Sales functionalities are specifically designed and ready to go for a variety of professional roles. With enablement for virtual agents, remote assistance, product design collaboration, and listening to what customers say, the broader Dynamics 365 CRM offering delivers mixed reality, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics to help you break new ground and get ahead of the competition.
Lets you unify data from many different sources to build dashboards and reports that help you understand customers and steer the company toward growth. You can give all team members the ability to make decisions based on data and be confident in making a greater contribution to your equipment manufacturing business.
Sometimes, Sikich has to help a client turn around a CRM project that is taking too long, runs over budget, isn’t delivering what the company expected, or meets with user resistance. In those situations, we often find that the EM’s previous technology partner allowed the effort to become too complicated. Just like we do in new projects, we follow your priorities and make sure the effort is contained and predictable.
See how Sikich helps businesses implement, manage, and upgrade Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM.
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