While growth is a key objective for every manufacturer, there’s never been a clearer time to rethink revenue growth.
The pandemic, the Great Resignation, and ongoing economic frustrations have made growth projections difficult, and 2023 is shaping up to be a trying year. Now more than ever, companies must pull back and implement new strategies for increasing manufacturing qualified leads. Here, we’ll explore four recommendations that can help your business do exactly that.
Four Ways to Grow Manufacturing Qualified Leads
1. Leverage Outbound and Inbound Strategies
Increasing manufacturing qualified leads through marketing is often approached through one channel, with others either falling behind or not being considered at all due to lack of talent or expertise. Both inbound and outbound marketing serve distinct purposes, but giving one too heavy a concentration in your marketing mix can create cost challenges and give competitors an advantage in underutilized areas. Outbound marketing tactics are great for getting in front of people proactively and building relationships, while inbound marketing positions your business where people are already looking for solutions.
Learn more about inbound-outbound lead generation for manufacturing.
2. Reallocate Resources and Tasks
Another opportunity to consider comes not from how your business markets but from how your sales and marketing teams operate. Today more than ever, these teams are being asked to do more with less — diluting their focus and their results. Instead of tasking sales and marketing with account management and service matters, consider implementing a front-end sales solution to tackle prospecting, nurturing, and other important administrative tasks. With this division of labor, your team is able to take manufacturing qualified leads from the front-end team and dedicate more time toward closing them.
The traditional sales model is dead — learn more about the new model that’s creating better results.
3. It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
Every prospect that enters your pipeline remains an opportunity even if they’ve told you “not yet.” It’s important to stay in front of these contacts and continuously nurture and connect with them. Situations and suppliers change, and what was once a “no” can quickly become a “yes please!” — what matters is that you’re the first person in line when that change occurs. Nurture every prospect in your pipeline until the engagement comes to a resolution — whether that’s them moving forward or them saying they’re no longer interested (also, pro tip: a “no” still has future potential — continue to periodically engage Closed-Lost prospects; you may be pleasantly surprised!).
4. Learn, Refine, and Repeat
Last but not least, every sales and marketing effort must go to inform future processes and decisions. Maximizing results means understanding what worked and what didn’t and then using those insights to pivot where needed or press harder on the gas. When you’re looking to increase manufacturing qualified leads, leverage the data and tools at your disposal to glean insights from your campaigns, marketing efforts, sales conversations, and more.
Learn more about implementing a follow-through-to-resolution approach in your sales initiatives.
Grow Your Manufacturing Qualified Leads with Athena
Athena helped manufacturers across multiple sectors — corrugated, plastics, metals, electronics, and more — drive revenue growth through a structured, proven process. Every program we build leverages the recommendations explored here and more, helping to create a truly holistic solution for increasing new customers, growing pipelines, and increasing annual recurring revenue. Additionally, our structured process helps sales and marketing teams become more productive and accountable — we work closely with them on every opportunity to increase the chance of a successful close.