CRM for manufacturers: 10 criteria for B2B sales

Imagine a fictional example: the sales manager of a machine spare-parts manufacturer is looking for the final version of a large project quote submitted months ago. The engineer who prepared the quote has moved to another department; the notes of the meeting with the customer are on their laptop, the revisions are in e-mail attachments, and the price discussion with the dealer is in a WhatsApp group. When the customer calls, nobody can say “this is our latest quote, the price is valid until this date.” In industrial sales this picture is not rare, because selling takes long, runs through several people, and the records are scattered across individuals.

A CRM for manufacturers is software that tracks, on the customer card, the long cycle of industrial and B2B sales, its multi-line quotes and its several decision makers. In this article we cover the criteria for evaluating such a system, the difference between a full CRM, the Sales / Quote module in the portal and an ERP, and where an Excel and e-mail routine starts to struggle.

How does industrial sales differ from retail and service sales?

• The sales cycle is long. The road from the first conversation to the order often takes months; if remembering where the opportunity stands is left to individuals, it gets forgotten.
• The decision is not in one person. Purchasing, the technical unit and management are different people; each one’s conversation and objection must be recorded.
• Quotes have many lines. Options, discounts and delivery terms turn a quote into a file rather than a price list.
• Currencies are mixed. Companies that export or use imported inputs may quote the same customer in different currencies.
• The channel is layered. A direct customer, a dealer or a project contractor buys the same product on different terms.

10 criteria for choosing a CRM for a manufacturer

The list below turns the questions you can ask in a demo into criteria headings. For each item, ask the vendor “can you show this with the latest example we had?”

1. Customer memory: Are contacts, conversations, quotes and notes on a single customer card? Does the information stay when a salesperson changes?
2. Opportunity funnel: Do the stages reflect your sales process, and are overdue opportunities visible?
3. Multi-line quote: Does it produce a print-ready quote with line items, quantity, discount and VAT?
4. Quote in foreign currency: Can the same customer be quoted in different currencies, with each one appearing separately in the record?
5. Quote revision: Is each revision stored as a separate version, and is it clear which final version went to the customer?
6. Approval: Does the quote pass through an authorized person before it goes to the customer, and do the decisions stay on record?
7. Dealer and project separation: Can several opportunities and quotes be opened under the same customer card, and can a dealer and an end user be tracked without mixing them up?
8. After-sales link: Once a quote is accepted, are collection and support requests linked to the same card?
9. Role and permission: Do the salesperson, manager and accounting see the same data at different scopes?
10. Relationship with the ERP: Where is the boundary drawn with the system that manages orders, stock and shipment, and who will set up the data flow if one is needed?

Instead of scoring the list, mark each item with one of three labels: “must have,” “nice to have,” “not needed for us.” A system that fails on an item you marked “must have” is the wrong choice for you, however good it looks on the rest. Set the labels together with sales, finance and management, because sales wants quote approval, accounting wants collection and the manager wants the report, and the three may not need the same things.

How do you track customers and quotes in an industrial company?

Whatever the software, the flow stays the same: first the customer is recorded, then an opportunity is opened, a quote is prepared, it passes the necessary approval, and the closed sale is reported. Each of these five steps should leave behind information that is useful for the next one. The conversation note on the customer card feeds the opportunity, the needs summary in the opportunity feeds the quote, and the last approved version of the quote feeds the closed sale in the report.

In a long-cycle sale, what causes the real loss is not the steps themselves but the gaps between them: nobody writes down who will call after the last conversation with the customer, no follow-up date is set after a quote is sent, the customer’s “we’ll think about it and get back to you” is not noted on the opportunity. For every opportunity, let the owner and date of the next step be written down.

B2B sales tracking with Excel and e-mail: where is it enough, and where does it struggle?

In a company with few customers and where one person prepares the quotes, Excel and e-mail can be enough. The struggle starts as the number of people involved in sales and of simultaneous opportunities grows:

• Correspondence with the customer stays in a person’s inbox; when that person leaves or goes on leave, the history becomes inaccessible.
• The quote file multiplies in e-mail; which version the customer has is guessed from file names.
• In quotes with foreign currency and many lines, a formula error goes to the customer unnoticed.
• The sales manager asks everyone for a separate spreadsheet to see how many opportunities are at which stage.

CRM, the portal Sales / Quote module and ERP: who does which job?

The difference between the first two rows of the table is one of scope. The portal module offers the customer, opportunity, conversation, quote and approval flow inside the working portal, on the same user and permission infrastructure. YazSis CRM AI, on the other hand, is a broader CRM backbone that gives role-based screens to support, accounting and license teams as well as the sales team, with aspects such as call lists and campaigns. Which one is right for you depends on how many teams outside the portal your sales process involves.

Five things to prepare before going to a demo

A general demo looks good in any software. To test it against your own work, bring these to the demo:

• A real quote of yours: the example with the most lines, in foreign currency, or with the most revisions.
• The stages of your sales process: the steps you use yourself from the first conversation to the order.
• Your discount and approval rule: who gives approval, and under what conditions.
• The moment you lose the most information: a salesperson change, a long wait or a dealer conversation.
• The report management wants to see every week: which indicators, how often.

If you send these to the vendor in advance, the demo turns from a general feature tour into a short rehearsal of your own work. If something is missing, you find that out on that day too.

Which one should you start with?

Start with the step where you lose the most. If quote versions get mixed up, there is no approval and customer history sits with individuals, a Sales module that brings the customer, opportunity and quote into one flow may be enough as a first step. If you also want after-sales support, collection, campaigns and field sales planning in the same center, the CRM side comes onto the agenda. If your problem is orders, stock and production, that is something to be solved with an ERP, not a CRM; drawing the boundary between the ERP and the CRM from the start spares you double entry later.

You can look at the structure that brings the customer, opportunity and quote into one flow on the Sales / Quote & Customer module page.