Customer churn taking you by surprise. Saturated accounts. Knowing you need to cross-sell and upsell, but struggling to make the right connections. They’re thorns-in-the-side that we hear across manufacturing, wholesale and distribution companies. And they’re fixable, with the help of AI and Machine Learning — as long as it’s rolled out right for your firm.
Here, John Downes, Account Executive at sales-i, a SugarCRM company, and Trevor Rogerson, Senior Sales Executive here at Provident CRM, share thoughts on:
You might be in a long-established business, that’s weathered plenty of storms by sticking to tried-and-true ways of working. So, it’s a fair question: why risk riling employees, upsetting processes and wasting cash by investing in Machine Learning and AI? Especially given it’s not clear how exactly it’ll help your business — and might even bring risks with it?
Being risk-averse is no bad thing. The danger is shooting yourself in the foot with it, missing out on the sea change that’s sweeping through industry. Machine Learning and AI still need fine-tuning, yes, and adapting to suit your business best. But they’re not going anywhere — and your competitors know that, too.
Figuring out where these tools fit your business will be similar to the shift to cloud you might have already made. Freeing your ERP up from on-premise limitations will have stepped it up a level. Now, time to take it up more notches with AI.
AI and Machine Learning are powerful tools for your business, which does mean some people see them as a job-nabbing threat. But the things only your people can do will be just as valuable as before: building and nurturing client relationships, negotiating the best deals with suppliers, taking your in-person business to new markets, living out the company ethos that powers your firm forward. So these new tools are an aid, not a threat. Really. They’ll help your best people do what they do better, saving them time on the boring bits, helping spot ways to up profits, and flagging any gaps or errors before they become issues. They’re an enhancement, not a replacement.
If we look at manufacturers, plenty haven’t taken the plunge yet: only 14% of manufacturers use dedicated sales forecasting software and only 8% use AI/Machine Learning tools. So there’s still a wide-open window to be an early mover, edging ahead of your competition by getting to grips with these business enhancers before they do.
A smart place to start is your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system — the tool which should tell you everything your customers have ever needed, wanted, paid you, and felt about the way you do business with them. Just like with CRM basics, introducing AI and Machine Learning tools is meaningless if your people aren’t ready and willing to work with them. They’ve got to be seamless to use, so there’s as little change as possible to how your sales reps, marketing team, operations team (and so on) work. As soon as they’re putting in quality data, you’ll see the trend reports, forecasts and inventory management insights you need, plus the ROI you want on your CRM. Basically, you’ve all got to see the new tools pulling their weight right away — especially the reps who’ve been with you for decades and know they’re already excellent at what they do.
At Provident CRM, we do the heavy lifting to get your people on board. And we’re continually adding tools to make this shift more convincing — and more effortless — for your people. Take SugarCRM plus sales-i as an example: sales-i links your CRM to your ERP. So, when your sales team log in, it’s as if someone’s pulled together all the research and details on the account they want. All sat there for them to glance through before they meet the contact, so they’re primed to say all the right things and nail that sale.
Next, we’ll take a look at how AI and Machine Learning can help them do that.
Managing extensive product lines and customer bases is complex.
We could all do with more time to make sense of customer data. There are chances to sell, ways to offer above-and-beyond service, ways to harness loyalty hidden in those numbers — but who has the hours? If you’re working with spreadsheets, your people might be plugging in data once a week or once a month. Inevitably, that means there are huge gaps in how well you can understand your clients. And when you’re dealing with high numbers of transactions, customers and products, the potential flux month to month is massive.
The reality is, it’s not so hard to increase average order value for an account. The tricky part is knowing which products best fit that customer, for whatever reason. If you’re a wholesaler or builder’s merchant with a wide product range, say, you’ll be selling into very different sales channels. If you can capture as much data as possible on those customer segments and profiles, you’ll clearly see what next-best offers you should be making. Because it’s not just about what your customers buy — who they are, where they are and how they buy matter, too.
When you mix proper data-crunching and human know-how on this, you’ll get results. Sales automation will handle the data side for you, and up your reps’ efficiency. Think of it like a caddy or personal assistant, bringing to the surface things you might overlook or forget. It could be as simple as: this customer normally buys every month but they haven’t placed their regular order — check in and see what’s happened there. Or it could be more niche: this customer’s falling short of our target, based on the product volume we expected year-on-year. Have a chat with them — and if they don’t hit the quantity, remember to up their price next year.
Your CRM data’s a mess and it’s clouding decision-making.
Getting new clients is likely a rare event in your market; you’re more focused on maximising earnings from the accounts you have. But without connecting your ERP and CRM, you’ll be on the back foot. You’ve got to get that valuable ERP data over to your sales team, in a way that’s easy for them to read and use.
Tech that makes this easy is a must. And if you’re using SugarCRM, there’s a planned AI update that’ll summarise case history for your accounts. Think what that will reveal after it’s powered through the years of customer data you’ve got. What’s the overview of tickets? What’s the sentiment like? Who and what do they frequently speak about? What do they complain about? And, most importantly, what should you do next?
Saturated accounts and tough competition.
When existing customer relationships count for pretty much everything, you’ve got to keep deepening, improving and evolving those links. And this ERP + CRM data-crunching will set your sales reps up to do that: understanding the customer’s situation and buying patterns (even when they’re unspoken), making relevant suggestions at the right times, knowing when to push and when to give them space.
Thing is, even the most successful sales reps can get complacent. If you’ve got great relationships with long-standing clients, you can fall into a comfortable cadence of repeat sales. That’s fine — but they could be more enterprising, more innovative, more profitable. With a tool like sales-i, your reps will get those nudges: there are missed opportunities here. There’s great margin on this relevant product — so does this customer know about it?
It’s about adding data-driven insights to the gut feel that’s already serving your top sales reps well. Adding numbers to nous, so your sales reps get the best possible results for themselves and your clients.
Speaking of numbers, time to back these pointers up with some. Here are some ways AI and Machine Learning have identified untapped opportunities in existing accounts for manufacturing, wholesale and distribution:
✓ Putting your customer data to work
Motus UK grew sales activity by 300% with sales-i (before, they were missing sales opportunities in spreadsheets).
Spreadsheets are still the go-to for sales forecasting — they’re free, and it’s a bit of an “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” situation. But you could extract much more value from that ERP data with a smarter tool. And, when you tot up the time your people put into updating, maintaining and — yes — correcting those sheets, they’re not really free, are they? Forecasting should be a collaborative activity, too, and we all know collaboration on Excel is death.
With tech that will optimise your data and data-management processes, you can leverage your ERP data to spot high-value sales opportunities. And close them.
✓ Powering cross-selling and up-selling
Nextran maintained 20% growth for truck parts sales with sales-i. And Ideal Bathrooms saw a 1.4% profit margin increase YOY.
Your customers are likely monthly, quarterly or annual repeat buyers. So how’s your cross-selling into that base? What’s the next-best for each account, based on demographic or spending? And are you upselling and switching up products to boost profitability?
With a tool like sales-i, you’ve got all the details you need to have these conversations. It works by putting all your invoices and transactions through a Machine Learning algorithm, which links your products and customers to identify white space. And that knowledge won’t be stuck in your individual reps’ heads — it’ll be on your system for everyone to learn from and leverage.
✓ Revealing your profitability
Industrial wholesale representative Durrie Sales focused their sales team on the biggest revenue opportunities.
With AI and Machine Learning, you’re moving from blindness to visibility. Plenty of your accounts will be stable — things will look like they’re trucking along as they’re supposed to. One customer spends a fraction more, another spends a fraction less. Overall, it looks rosy. But there are always ways to do better and, when you bring in a tool that can effortlessly peel back some layers, you might spot some underlying issues (or, better, soon-to-be issues that you can proactively avoid).
With sales-i, you can see where your sales reps should spend their time and maximise the value of the customers that matter.
✓ Boosting sales productivity and customer retention
Thomas Ridley Foodservice gained 4 days of sales a month with sales-i.
Retaining customers is the lifeblood of your business — and it takes work. Less busy work than before, granted, when you’ve got AI and Machine Learning on your side. But your people will still need to add their human know-how and emotional intelligence to the equation. That combination will set you on a path to revenue growth (not just stability).
For example, how much time are you spending sifting through customers who are likely to churn, struggling to get them back, or trying to figure out where things went wrong? Or losing decent customers just because they fell off your reps’ radars and started feeling overlooked? AI will do all this churn prediction and retention work for you. Giving your reps time to do the important work: reaching out to customers before you lose them, giving clients what they need before they’ve even realised they need it, making your top customers feel so valued they’ll never be tempted to switch.
With sales-i, you’d get a prompt nudge if an account stops its regular purchases or its purchasing habits change. And you’d act on that insight 24 hours after it happens — not 6 weeks later, when you’ve only just managed to put your ERP numbers into a spreadsheet. With a responsive turnaround like that, your chances of remedying the situation and keeping the account dramatically increase.
Our job is making sure your CRM system powers your company forward: moving with industry shifts, your firm’s internal structure and your clients’ needs. Platforms like SugarCRM help us do that, as they keep enhancing what they can offer you by adding tools like sales-i. It’s worth repeating, too: don’t view AI and Machine Learning as too big a risk or as a substitute for your valued employees. It’s an enhancer, not a replacer and — when it’s set up to fit your ways of working — it can bring you powerful changes.
To find out more about sales-i, book your demo via the link below.
