For years, manufacturers have used tools like Lean and Six Sigma to improve their quality, boost productivity, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience. And while these tools have significantly improved operations, there’s one area yet to address: the sales and marketing data silos in manufacturing.
Data silos happen when your sales, marketing, and front-office support teams use different processes and systems to gather, store, and act on data or when you have data collections unavailable to everyone who needs them.
Here are some signs you have a data silo:
If you see yourself in this list of signs, take heart. It’s easier than you think to get your people, processes, and technology all headed in the same direction. This post gets you started by walking you through how to calculate the true cost of siloed sales and marketing data.
When I sit down with prospects or clients to talk about data integration, they’re usually concerned about whether investing in new tools will be revenue positive for them.
To answer that question, you first need to get clear on what it costs your company to have data in multiple places because of the issues it causes downstream. Here are a few examples.
If you manually route leads or send leads by email, you don’t have enough visibility into your customer’s journey. And you’re probably losing some leads along the way because of it. That’s just how it goes when processes are manual.
The true cost of this data silo is when you consider the lifetime value of a customer.
Calculate your true cost: How many leads are you losing each year due to a lack of communication between sales and marketing? How many of those leads would you have converted with real-time visibility? What’s your average lifetime customer value?
If you manually respond to marketing requests, just one delay or bad handoff can lead to a missed opportunity. And it happens all the time. Someone didn’t realize they were supposed to follow up. Or someone was on vacation, and a sample request took days to fill.
The true cost of this data silo is when you consider that deals in the manufacturing segment can easily reach into six- and seven-figure territory.
Calculate your true cost: How many opportunities come your way? How many of those could be missed due to a lack of alignment between sales and marketing? What’s your average deal size?
If you’re struggling with slow cash or having profitability or EBITDA challenges, that’s a problem – especially if a private equity company owns you.
The true cost of this data silo is when you consider how slow cash increases your exposure and risk.
Calculate your true cost: How fast is your cash cycle? What pressure is that exposure putting on the business? How much revenue is your business missing out on due to lost leads or missed opportunities?
Hopefully, the chance to win more opportunities, convert more leads, and increase revenue caught your attention. But in case you still need convincing, here are some of the other benefits our manufacturing customers see when they integrate their sales and marketing data:
We’ve seen how often this decision gets companies wrapped around the ax handle. And we get it. This is a big undertaking. But whether we work together or not, I hope you’ll at least just get started. This work really is that important.
If you are looking for guidance, here are some ways Lake One’s experience might be helpful:
If you want to talk through some true cost scenarios, feel free to give us a holler. We sure enjoy the chance to geek out with new friends about sales and marketing data!