In today’s market, a sales strategy has to include a content marketing and inbound lead generation component. This is even true for industrial and manufacturing focused companies. Simply spinning the dial and hoping to catch someone live, or calling enough people and building relationships at a global level just isn’t realistic, time effective or cost conscious.

Sales now requires you to have a solid web presence and be producing content for your website and on social media accounts that will improve your search engine optimization, help to position you as an industry expert and ultimately drive leads to you.

This is particularly relevant if you are selling your products internationally, because connecting with people and identifying the appropriate target client and contact is even more difficult.

If you are a company in the manufacturing or industrial sectors and are looking to grow your sales not only locally but internationally, here are a few sales and marketing tips.

1. Develop a specific and focused sales and marketing strategy that outlines specific target companies and contacts to go after and attract.
2. Invest in a good, solid website.
3. Create marketing and sales collateral to support your efforts that includes quantitative metrics in it – numbers sell.
4. Build out case studies and customer success stories for consumption by prospects – stories also sell.
5. Develop an inbound lead generation strategy that utilizes relevant content published on your website on a daily or weekly basis such as blogs, infographics, white papers or newsletter. Content assets like white papers and newsletters should ask the reader to sign up that way you capture their email details for future follow up.
6. Utilize social media platforms to push and share information. We recommend using Linkedin, Twitter and the new upcoming B2B partnering and collaboration platforms like ComLinked
7. Use a good sales CRM system. You cannot track your sales efforts or funnel effectively using Excel.
8. Look for events you could attend that are specific to the target market you are selling and marketing to.

If you are an industrial services or manufacturing firm and in need of sales and marketing assistance feel free to contact me. I would be happy to see if we can help. Alternatively, if you are simply looking for a source of excellent sales and marketing information, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter.