Structure, follow-up and commercial support for growing businesses

Practical experience

From customer data to international sales opportunities

Building a commercial structure for three European markets focusing on CRM, segmentation, lead follow-up and pipeline development.

An international manufacturing and trading company wanted to further expand its commercial activities in three European markets. Although a strong position already existed in the home market, there was a lack of structure in customer follow-up, lead management and commercial processes for new markets.

In addition, the existing customer database had grown over the years, making targeted follow-up and segmentation increasingly difficult.

By connecting CRM, marketing and commercial follow-up, a scalable process for international market development was created.

The organization received:

• More insight into commercial activities
• A better-structured customer database
• More targeted market approach
• More relevant sales opportunities
• A better-filled sales pipeline
• More control over follow-up and conversion

The focus shifted from reactive selling to actively developing and following up on new commercial opportunities in international markets.

Targeted market development 

Based on the segmentation, commercial activities were set up for the selected European markets. This included, among other things:

• Targeted email campaigns
• Newsletters
• LinkedIn campaigns
• Instagram campaigns
• Product-oriented communication
• Reference projects and case studies

In addition, the website was further developed as a commercial lead generator, including the ability to request product samples.

CRM-driven follow-up 

All new leads, requests, and sales opportunities were centrally followed up via CRM workflows. This involved working with

• Pipeline management
• Sales stages
• Expected scoring dates
• Periodic follow-up moments
• Weekly and monthly evaluations

As a result, there was more control over commercial opportunities and follow-up became a structural part of the sales process.

Structuring the commercial process 

The first step involved setting up and optimising the entire sales process. Commercial workflows were established for:

• Quote management
• Order processing
• Product portfolios
• Price lists
• Sales conditions
• Customer and lead follow-up

By standardising these processes, more overview and a consistent working method for all involved employees emerged.

Optimising customer data 

Subsequently, the existing customer database was cleaned up and structured.  This included:

• Removing duplicate contacts
• Updating customer data
• Segmenting contacts by market and product group
• Adding new relevant contacts

The focus was not on one-time buyers, but on organisations that use the products structurally and repeatedly within their business processes. This resulted in a much more targeted commercial audience.

Practical experience

From separate processes to one commercial workflow

From four separate systems to one integrated environment for website, webshop, customer management, marketing and administration.

For a webshop, various software packages were used for daily business processes.

Although each system functioned well individually, the combination led to duplicate entries, fragmented data and extra administrative work.

Customer data was located in multiple places, reports were scattered and processes did not always align with each other.

The desire was to create more overview and manage all commercial processes from one central environment.

Important points of attention were:

• One central customer database
• One platform for website and webshop
• Automated marketing campaigns
• Real-time insight into stock and products
• Integration of sales, invoicing and accounting
• Less manual work

The various systems were brought together in one integrated platform. This resulted in:

By bringing together multiple separate systems, one central commercial workflow was created.

The benefits:

• One central environment for all processes
• Less duplicate entry
• More overview of customers and sales activities
• More efficient administration
• Better follow-up of customers
• More insight into commercial performance

The organisation now has one integrated system in which website, webshop, customer management, marketing, inventory management, invoicing and administration come together.

This allows for more time to be available for commercial growth and customer follow-up instead of manual administration.

1

Website & Webshop

• Website management centrally organised
• Product management combined
• Inventory management integrated
• Online sales processes streamlined

CRM & customer management

• All customer data centrally stored
• Complete customer overview available
• Lead and customer follow-up from one system

Marketing

• Newsletters integrated
• Customer segmentation centrally managed
• Marketing campaigns directly linked to customer data.

Invoicing & Administration

• Sales and invoicing linked
• Administrative processes simplified
• Better reporting and insight