Are you managing millions in inventory with sophisticated ERPs, but managing your sales leads on a static Excel file? It’s time to advance with HubSpot for material handling companies and more.
The Current Reality Check for Industrial Marketers
Complexity is a standard feature of the manufacturing and material handling sector. This holds true whether your business is an OEM producing parts or products, a distributor managing those products, or anything in between. You are dealing with long sales cycles, intricate spec sheets, aftermarket service intervals, and a customer base that demands instant answers.
Alarmingly, many sophisticated industrial companies are still hindering their growth by depending on outdated marketing tools, a trend we see all too often.
If your “CRM” is currently a shared spreadsheet owned by a sales manager, or if you are stuck using three different platforms just to send an email newsletter, you are leaking opportunities.
In our latest video, Site-Seeker Senior Account Manager and HubSpot Specialist, Carlotta Bartolini, explains why it’s time to leave those methods behind and why HubSpot is uniquely positioned to handle the demands of the material handling sector.
Here are the key takeaways from our HubSpot expert, Carlotta, on why advancing with HubSpot is crucial for modernizing your dealership or manufacturing operation.
1. The Sweet Spot for a CRM
A common hesitation we hear from some of our fellow MHEDA members and industrial clients is the fear of complexity. You know you’ve outgrown basic email blasts, but enterprise-level systems like Salesforce seem expensive, overly complex, and require a dedicated IT team to run.
HubSpot is the solution to this dilemma.
As Carlotta explains, HubSpot is the ideal middle ground. It provides the intuitive simplicity of easier-to-use platforms like Mailchimp, but delivers the robust functionality of those heavier enterprise tools.
For a fast-growing material handling distributor, this balance is vital. Your team can actually adopt it without months of training, but it won’t buckle under the weight of complex B2B data.
2. The Spreadsheet is “In The Past”
We know that change is hard. Spreadsheets are comfortable. But in today’s marketing landscape, they are dangerous, too. They create data silos, don’t update in real time, and can’t automate follow-ups when a prospect downloads a spec sheet.
“A lot of companies out there use those spreadsheets to keep track of leads and customers,” Carlotta says. “That’s in the past.”
You wouldn’t run a modern distribution center on paper pick tickets; you shouldn’t run your marketing on Excel. The beauty of HubSpot is that you don’t have to eat the entire cake in one bite. You can start with their Starter platform to get organized, and when you are ready, it is easy to scale up.
3. Why “Out-of-the-Box” Won’t Cut It in Industrial Companies
Industrial sales processes are unique. A lead for a pallet racking system is handled differently from an aftermarket parts request.
While the default version of HubSpot is great, it is just a foundation; you need to customize it to fit your reality.
This is where the power of the platform truly kicks in for our industry. By customizing HubSpot to match your specific sales stages, you can utilize workflows and new AI features to automate processes. Imagine automatically triggering a service reminder email six months after a forklift purchase, or notifying a sales engineer immediately when a high-value prospect views a specific product page.
4. We Filter the Noise So You Don’t Have To
HubSpot is constantly innovating, dropping new AI tools and features almost daily. For a busy marketing manager at a manufacturing plant, keeping up is impossible.
“So many features are out there, but they’re not all as valuable for everybody,” Carlotta notes.
This is where a HubSpot partner like Site-Seeker becomes essential. We don’t just sell you the software and walk away. We act as your filter. We learn about the updates and test them before rolling them out to you, ensuring that any changes we implement are actually robust and valuable for your specific business needs.
Ready to Advance?
If you are tired of wrestling with spreadsheets and disjointed marketing tools, it’s time to centralize your operations. Let us show you how HubSpot can be customized for the complexities of the material handling market.