Digital transformation in sales for manufacturing

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all right welcome to another lake one growth chat today we're going to be talking about digital transformation in manufacturing so manufacturing company leaders often have a core expertise in building and scaling their business by transformation on the manufacturing floor one of the areas that they often aren't really focused on transformation is in the rest of the business in sales marketing and some of the operations side 2020 2020 has definitely been a transformative year for all sorts of industries as they've had to react to not being able to leverage face-to-face conversations uh and relationship selling so today we're joined by our friends at polywater who have been on a journey of digital transformation since before colvin and we're going to talk to them about some of the things that they've learned how colvit has changed that uh and hopefully you guys can learn from their journey as well so merrell amy thanks both for joining us i'm gonna have you guys introduce yourselves and what uh you do at poly water and then also maybe you can tell everyone here a little bit about what poly water does as well so amy we'll start with you thanks ryan uh my name is amy helke i am inside sales for polywater and polywater is a chemical engineering manufacturing company for the industries and utilities and electrical and i work with the regional sales managers and in the office kind of helping them with some of the details and some of the customer management awesome thanks amy barrel i'm meryl steinhauser i'm product manager at poly water uh and also i polywater brought on a new product line polywater hof technic and the industry didn't um so this is new to the industry but also it's a it's not just a line extension it's actually a new market opportunities for us so we needed to um reach personas that we typically did not interact with and so that's why we've been excited to work with lake one awesome thanks meryl so as i mentioned in kind of our intro here polywater started this journey well before covid um and a study from deloitte found that front runners um in the manufacturing industry that actually believe uh in kind of this transformation there's about 25 of the industry that looks to digital transformation across our entire uh organization and i would put poly water in that front runner category as we started this transformation like i said before before coved um what i'd like to kind of just start with is you know post pre-covet what was what was the force what was the thinking inside of poly water um that started that process we started out looking at crm you know what were some of the challenges some of the opportunities some of the things that pollywater was looking down the road at saying you know what we need to get some new systems in place and new processes in place to help support our sales and marketing growth polywater was looking for a stronger sales and marketing alignment um to be more responsive um to gain more engagement to have more productive sales and the current um what they had currently just wasn't wasn't as strong as what they were looking for um so moving to a a new platform and and a new new alignment was what they were really looking for awesome so i know one of the things that when we talked um was really uh utilization of that old platform there wasn't a lot of usage one of the things we looked at uh was ease of use in some new modern technology um can you talk a little bit about what that journey looked like internally how many people you know were involved in some of those discussions a big organization like poly water sales marketing there's a lot of different people at play and a lot of different needs what was that process like kind of trying to figure out you know you had a system that was 20 years old a lot of technology advancements have happened over 20 years ease of use is kind of this nebulous thing it could mean a lot of things to a lot of different people so kind of talk a little bit about what that process of finding out what was out there what polywater really needed looked like for you guys uh well so there was a lot there was quite a bit of involvement i'm just making sure testing making sure that the new crm um was going to be user-friendly to all departments i mean you're talking with you know sales and marketing and you're talking about with lab engineers um and purchasing and production so what we were looking for was something that was going to kind of align all of those with everybody's contacts but also give everybody the ease of being able to find their contacts um we polywater does something you kind of unique with our contacts where we actually code them based on their market their company type their persona their location and their their job function and so having something that would keep that coding per contact and keeping it more user-friendly than what our old crm was was a lot of discussion and it was um it was a large a large need and so you know the hubspot gave us that that usefulness and it was easy to kind of implement after everybody agreed what those codes were going to be so agreement is definitely something that that i heard you say a few times there i think a lot of times at least on our side we see organizations that rush to a decision on technology before getting agreement on you know what each team needs um how each team is going to to use it um we obviously worked with you guys in that process do you want to talk a little bit about you know what what what some of the things were that we went through um to help you guys arrive at that alignment arrive at that agreement um it can be especially when you're navigating complex coding um and a complex data set how how poly water kind of arrived at that agreement point what some of the steps were that you guys took well late ones you know initial discussions were great so they were super helpful they um they brought a different point of view to everybody that was involved in in the discussions you know i'm not just looking down a funnel and saying well this is how we always did it this is how we should continue to do it going forward um you guys really kind of kind of opened the box for poly water and kind of made us look at a different in a different view on how structuring our contacts was going to give us a stronger sales and marketing alignment and that was really really helpful and it made it made um poly water kind of kind of look that way kind of look out of the box and see how we really wanted to contact and connect and nurture existing contacts that we had as well as gaining future contacts cool so here we are 16 months 18 months later um it's definitely a journey if you could go back and tell yourself or anybody that was involved they're kind of those early discussions something that you know now um what would it be if there was you know if i only knew then what i knew now what you know what are kind of some of the big takeaways in that you know that initial process of transformation um taking the time and listening to the suggestions to make sure that you are really putting the steps in the right direction to make that change changing from a 20-year-old crm to a brand new powerful sales and marketing platform um takes some thought takes some thinking outside of the box and some some suggestions and some um [Music] some direction and really listening to all of that and putting it together and thinking of what it what's really going to make sense and make it easy for everybody involved for sure so we started this process prior to covid um we got it we were you know getting it up and running getting it in place then this pandemic hits and all of a sudden like many manufacturers that rely on personal relationships selling face to face pollywater was kind of in the same boat of okay our sales team can't hit the road how do we you know leverage some of the the technology that we put in place um other kind of modern marketing and sales strategies um you know what did you guys start to think about and talk about in terms of building on top of the platform that we've already kind of put in place with transformation to try to overcome some of the challenges posed by the pandemic [Music] meryl do you want to touch on that one a little bit sure um you know some of the capabilities of hubspot were nice to haves but when kovid came along it was really um value added such as i was just telling amy about the tasks so if somebody asks for a sample or something needs to be processed through the system i'm here right now but typically i'm not and this way we have a way of tracking it seeing that making sure that we are responsive to our customers and also that we can follow up without being in the same location and so that's been valuable and because we're not here to hash out ideas and we're in our own locations uh sometimes i don't want to say your your thinking becomes siloed but you're more individual and so by having templates you still can brand effectively for your company and your so there's brand recognition when those emails go out because doesn't matter where they're they all look the same and if you have a template the messaging is similar of course if it's one-to-one it should be personalized but it's really helped to have a cohesiveness despite the disjointed approach that needs to occur at this moment awesome so i know one of the challenges that we we kind of tackled or that got brought up probably mid-summer once it became clear that travel really was going to be restricted for quite a while uh was that in-person face-to-face conversation that the sales team was able to have with engineering firms what were some of the things that that you guys started to look to um and plugged into um the the sales and marketing stack that we put in place with hubspot um to overcome that um i do you wanna talk a little bit kind of about the video um one-to-one video work that that the sales team started exploring with um and what some of the results of that uh and feedback has been um i'll let either one of you kind of pick up that question uh so i'll just start and amy please jump in so right because you aren't face to face but you still want your your user to have or your customer to have a personal experience vidyard interfaces with hubspot and it allows us to insert personal messages so when someone opens an email it's not just a video but you can personalize it with boards with even with their name or it can be i mean the whole message could be personalized and rather than being another email in a sea of emails that people are receiving it feels personal because their face is in your home and it's the next best thing to you know being there and having a one-to-one conversation it has been well received our regional managers are doing it and even our reps are are utilizing that not embedding it in their emails but creating these um these videos they're trying to be creative and funny um not just focused on the product but what is your customer going through and it really has allowed us to to utilize that awesome amy did you want to add anything to that i think merrill explained it really well um it it it allowed our team to get creative and how they were going to reach out to their contacts and keep their contacts engaged and their engineers engaged and um it it was it was fun to watch and it was uh it was a great experience for for them and for the company awesome we can attest to the fun of watching those we we're on the receiving end of some of those and were surprised by the personalities that came through in that brian i just thought of one thing because you're not there face to face what your integration with vidyard allows us to see did they watch the whole thing did they stop did they flip through so it's not just they opened it there's a depth of information that we can mine even what they were looking at maybe they you know fast forwarded through a big portion of it and and we can then see what's their area of interest so it's really been a wonderful tool exactly and you just kind of hit on a key point of you know what is the benefit of all of this automation and all of this transformation is the level of data and insights that the polywater has been able to get on contact level engagement with marketing assets content uh and really to be able to adjust and adapt um i want to introduce uh the the other face on the call here uh rachel seco is blake one senior director of operations uh and has been working with the polywater team very closely um in the x in the uh implementation and execution uh of this digital transformation so i'm going to open it up to rachel to to have a few questions uh with with amy and merrell here hi everyone so i wanted to take a step back a little bit and talk about from the from the very beginning i think so much of transmission really has to do with the team you have assembled and i think it's only as strong and is as great as kind of the team you have at hand for in regards to alignment so can you talk a little bit about how you determined who would be leading from your side leading that transformation and talk about kind of positions that you had assembled on the team um well as polywater is structured with departments um we looked at the people within each department and who could best represent that department and kind of think about their needs their wants um and be able to communicate in those discussions you know and and work as a team to kind of you know with pot with poly water as a company in mind as well as as their department i would also like to interject that amy's being modest but the success of hubspot at polywater is amy she is central she is key so uh you're not getting 20 calls from hollywater with the same information and each of us processing it differently we go to amy she gets an information and she shares a um you know this the same in this the same response to each of us so that we there's that consistency and amy's done an amazing job because when she implements one thing we're already throwing we want these five other things and so having one central figure i feel has been greatly beneficial and amy has is outstanding i i definitely i echo that and even from it's it's very evident to see that having one central point of contact we lovingly term her as the as the pit boss on on both sides it's really beneficial and likely something that we would recommend to anybody thinking about starting a sales and marketing transformation no matter how big or how small that you have a pit boss and somebody to to lead the charge one other thing too and in our work with poly water is could you talk about this idea of a super user i i think we turn them as a super user an early adapter or just kind of the importance of having somebody who is jumping jumping in with two feet and really adapting the tool on the platform um well i think having a super user as you kind of call it is important because you have that person who really kind of gets to understand the workings um the behind the scenes um because as mural kind of a test there you know you kind of get you get all sorts of requests and wants and wish lists you know from all from everybody and it really kind of takes understanding the whole platform to figure out the best way the easiest way the most user friendly to implement and present that to to the rest of the company to that department or whoever requested it and and i agree with amy she's as i said she's the focal point but uh the the super user in in our company he well i'm thinking of one he jumps in and is willing to work through to understand it to make it work for his need not everybody is has that same level of confidence so you have a spectrum and so the super user goes in and actually in a way formulates it so it's much easier for the people who are a little concerned or don't want to yeah don't want to develop that to come in and use it but his use has has shown us what capabilities we could use and the effectiveness and really pushes us so but amy is unfortunately or i mean i i would think she has to deal with that because then all this enthusiasm is focused at her and she needs to get those answers yes okay so we've kind of taken it from building your team having these key stakeholders to identifying once we get to that point some of the super users could you talk to us about your part of your training and you're kind of rolling out to the broader group but i think you guys have done such a good job of that and if you could just share a little bit about how you kind of broke it down and some of the training tactics and that you've used um some of the training tactics that we used was really kind of focusing on the immediate needs and then looking a little bit ahead ahead of that and knowing where we where it was probably going to go but um training them training everybody on kind of the fundamentals kind of the base bone of actually how you know the meaning of the platform but then also kind of enlightening them as what does that mean for for poly water how is poly water going to utilize that platform um so i don't want to say that we took baby steps they were kind of probably more of a toddler to adolescent step um in the training um but just kind of kind of kind of focusing on what we needed in the immediate as well as looking towards like a couple steps ahead i'm sorry i always jump in but i don't think amy realizes so not only does she have us when we could physically be in a room or she does it by zoom she then also puts the procedures in a central location for all of us so we can refer to them and um such on thing as certain things such as calling our contact list she walks us through it how to do it what's important and keeps us on task so amy she trains us she supports us and she reinforces it thanks i feel like this is part of the question that you always get in in a job interview but could you tell us about any challenges that have come up and and maybe share one one challenge and and how you overcame it if you need a little help i could i could think of one breaking down some breaking down some of the really complex processes that poly water has internally you kind of touched on it a little bit amy about some of the contact coding and translating it into an an automated system basically to where it's it's doing some of the leg work for you not that you have to read all the codes but maybe just talking about some of the steps that we took to kind of making that want or a desire a hubspot marketing automation reality that's a good one rachel that's that was a challenge and definitely um because our coding was so unique um with the company that we are you know um we had abbreviated and we hubspot it took a lot of took a lot of thought and conversation because now we were incorporating forms that we were collecting contact data from our website and putting our abbreviated codes on a form somebody wasn't going to understand that c4 meant industrial so it was it was really kind of that was a really big challenge and a really big exercise to try and get those codes correct to where our contacts were going to understand what we were asking for them or asking of them when they were filling out contact forms on on our website for for data collection that was it that's a good one that brings back a lot of memories it does for me too memories are ptsd i'm not sure which one it is but um so i want to kind of pivot to forward thinking so you guys have been on this transformation journey um and i hope for for you for you guys looking back on kind of at this point now you're you're like wow i can't believe how far we've come with it can and that we did didn't always have this or we why did we wait so long to make this change but as you think ahead to 2021 um you know what are some of the things that you're really excited about continuing to do more of or trying new things um now that you've kind of gotten over that initial hurdle of just starting the snowball going um as you've heard throughout this conversation um there's just start pick a spot you know digital transformation has to have a plan but you have to start it otherwise the plan will never actually come to fruition um and there's constant iteration there's constant you know once people get excited as meryl pointed out they're a thrush of enthusiasm and like everybody's wanting to do this that and the other thing um so just get started so now that you've gotten started what are the exciting things that you guys are looking forward to next year um one really exciting thing that we actually just initiated this week or talked to each department about this week is setting up more a more of a marketing plan with each department making them making them segment and really look at their contacts and create groups of contacts that they want to contact with and market with and who does that look like and what does that marketing look like and really making them visualize how all of this you know all of this back end and hard work that we've done for the last year of contact coding and who belongs to who and where does this contact come from and now we get to take all of all these contacts and cultivate them into these groups to actually market to them and actually give them some information that some valuable information that polly waller hollywater holds you know product information industry information and um everybody's really excited to to actually they're really excited to hear about it but i think they're going to be even more excited when they actually see how it's actually going to roll down in 2021 yes and once again i'm building on what amy said but from a marketing standpoint as a product manager once these lists of targeted audiences are focused we can create personalized messages i mean that's the premise of abm and just by using hubspot's tools of emails and embedded videos and um even a b testing of our headlines we can have strategic campaigns addressing the needs of these specific groups so i'm very excited that we're util we we're at a point through amy's hard work of getting us to to to think and um uh strength think strategically and once those groups are identified then we can because as we said in covid you can't just push out information about your product there's a lot of emails out there you need to be creative it needs to be personal it needs to have value and this helps us deliver value to our customer awesome uh well merrill amy thank you so much for joining us today to share a little bit about your digital transformation journey at poly water uh before we go is there anything that either of you would like to add that anyone that's thinking about starting this journey or is hesitant to starting this journey anything you'd like to say to them well [Music] i don't know if everybody has seen your video about being outfitters but my experience and i know amy has done the bulk of this work it's important when you go on a journey to have a good guide and to have a road map and lake one provides both they have patience they have experience and they are quick to adapt because that's what we need not only with covid but just in this environment is you can't slug away and push out the same message for a year you need to be responsive those are that's the tool of hubspot is you get the data you can respond and but i wouldn't know what to do if it wasn't for rachel and ryan so thank you very much i've grown a lot i've learned so much and really thank you thanks mel thank you all right well that does it uh thanks again and we'll see you next time bye