I run a manufacturer’s entire marketing: social, ads, the website, email and follow-up. Now sales and support each answer faster, and the company makes more money from higher-value customers.

The company sells industrial machines across the country and does millions of dollars a year. I manage all of its marketing: the social media, the ad spend, the website, the email, the automations and the follow-up, with the analytics behind every decision. The first thing I did was split sales and technical support into their own sections of the CRM, so each answers faster. Then I built the follow-up automations, the call scheduling and the online ordering system that keep a buyer moving without waiting on a person. More buyers get an answer in time, more of them are the right buyers, and the company makes more money.

“During my time working directly with Tucker he had a huge positive impact on our capabilities.”From the company’s letter of recommendation

Client: A manufacturer, Florida (name withheld)
Their work: industrial machines, sold to businesses across the country
My work: All of the marketing: social media, ads, the website, email, automations and follow-up, plus the CRM workflow, call scheduling and online ordering
Scale: Millions of dollars a year in revenue
Reference: The company’s letter of recommendation, quoted with permission

1 to 2

Sections in the CRM

Sales and technical support, each worked by the right people, where everything used to land in one place

Millions

Dollars a year in revenue

The customer on the other end is buying a machine, so a faster answer is worth real money

Follow-ups waiting on a person

Email automations send the sales team’s follow-ups the moment they are due

Online

Orders and call bookings

Customers order and pick a call time themselves, where there was no way to do either

What the owner keeps

Built by me, handed over whole, with the files, the documentation and the training to run it without me. My help is there when they want it, and nothing has to be rebuilt if they never call again.

Theirs to keep

The CRM, with sales and technical support in their own sections and a written workflow for each, in the company’s own account
The follow-up email automations, the call scheduling and the online ordering system, in accounts the company owns
The social, ad and analytics accounts, with every number in them

Run without me

Sales answers sales and support answers support, each from its own queue
Follow-ups go out on their own, and a buyer books a call without a reply from anyone
Orders come in online without a person on the phone

The short version

Four things changed. Everything below is the detail.

The whole marketing, run by me

I manage the company’s marketing end to end: the social media, the ad spend, the website, the email, the automations and the follow-up, and the analytics that say what is working. One person decides what gets posted, what gets spent and what gets built, from the same numbers.

Sales and support, split apart

Their CRM had one section for everything that came in. The first thing I did, in their office, was give sales and technical support their own sections and rebuild the workflow around each. A sales inquiry goes to the people who sell, a technical request goes to the people who fix, and neither waits on the other. Both sides answer faster, and more of the right buyers get an answer in time to buy.

Follow-up that does not wait

I built email automations for the sales team, so the follow-up a buyer should get goes out when it is due instead of when someone finds the time. I added a way for customers to schedule calls themselves, so a conversation is on the calendar without the back and forth.

Ordering online

I created their online ordering system and integrated online orders into the business, so a customer can buy without a phone call and the order lands where the team can see it.

Before and after

One queue for every kind of question and a follow-up that depended on someone being free, against two queues worked by the right people and a set of systems that keep the customer moving on their own.

	Before	Now
Sales inquiries	In the same CRM section as every technical request	Their own section, their own workflow, worked by the sales team
Technical support	Mixed in with the sales inquiries	Their own section, their own workflow, worked by the technical team
Follow-up	Sent by hand, when someone had the time	Email automations send the sales team’s follow-ups when they are due
Scheduling a call	Arranged back and forth by email and phone	The customer picks a time from the calendar
Orders	No way to order online	An online ordering system, with orders integrated into the business
Process	Each step handled as it came up	Written workflows for sales and for support, so the next step is known
Website	Changes waited on whoever had time	Directed day to day by me, as part of the marketing
Email	Written one at a time	Automations and follow-up sequences, written in the company’s voice
Social media	In-house, as time allowed	Managed by me on a schedule
Ad spend	In-house, as time allowed	Worked by me against the analytics
Analytics	Available, but not read as a routine	Handled by me, and used to decide the ads and the posts

The detail

Each part of the work, what it replaced, and what it changed. Open the ones you care about.

Sales and support: two sections of one CRM

The first thing I did, on site: give each kind of customer question its own home and its own workflow.

What was there

Everything a customer sent in, a question about buying a machine or a question about a machine that would not run, landed in one section of the CRM. The two kinds of question need different people and move at different speeds, and keeping them together meant each one was slowed by the other.

What I built

A sales section and a technical section

Each with its own queue, so the sales team sees sales and the technical team sees support, and nobody sorts through the other side’s work to find their own.

A workflow for each

The steps from a new inquiry to an answer, written down for sales and written down for support, so the next step is known and the handoffs are clean.

Done with the team, not sent to them

I went to their office and set it up with the people who would use it, so the sections matched how the work is done.

What it changed

Both sides answer faster. A buyer ready to spend on a machine hears back sooner, and a customer with a machine down gets to the right person sooner. For a company doing millions a year, that speed is where the revenue follows: fewer buyers go quiet, and fewer customers wait.

Follow-up email that sends itself

Email automations for the sales team, so the next message to a buyer goes out when it is due.

A sales follow-up that depends on someone remembering gets sent late or not at all, and the buyer who was ready last week is talking to someone else this week. I built email automations for the sales team so the follow-ups go out on their own, on time, in the company’s voice.

What that gives the sales team: the routine messages are handled, so their time goes to the conversations that need a person.

Scheduling and the processes around it

A customer picks a call time from the calendar, and the steps around a call are written down.

I built the system that lets a customer schedule a call themselves, so a conversation gets on the calendar without the back and forth of finding a time by email. Around it I wrote the processes that improve how the team moves a customer from one step to the next.

The point is the same as the CRM split: the customer keeps moving, and nothing waits on someone being free.

Online ordering, built for them

A customer can order without a phone call, and the order lands where the team can see it.

I created the company’s online ordering system and integrated online orders into the business. A customer who is ready to buy can do it online, and the order is recorded where the team works instead of arriving as a message someone has to retype.

The whole marketing: social, ads, website, email

Everything I run for them, and the numbers it is run from.

I direct the website day to day: what changes, what gets added, what a buyer sees first.
I write the email: the automations, the follow-up sequences and the one-off sends, in the company’s voice.
I manage their social media.
I work on their ad spend, deciding what to spend and where from what the analytics say.
I handle their analytics, so the company can see what brings customers in.

Marketing and systems are one job here. The ads bring a buyer in, the CRM puts the buyer in front of the right people, the follow-up keeps the buyer moving, and the analytics say whether it worked.

The recommendation

The company’s letter of recommendation, in full.

To whom it might concern,

I am writing to recommend Tucker Shively for your current opening. Tucker collaborated with me as a consultant to A manufacturer, Florida (name withheld). We worked together on many projects as well as day-to-day direction with our website.

As a valuable indirect member of our team Tucker was always professional, time sensitive and extremely creative. During my time working directly with Tucker he had a huge positive impact on our capabilities.

I always put a premium on teamwork among my team and Tucker never failed to deliver. He was always prompt with ideas and feedback and once the solution was agreed upon, he completed the task ahead of schedule. Tucker has a great personality, is a delight to work with and always represented the company in a professional manner.

Thanks,
(signed; name withheld)

The signed letter is on file. It was written as a general reference, and the company has agreed to its use here.

What the numbers do not say

There are no measured figures on this page, on purpose.

The revenue is the company’s scale, not my result.The company did millions of dollars a year before I started. I do not publish a before-and-after revenue figure, because I did not measure one in a form I can show. What I can say is what changed in how customers are answered and followed up, that more of the right buyers got an answer in time to buy, and that the company made more money for it; the letter above is the company’s own account of the effect.
Response time was not logged in a dashboard I can publish.Sales and support answered faster once each had its own section and workflow. That is what the team saw and what the work was for, not a timed measurement.
The before column is as the team described it.The state of the CRM, the follow-up and the ordering before I started comes from what I found when I began and what the team told me.
The marketing figures are the company’s to share.The social, ad and analytics accounts are the company’s, and their numbers stay with them.

How I measured

Where everything on this page comes from.

The work: my own record of what I built for the company, from the CRM split on the first office visit through the follow-up automations, the scheduling, the online ordering and the marketing I still run.
The quote: a signed letter of recommendation from the company, quoted in full above and used with permission.
The scale: the company’s annual revenue is in the millions, given here in round terms. No exact figure of the company’s business appears on this page.
The old systems are as I found them when the work began and as the team described them to me.

Why it matters

A company selling machines wins or loses the sale in the time between a customer’s question and the answer. At the company that time depended on one queue and on whoever was free. Now each kind of question has its own home, the follow-up goes out on its own, the customer books the call and places the order, and the marketing is run from the numbers.

“He was always prompt with ideas and feedback and once the solution was agreed upon, he completed the task ahead of schedule.”From the company’s letter of recommendation

That is the point of all of it: a company doing millions a year answers every customer faster, and the people who run it get to work on the business, not only in it.