I work with manufacturing companies on sales automation and I see how much value it can create. That is why it bothers me to see so many automation projects fail in small and medium manufacturers.

These companies need the most help to survive in a difficult market. But many of them see automation as hype. It looks good on paper, but it does not change profit. Often they are right. Many projects fix local pains and ignore the basic economics of the business. If you want automation to matter, you have to tie it to profit.

One simple way to think about profit is:

Profit = Value shipped − Variable costs − Overhead

It is a simplification. It does not show capacity limits, cash flow, or risk. Those still matter. But the formula is good enough to think clearly.

If you accept this, there are three main ways to increase profit:

• Increase value shipped: More and better priced orders that you can actually deliver.
• Reduce variable costs: Fewer errors, less wasted engineering and sales time per order.
• Reduce overhead per euro shipped: Grow revenue faster than you grow admin and management.

Sales automation can help with all three. The key question for every idea is:

Which part of this formula does it move, and by how much, at my current capacity?

If you cannot answer that, the project is low priority, except for basic safety, compliance, and customer obligations.

One more rule first:

Make the process clear and efficient, then automate.

If a process is slow, unclear, or full of waste, automation will only make the waste happen faster. First define and clean the steps. Then automate.

Now let us walk through the three terms as an owner or manager.

1. Increase value shipped, but only with the right orders

Value shipped = quantity sold × price per unit (or per order)

Sales automation can push this term up, but only if you look at your real constraint.

Ask yourself:

• Am I demand constrained? Could I produce more if I had more good orders?
• Or am I capacity constrained? Are machines, people, or suppliers already at the limit?

Quick test for the last 3 months:

• Did you lose more sleep over idle capacity, or over overtime and late deliveries?

If you are near capacity, your goal is not "more orders". Your goal is "better orders". Higher margin, better fit to your processes, less chaos.

With that in mind, here is where automation helps:

1.1. Faster quotes, if the basics are already good

Automation can cut out the slow, manual steps in quoting.

• RFQs are captured automatically from email or portals, with customer and part data pre-filled.
• Standard routings, prices, and surcharges are pulled from a database instead of being rebuilt in Excel each time.
• The system prepares a draft quote so sales or engineering only adjust the edge cases.
• This makes quotes faster without just asking people to "work harder".
• Faster quotes mean you win more RFQs where you already have a real chance.
• You stop losing good work only because you reply too late.
• If your price, quality, or delivery performance are weak, speed alone will not help.

Simple metric:

Win rate for quotes answered within 24 hours vs later. If there is no gap, quoting speed is not your core problem.

1.2. More RFQs processed, to filter better, not to say "yes" more

Automation can increase how many RFQs you can screen without burning out your team.

• RFQ intake, file handling, sorting and basic data entry are handled by the system.
• Sales engineers spend more time judging jobs and less time on copy and paste.

The goal is not to say "yes" more often. The goal is to see more opportunities and select the ones that fit your margin and capacity.

Simple metric: track per month for one process:

• RFQs received
• RFQs quoted
• RFQs rejected with a clear "bad fit" reason

After automation, the share of "rejected for bad fit" should go up, while the number of good wins stays stable or improves.

1.3. Pricing discipline, not "magic" automatic pricing

Automation can help you apply your pricing rules the same way every time.

• Base prices, surcharges, and discounts live in one system instead of in several Excel files and in people's heads.
• When someone prepares a quote, the system calculates a recommended price and shows the expected margin before they send it.
• If someone tries to go below a minimum margin, the system blocks it or asks for approval.

Automation will not fix a bad pricing model. It will just apply your model faster and more consistently, good or bad.

Simple metric:

Average gross margin on new orders before vs after introducing pricing rules in the system.

1.4. Better customer and job selection

Automation can help you use your own history to choose better work.

• RFQs, quotes, and orders are captured in one place instead of in spreadsheets and inboxes.
• The system can tag each RFQ by customer, industry, part type, and later by margin and hours on the bottleneck resource.
• Simple reports show which customers and part types give you high margin per bottleneck hour, and which ones always cause rework, late payment, or firefighting.
• You can set simple rules or views so that "good fit" RFQs are highlighted and "bad fit" RFQs are clearly marked or parked.

So automation does two things here: it gathers the data without extra effort and it makes it easy to see and act on the patterns.

Simple metric:

Margin per hour on your bottleneck resource (for example machining or inspection) by customer or part type. Automation should make this metric a standard report, not a one-time Excel project. Over time, that average should improve for the work you accept.

Short example

You process 100 RFQs per month, quote 60, win 20 jobs. Your bottleneck is machining.

You introduce an RFQ intake and quoting system that:

• Records every RFQ with customer, part type, and estimated machining hours.
• Shows margin per machining hour by customer and part family.
• Flags RFQs from low margin, high trouble customers as "low priority".

You still quote 60 RFQs, but you reject bad fit and low margin jobs earlier. You still win 20 jobs, but with higher margin and less chaos on bottleneck machines.

Profit goes up, even though "orders won" did not change. The difference is that automation makes the selection rules visible and repeatable instead of living in one person's head.

2. Reduce variable costs per order

Variable costs include material, external services, consumables, some part of direct labor, scrap, and rework. In many SMEs, engineering and sales hours per order are also part of the running cost.

Sales automation can cut this in two main ways.

2.1. Fewer errors and less time on jobs that should never have started

Automation can help you:

• Capture RFQs in a structured way instead of messy free text emails.
• Turn emails into structured tables where it is practical.
• Check for missing drawings, unclear tolerances, wrong material names, wrong addresses.
• Apply simple go or no go rules before detailed costing.
• Expire and follow up stale quotes automatically, so they do not clog the system.

You avoid wrong routings, mispriced jobs, "we built the wrong thing" moments, and deep costing on lost or bad jobs.

Simple metrics (pick one to start):

• Scrap and rework cost per month linked to wrong or unclear quotes.
• Number of orders with "quote vs order mismatch" issues.
• Engineering hours spent on RFQs that never converted.

If these do not trend down, your "automation" is cosmetic.

2.2. Less engineering and sales time per order

Automation can:

• Answer standard questions with templates or a knowledge base.
• Reuse past quotes and process plans instead of starting from zero.
• Route simple parts through guided calculators so engineers focus on the tricky work.

The same engineering and sales team handles more turnover, or simply spends more time where their skill is really needed.

Simple metric:
Total engineering and sales hours booked to quoting and order preparation, divided by number of orders. That number should fall over a few months.

3. Reduce overhead per euro of value shipped

Overhead is everything you pay even if you ship nothing:

• Management
• Planning
• Admin
• Software
• Offices
• Indirect labor

In SMEs, overhead usually moves in steps. You do not remove "0.3 planners". You delay or avoid hiring the next one.

Sales automation helps here in two practical ways.

3.1. More turnover with the same back office

Automation removes small manual steps:

• Downloading RFQs
• Renaming files
• Creating folders
• ERP entry
• CRM updates
• Status emails

One by one they are small. Together they are a full-time job.

You can grow revenue without adding the same amount of admin and coordination.

Simple metric:
Sales and admin headcount per million euro of revenue. After some time, that ratio should improve or at least remain flat while revenue grows.

3.2. Less chaos, fewer firefighting hours

Bad orders create hidden overhead:

• Extra planning meetings
• Constant rescheduling
• Chasing corrections and clarifications

Sales automation can reduce this by:

• Enforcing clean order data and realistic due dates.
• Preventing impossible lead times at quote stage.
• Giving basic capacity visibility to sales before they promise something.

Simple metrics (pick one):

• Hours per week spent in planning or firefighting meetings.
• Number of reschedules per week in your planning system.

If those numbers do not go down, you did not cut overhead in practice, no matter how nice the automation looks.

4. Do not forget capacity, cash, and risk

The profit formula is useful, but it does not replace basic sanity.

Some hard rules:

• If you already run regular overtime or have a constant backlog of late jobs, anything that increases order intake should wait. First stabilise capacity and flow.
• If customers pay in 60 days and suppliers in 30, be careful with sudden growth in order volume. You can go broke with a full order book.
• If key pricing logic and special agreements live in one person's head, your first "automation" is to get that into a system. You do not need AI for that.

Some automations will not show an instant gain in value shipped, variable cost, or overhead, but still protect the business:

• Traceability and documentation that key accounts expect.
• A basic CRM so you are not blind when a salesperson leaves.
• Simple knowledge capture so you do not lose quoting and process know how.

These are still valid projects. Just do not confuse them with profit boosters. They are insurance.

5. Checklist to pick and run sales automation projects

If you only take one thing from this article, use this as a working checklist.

If you are busy, do not try to implement everything. Pick one sales process and one metric from this page and start there. Anything more will die in daily business.

Step 0: Check whether you have room to change anything

Implementation takes time, attention, and money before it pays back. Estimate how many hours per week the project will need from your team over the first two to three months. If you cannot find those hours without adding overtime or dropping other priorities, wait. A half-implemented system is worse than no system.

Step 1: Pick one sales process

Examples:

• RFQ intake
• Quote preparation
• Follow ups
• Quote checks and approvals

Ask:

• Can I draw this process on one page?
• Do I know who touches it today?
• Do I know roughly how many RFQs or orders go through it per month?

If not, you are not ready yet.

Step 2: Make it lean on paper

Before any tool:

• List each step in order.
• Mark steps that add no value for the customer or for a decision, then remove or simplify them.
• Decide who does what and when.
• Write simple rules for pricing, go or no go, and priorities.

If you cannot do this, do not automate. You will just invite chaos.

Step 3: Choose what to automate

Start where it is boring and repetitive:

• High volume, low skill steps like file handling, data entry, standard follow ups.
• Do not start with exceptions and special cases.
• Check that the data you need is actually available and clean enough.
• Agree with the team how they will work with the new tools.

Step 4: Define and track a few metrics

Before you start, write down a baseline. From the examples above, pick one or two metrics you are willing to track every month, for example:

• Value of orders per month from RFQs handled in this process.
• Engineering and sales hours per order in this process.
• Scrap and rework incidents from quote or order errors.
• Hours per week in planning or firefighting meetings.

After a few months, ask:

• Did value shipped increase without overloading the bottleneck?
• Did hours per order go down?
• Did overhead per euro shipped improve, or at least stay flat while revenue grew?
• Did chaos and firefighting in the shop decrease?

If you cannot see a clear change in at least one of these, stop or redesign the automation. It did not earn its place.

Treat sales automation like any other investment. It has to prove itself in profit or in clearly reduced risk, not just in a nice demo.

How Sales Automation Actually Increases Profit in Manufacturing © 2025 by Çağrı Üzüm is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0