HubSpot for manufacturers, with your quotes and ERP orders in one place

Most manufacturers we talk to already have an ERP that runs the plant. It holds pricing, inventory, work orders and invoices, and the team would rather leave it alone. What it doesn't handle well is everything that happens before an order exists. That means the first call, the RFQ, the quote that sits for two weeks, and the distributor who used to order every month and quietly stopped.

Today that work lives in inboxes, a shared spreadsheet and the heads of two or three senior reps. HubSpot gives it one home. Each company, contact, RFQ and open quote sits on one record. Your sales manager can see what's moving and what's stuck without calling a meeting.

We set HubSpot up around how your plant sells. A job shop quoting custom parts from drawings needs a different setup than an OEM selling equipment through dealers. We start by following one of your RFQs through the business, then build HubSpot to match. The ERP stays in charge of orders and pricing. HubSpot handles the people, the quotes in progress and the marketing. If you'd rather set HubSpot up yourself, our HubSpot setup checklist for manufacturers lists each step in order.

Our rule is simple. If it affects what ships or what gets invoiced, it stays in the ERP. If it's about winning the order, it goes in HubSpot. Pricing, inventory, lead times and production stay put. Companies, contacts, RFQs, open quotes, follow-up tasks and marketing live in HubSpot.

Then the two systems share what each side needs. Reps see a company's recent orders and open quotes in HubSpot. When a quote becomes an order, the deal closes on its own, so the rep doesn't have to remember to update it. Sales and finance stop arguing about whose number is right, because they're reading the same one.

How the connection gets built depends on your ERP. NetSuite and QuickBooks have ready-made connectors in HubSpot's marketplace. Epicor, SAP Business One, Dynamics 365 and most job-shop systems usually need a third-party connector or a custom build. We look at your ERP and your data before we promise anything. If the connection will take longer or cost more than it's worth, we'll say so.

A custom power systems manufacturer came to us on Salesforce. We moved its sales team into HubSpot, then cleaned up the sync with its ERP so customers and orders match in both. Reminders, assignment and follow-up replaced steps people used to do by hand. Since the move, the team has had hours back every week. Read the power systems story.

Messy product data slows every ERP project down. If one part has three names, or a customer shows up twice, the sync copies the mess into HubSpot. So we clean up part numbers and company records first. What lands in HubSpot is something your reps can trust.

Plenty of manufacturers sell through someone else. That makes the CRM harder. The company that buys isn't always the company that uses the product, and one dealer may buy through two distributors.

We set up company types, such as OEM, distributor, dealer and end user, and use HubSpot's association labels to show how they connect. Association labels need a Professional plan. A few setups need Enterprise, and we'll tell you up front if yours does.

For independent reps, we keep it short. They carry several lines and won't fill in a long screen for every manufacturer they represent. A form with a few fields they can fill in from a phone gets used, especially when you send leads back to them. A thirty-field record does not.

Once order history flows in from the ERP, your sales manager sees each distributor's recent orders and open quotes every week. You find out a dealer has slowed down while there's still time to call.

They can, if you judge them by quotes and orders instead of clicks. Google catches people searching for a specific part, material or product type. LinkedIn reaches engineers, plant managers and buyers by job title and company. That includes the ones who will never search for you by name.

We track the actions that matter to a manufacturer. That might be an RFQ with a drawing or a CAD download. It might be a request to talk to an engineer, or a search for a local distributor. HubSpot then tells Google and LinkedIn which of those leads turned into a quote, so the ad platforms learn to find more people like them. HubSpot can send that data on its own, so there's usually no custom build.

Keep your specs and data sheets open, with no sign-up form in front of them. Engineers dislike sign-up walls, and AI tools can't read what's locked behind one. Ask for contact details when someone wants something that shows they're close to buying, like a sample, a quote or a design review.

A rep opens a company in HubSpot and sees its last orders and open quotes on one screen. They can also see the last time anyone talked to the buyer. The sales manager opens one report and sees every quote by stage and by age. Marketing can point to the campaigns that produced quotes last quarter, and the ones that produced nothing.

No one retypes quotes or builds the Friday forecast in a spreadsheet, and the forecast only counts live deals. When a senior rep retires, their accounts and notes stay with the company. You can check every one of those for yourself.