Beneath the discovery of cutting-edge manufacturing industry are semiconductors. Compared to the last twenty years back, the semiconductor industry is now developing at a very rapid pace blended with unique technology. Many of the semiconductor manufacturing firms including FABs are eyeing to deploy new-fangled technologies, but there are various obstacles to consider. According to some new research including from techARC, one of the imperative challenges underpinning this industry is the intricate procedure of sales. The point to be noted is that there is a certain level of non-transparency regarding who the end customer is. But, compliance, research, and testing requirements can amplify or even escalate the sales pipeline too as long as eight to ten years. Jennifer Capestany, marketing specialist at MST Solutions once said, “For instance, If someone is crafting a computer processor or a chip especially for a medical device, then those medical products have to go through testing, which could last for eight to ten years. Therefore, it is mandatory for these companies to track the chips and tests so that they are aware of their pipeline and what the potential is for a forecast for the next few years.” It not only requires constant endeavor around relationship management, but also at the same time, pushes an obstacle in terms of tracking various activities, data, and prospect information. Innovative modern-day technologies such as enhanced customer relationship management (CRM) can assist in capturing the entire sales procedure and can also highlight the entire history of the client while recommending the following steps for the salesperson.
In 2020, the semiconductor market size was valued at $427.6 billion and is expected to reach $698.2 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 5.9 percent during the same period. Along with this, increased investments in memory devices and Integrated circuit components are driving technological improvements in the semiconductor sector. While this is good news, semiconductor and component manufacturers still face challenges related to managing complex networks of multi-tiered original design manufacturers (ODM) relationships, distributors, contract manufacturers, and so on. Hence, to flourish in this highly complex market, sales teams need to capture every possible socket with solution selling, identify additional addressable opportunities, ensure a clear understanding of customer needs and improve forecast accuracy for improved pipeline and product planning.
The Challenges of Semiconductor Sales Effectiveness
In the semiconductor industry, a very usual hindrance to the effectuality of sales in non-customer-facing activities puts up an immense burden on the time of salesforce. For instance, efforts and time spent on gathering materials for internal meetings, specific time for working with the product group to review or examine new devices, and entering and collecting information into demand-forecasting systems. According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, an average of 26 percent time is spent by the company on customer-facing sales tasks like sales calls planning, traveling to meet with clients, and account strategy planning. On the other hand, only 28 percent of the time is spent on in-house tasks that are related to sales like campaign planning, while 18 percent of the time is spent on support and service activities.
Devoid of any marketing material and sales tools, the effectiveness of sales also gets ruined. According to experts, the sales force needs to be furnished with state-of-the-art updated product guides, competitive information, crystal clear message, and roadmaps to sell more intelligently.
According to semiconductor industry institutions like IESA, augmentation of innovation in technology will spearhead and further boost the semiconductor industry globally. With the emergence of more top-notch electronic devices such as IoT, smartphones, electric cars, tablets, there will be a continuous expansion of the semiconductor industry, which will also further drive the innovation in IC design employment, and also increase the volume of semiconductor marketing and sales jobs. Moreover, the demand for semiconductor products will escalate with the enhancement of IoT and digitization.
Some of the key findings of the experts include:
- Both automotive and industrial markets would push for huge growth in demand for processors and also increase investment in FABs and semiconductor process engineering jobs
- The triumphant market growth of the sensor sector is being carried out by several innovations in sensor technology and massive demand initiated by the latest concept of IoT
- Whisking tablet sales will continue to spearhead the data processing application market. Nonetheless, the sudden growth of ultra-mobile devices will discard tablets as the king in the market, and will ultimately turn out to be the superior driver for the data processing application market.
- The trend towards integrating more semiconductor features on a single chip (SoC) will continue.
How Technology can Perk-up Semiconductor Industry’s Growth in Sales
In order to augment a well-boned revenue for the semiconductor companies, the employment of accurate technology tools is essential, which can also empower these firms by gathering every bit and piece via decreasing costs of sales, enhancing the effectuality of sales, and selling of solutions. Most importantly, these imperative tools also aid the companies in terms of quotation management and international price.
Here are the top important scenarios, that semiconductor firms can grab for longer benefits:
- Customer segmentation is one of the very unique ways that can play a pivotal role in assisting and providing sales bandwidth for discovering innovative opportunities. In order to achieve this, customer segmentation must be done by the semiconductor organizations into several tiers, which must be based on margins and financial revenues as well as probable and existing wallet share. After this, the companies will be able to center on the ones with huge revenue, margin, and potential to grab a share of the wallet.
- Nitesh Mirchandani, VP and Global Head – Communications, Media, and Technology (CMT) Vertical, Birlasoft, said “forecasting of business is another key area because a vigorous and sturdy salesforce supervises the complete business with a full view of the entire pipeline. It also helps in speculating for intricate sales teams, which is especially important for the semiconductor makers. Now, the sales team can deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools to craft the forecasts error-free. Several criteria such as forecast type, adjustments, time, and currency, can help in determining the near-accurate forecast. Overlay splits is another area that can further boost in providing the accurate amount to sales overlays by contract value and revenue. It can aid the semiconductor companies to grab confidence in their services, and further assist the business tycoons to shoot up in this massively cutthroat market.”
- Mirchandani also opines that usually, customers take a long time moving through the funnel in the semiconductor industry due to the projects and products being invariably technical and spread across different locations/time zones, involving several key decision-makers. Longer sales cycles with multiple divisions can help keep a complete track of all activities and submissions as well as a strong collaboration between sales, marketing, technical teams. A CRM platform can also be the cross-functional collaboration tool between multiple teams to reinforce the value message at the correct points, ensuring that the prospect is well-informed on key differentiators, value adds, and new developments.
- On the other hand, the semiconductor companies find it extremely difficult to assign and train new clients, while sustaining the same personalized experiences they could offer during the initial phase of their journey. To get rid of this difficulty, a conventional automated onboarding journey can perk up the experience of the client and fetch correct teams as per the requirement to assure no obstruction in the coming years. A state-of-the-art CRM system can also be crafted in the onboarding process to assure perfect link with upstream opportunity closure and downstream fulfillment to ensure a seamless onboarding journey and full visibility to services and sales.
- A huge amount of time is spent by the sales team in either facing the clients or in preparing sales calls. A seamless sales call requires impeccable preparation and all sorts of information about the client and stakeholders. In this case, a top-notch CRM can assist the sales team to plan their activities accordingly and in viewing the required information. In fact, guided business process flows can also be provided by CRM to systematize the sales procedure.
