If you're selling ERP solutions into manufacturing, you've probably experienced this: strong initial interest from IT, promising discovery calls, detailed demos... then radio silence when the decision moves to "stakeholder alignment."

Here's what's really happening: Your deal just hit the plant floor—and your messaging didn't translate.

The Invisible Veto

Over the past 18 months, we've analyzed deal flow across 50+ ERP implementations in mid-market and enterprise manufacturing. The pattern is clear: operations leadership now holds veto power in 73% of manufacturing technology decisions.

Yet most ERP vendors are still selling like it's 2019—leading with IT buyers, speaking in system integration language, and wondering why deals stall at £500K+.

The IT/OT Language Gap

Here's the fundamental disconnect:

Your marketing says: "Seamless integration across your digital ecosystem"
Plant managers hear: Nothing that addresses their actual problems

Your sales deck shows: Real-time data visibility and analytics dashboards
Operations directors need: Concrete impact on unplanned downtime and OEE

The best ERP solution in the world doesn't matter if you can't speak credibly about operational outcomes to the people who actually run production.

What Winning Looks Like: The Data

We've tracked conversion patterns across ERP vendors targeting industrial accounts. The performance gap between average and high performers is stark:

Average Performers:

• Lead with IT/CIO contact exclusively

• Speak in "digital transformation" language

• Average sales cycle: 9-14 months

• Conversion rate: 12-18%

• Average deal size: £450K

High Performers:

• Engage operations stakeholders within first 2 touchpoints

• Message around production KPIs, quality metrics, maintenance efficiency

• Average sales cycle: 5-7 months

• Conversion rate: 28-35%

• Average deal size: £850K+

The difference? High performers have learned to navigate the complex OT/IT buying committee—and they've built their entire GTM motion around this reality.

The Multi-Stakeholder Equation

Manufacturing buying committees typically include 6-9 decision-makers:

IT Side:

• CIO / IT Director

• Infrastructure Lead

• Cybersecurity Lead

Operations Side:

• VP Operations / Manufacturing Director

• Plant Manager(s)

• Maintenance Manager

• Production Manager

• Quality Manager

Each persona has different priorities, speaks different language, and evaluates your solution through a different lens.

The mistake most vendors make: treating this as a sequential process (IT first, then operations).

What works: parallel engagement strategies that address both technical requirements and operational outcomes from day one.

Three Patterns We See in Winning Teams

1. They Lead with Operational Outcomes

Instead of "our ERP provides real-time visibility," they say:

"Manufacturing leaders we work with typically see 12-15% reduction in unplanned downtime within 90 days of implementation—here's how that translates to throughput in your environment."

The difference? Specificity about what operations leaders actually care about.

2. They Map the Buying Committee Early

High performers invest time understanding:

• Who influences the decision (often not who you think)

• What metrics each stakeholder is measured on

• Where political alignment exists (or doesn't)

• Who has historically blocked similar initiatives

This intelligence shapes their entire engagement strategy—messaging, collateral, proof points, even demo focus.

3. They Speak Two Languages Fluently

Winning vendors maintain separate content tracks:

For IT buyers: Integration architecture, security protocols, data governance, API capabilities

For operations buyers: OEE impact, quality consistency, maintenance optimization, production scheduling

They don't water down either message trying to appeal to everyone—they deliver the right message to the right stakeholder at the right time.

The Cost of Getting This Wrong

We recently analyzed a sample of stalled deals (qualified opportunities that went dark after 90+ days):

• 67% stalled when operations leadership got involved and didn't see relevance

• 23% stalled due to misalignment between IT and operations priorities

• 10% stalled for budget/timing reasons unrelated to messaging

Translation: 90% of lost deals weren't lost because of your product or pricing. They were lost because you couldn't bridge the IT/OT divide.

At £500K-£2M+ deal sizes, every lost opportunity due to misaligned messaging represents significant revenue left on the table.

What This Means for Your GTM Strategy

If you're reviewing your industrial sales and marketing approach, here are the critical questions:

1. Stakeholder Coverage: Can your sales team speak credibly to both IT and operations leadership—or do they default to IT-centric conversations?

2. Content Arsenal: Do you have messaging and collateral that addresses operational KPIs, or is everything written from a technology-first perspective?

3. Engagement Sequencing: Are you engaging operations stakeholders early, or only after IT has "qualified" the opportunity?

4. Pipeline Quality: Are you measuring just volume, or tracking how many deals successfully navigate the full buying committee?

5. Win/Loss Intelligence: When you lose deals in manufacturing, do you actually know which stakeholder wasn't convinced—and why?

The Industrial Sector Isn't Like Other Markets

Here's what makes manufacturing different:

• Longer tenure: Operations leaders often have 15-20+ years with the same company. They've seen trends come and go.

• Higher skepticism: They've been burned by technology that looked good in demos but failed on the plant floor.

• Different metrics: They're measured on uptime, throughput, quality—not innovation or digital maturity.

• Risk aversion: Unplanned downtime costs £10K-£50K+ per hour. They won't risk production on unproven solutions.

Generic B2B SaaS playbooks don't work here. You need strategies built specifically for how industrial buying committees actually make decisions.

Moving Forward

The ERP vendors winning in manufacturing aren't necessarily those with the best product. They're the ones who've figured out that selling to industrial accounts requires:

• Bilingual capability: Speaking both IT and operations language fluently

• Multi-stakeholder orchestration: Engaging the right people at the right time with the right message

• Operational credibility: Demonstrating you understand plant-level realities, not just system capabilities

• Patience with complexity: Respecting that these decisions involve serious operational risk

If your conversion rates in manufacturing feel lower than they should be, or your sales cycles feel longer than necessary, the gap probably isn't your product—it's your ability to navigate the IT/OT divide.

About Bonafide

We're a specialist GTM agency dedicated to helping ERP and technology providers break into manufacturing and industrial accounts. Unlike generalist agencies, we focus exclusively on navigating the complex IT/OT buying committees that characterize industrial sales.

Our "Precision Pipeline" framework—developed in partnership with brands like Google, IBM, and Bain—helps ERP vendors translate technical capabilities into operational outcomes, engage multi-stakeholder buying committees effectively, and accelerate deal velocity in manufacturing accounts.

Recent client results:

• 83% increase in conversion rates through multi-stakeholder engagement strategies

• 60-day reduction in average sales cycle length

• 20% increase in market share within 12 months for a leading ERP integration partner

If you're evaluating your industrial GTM approach, we offer complimentary Industrial GTM Audits to identify where you might be leaving revenue on the table.