Your first 90 days as a marketing leader at a manufacturer

You have the title, a laptop and a login to a website someone else built. The owner wants growth, the sales manager wants leads, and nobody can tell you where the trade show contracts are filed. Your first 90 days as a marketing leader at a manufacturer will shape how both of them see you for a long time.

Spend days 1 to 30 listening to sales, customer service and five customers. Spend days 31 to 60 auditing what exists: accounts, analytics, the website, the CRM, show contracts and spend. Spend days 61 to 90 shipping two visible wins and a one-page plan. Do not start with a rebrand, a new website or a new CRM.

1. Days 1 to 14

   Listen: book the owner, five or more salespeople, customer service, five customers, engineering and two distributors or reps

2. Day 30

   Conversations finished; a one-page summary of what you heard goes to the owner and the sales leader

3. Days 31 to 60

   Audit: accounts, inquiry path, CRM routing, analytics, search, sales tools, product content, show contracts, spend, agencies, brand files, channel content

4. Day 60

   One spreadsheet of every account, recurring cost and contract end date

5. Days 61 to 90

   Ship: every inquiry answered within one business day, and the one sales tool reps use most, rebuilt

6. Day 75

   The rebuilt sales tool is in reps' hands

7. Day 90

   Present the one-page plan, with two visible wins as evidence

Avoid anything that takes six months and shows nothing in three: a rebrand, a website rebuild or a CRM change. Source: Our position.

What does the owner expect from a new marketing leader?

Our team structure analysis read 20 marketing job postings from US manufacturers and industrial distributors live on Indeed on Oct. 26, 2026. Of those, 17 asked the marketer to support sales directly, 15 mentioned trade shows and only five mentioned paid advertising (download the dataset (CSV)).

Several postings put lead handling at the center of the job. Super Radiator Coils’ marketing operations specialist is asked to “Manage all new inbound sales inquiries” and make sure every lead is assigned to the right internal team. EDCO Products built a whole coordinator role around responding to, qualifying and routing inbound leads from the website and trade shows. Nexen Group’s marketing manager is asked to “Administer and optimize CRM systems” and manage lead routing and dashboards, and reports to the vice president of sales.

In a company this size, marketing earns its budget by making sales more effective. Your first 90 days should prove you understand that before you propose anything else.

Days 1 to 30: who should you talk to first?

Listen before you change anything. Book these conversations in your first two weeks and finish them by day 30.

Who	What to ask
The owner or president	Which customers and markets they want more of in 2027; what marketing did well and badly before you; what budget exists and who approves spending; how they will judge your first year
Every salesperson, or at least five	What a good lead looks like; where the last three new customers came from; which sales tools they use and which they ignore; what they wish they could send a prospect but cannot. Ride along on a customer visit if you can
Customer service and inside sales	Where inquiries arrive (web form, phone, email, distributor); how fast they are answered; the five questions customers ask most
Five customers, a mix of new, large and at-risk accounts, introduced by sales	Why they chose you; who else they considered; how they search for suppliers and specs; what nearly made them leave
Engineering or product management	What launches in the next 12 months; where the current product content is wrong
Two distributors or reps, if you sell through a channel	What content they need, and whether they can find it

Write one page on what you heard. Share it with the owner and the sales leader before day 30. It shows you listened, and it gives you permission for the audit.

Days 31 to 60: what should a new marketing leader audit?

The checklist runs in order of risk, with the items that can cause a crisis first. The last column shows where an owner wrote the same work into a job posting.

#	Audit item	Where to look	Red flag	Named in a posting
1	Who owns the accounts: domain registrar, website hosting and CMS, Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, LinkedIn page, CRM	Ask IT, finance and any agency for the admin list	Any account in a former employee’s or an agency’s name
2	Website inquiry path	Submit every form and call the main number	A form that goes to a dead inbox or takes more than a business day to answer	Super Radiator Coils: “Manage all new inbound sales inquiries”
3	Lead routing in the CRM	Trace five recent inquiries from first contact to quote	Leads with no owner, no source or no follow-up date	Nexen Group: “Manage lead routing”
4	Analytics	Google Analytics 4 property and its key events	Form submissions not tracked as key events
5	Search visibility	Search Console; a site: search on Google; your robots.txt file	Important product or capability pages not indexed
6	Sales tools	Collateral folders; ask reps what they actually send	Brochures with old logos, wrong specs or discontinued products	Nexen Group: brochures, product catalogs and application guides
7	Product content	Datasheets, spec pages, drawings, CAD downloads	Specs on the website that disagree with the current datasheet
8	2027 trade show commitments	Signed contracts, deposits, booth space, cancellation dates	A cancellation or payment deadline in the next 90 days that nobody owns	Seaman Corporation: a marketing events manager role
9	Marketing spend	12 months of accounts payable coded to marketing; credit card statements	Subscriptions nobody uses; retainers without deliverables
10	Agencies and freelancers	Contracts, scopes, notice periods	Auto-renewing retainers; no written scope	Super Radiator Coils: “Manage digital marketing vendor relationship”; Miller Manufacturing: agencies and freelancers
11	Brand files	Logo files, photos, fonts, templates	Only low-resolution files, or only the agency has the originals
12	Channel content	Distributor or rep portal; co-op program terms	Distributors using your old literature or making their own	ARG Industrial: “Coordinate vendor co-branded materials”

Item 1 comes first because it is the only one that can lock you out of your own marketing. If a former agency controls the Google Ads account or the domain, fix that before anything else.

For item 4, Google defines a key event as “an event that measures an action that’s particularly important to the success of your business.” For a manufacturer that usually means an RFQ form, a contact form, a spec sheet download and a phone call click.

For item 5, Google’s own SEO starter guide suggests searching Google for your site with the site: operator. “If you see results pointing to your site, you’re in the index.” It also warns that “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months,” so do not promise search results inside your first 90 days. While you are there, read your robots.txt file; our study of manufacturers’ robots.txt files shows what they let AI crawlers reach.

For item 3, if the CRM and the ERP both hold customer records, decide what the ERP owns first before you fix routing.

Spend the last week of this phase totaling what you found. List every account, every recurring cost and every contract end date in one spreadsheet, which becomes the backbone of your plan.

Days 61 to 90: which two wins should you ship first?

Ship two things the sales team will notice and the owner can measure. Our recommendation for almost every manufacturer is the same pair.

Win 1: every inquiry answered within one business day

Fix the path from website form, phone and email to a named person, with a response-time target and a weekly report of inquiries received, answered and passed to sales. Several of the 20 postings were written around this job, from Super Radiator Coils’ inquiry management to EDCO’s lead qualification role. It costs little, it uses data you already have, and salespeople see the result in their inboxes within weeks.

1. 1

   Inquiries arrive

   Website form, phone and email, plus distributor referrals if you sell through a channel

2. 2

   A named owner answers

   Within one business day, against a stated response-time target

3. 3

   Route the result

   Qualified inquiries pass to sales; the rest are answered and closed as no fit

4. 4

   Report weekly

   Inquiries received, answered within one business day, and passed to sales

A named owner and a weekly count turn response time into a number you can show the owner at day 90. Source: Our position.

Win 2: rebuild the one sales tool reps use most

Ask the sales team in your day 1 to 30 interviews which document they send most often. It is usually a line card, a capabilities presentation, a product overview or the top product page. Rewrite it with current specs, current photos and one customer proof point, and get it into reps’ hands by day 75. Retire the old version everywhere it lives.

The one-page plan

Then write the plan on one page. It should name three goals for the next 12 months tied to numbers the company already tracks, such as inquiries, quote requests, response time and trade show leads. Include the budget you need, what you will contract out, and what you will stop doing. Present it at day 90 with the two wins as evidence.

What should you avoid in the first 90 days?

Avoid anything that takes six months and shows nothing in three, such as a rebrand, a website rebuild or a CRM change. Each may be the right call in 2027, and each will go better once you know the products, the customers and the sales team. Also avoid cutting a trade show before you have talked to the salespeople who work it. Some shows matter for reasons that never appear in a lead report.

In your industry

Build to print and job shops

Win 1 is RFQ response time. Measure hours from RFQ received to quote sent, alongside inquiries answered.

Building products and spec-driven sellers

Add architects and specifiers to your five customer conversations, and audit continuing education programs and spec sections alongside collateral.

Industrial distribution and channel-led manufacturers

Item 12 moves up the list. Distributors selling from outdated literature is a common and fixable problem.

Catalog and e-commerce sellers

Item 7 becomes the biggest job. Product data errors cost orders directly, so audit a sample of your top 50 SKUs before anything else.

What to do Monday

1. Ask IT and finance for the admin list for your domain, website, analytics, ad accounts, LinkedIn page and CRM.
2. Book the owner conversation and at least five sales conversations for your first two weeks.
3. Submit every form on the website and note who responds, and how fast.
4. Ask accounts payable for 12 months of marketing spend.