What Companies Are in the Manufacturing Field?
The manufacturing field is kind of a big deal.
Simply put, there’s no chance of technological development without manufacturing. It’s a vital part of the global economy: value added in the industry is expected to reach $8.8 trillion by the end of the year.
And that, just in case you didn’t know already, is why manufacturing is such an attractive industry to sell to. Deals here have huge potential to be high-value and long-term – and as a result, there are plenty of businesses with products built to make the lives of manufacturing executives easier. As you’re reading this blog post, we’re going to guess that you’re a sales pro working for one of them – welcome!
That said, the manufacturing industry is a complicated beast. Finding the right businesses to sell to requires deep industry knowledge and highly targeted strategies – and that’s where this blog post comes in. Today, we’re going to run through different options for finding the top companies in the manufacturing field (and tell you which one we think is best 😉).
We’re also going to run through the very top businesses in the industry, which should inspire you to get started on your own prospecting path.
Ready? Let’s get going.
How to Find the Top Companies in the Manufacturing Field
There are plenty of ways to find top companies in the manufacturing field – using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, using the Surfe App, asking your boss to hold your hand, calling your mum for help…
Spoiler alert, some of these are more effective than others. Here, we’re going to dig into two of the best ways to find the businesses you want to sell to – LinkedIn Sales Navigator and the Surfe App.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator probably needs no introduction – but we’re going to do it anyway. Sales Navigator is a handy tool built by (you guessed it) LinkedIn for sales professionals like us.
LinkedIn has a lot – and we mean a lot – of accounts, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it super simple to narrow these accounts down until you have something approaching your ICP.
Quick note: LinkedIn Sales Navigator isn’t free, but investing in a tool to help with your manufacturing industry prospecting is sure to pay for itself in terms of the time you save.
Now onto the good stuff. Here’s how to use it:
- Head on over to LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s Advanced Search feature and use the industry filter to narrow your list down to people in the manufacturing industry
- Next, you’ll want to get more specific. This means setting filters to match your ICP – that could include company size, company location, company headcount, and so on and so forth
Easy peasy! LinkedIn Sales Navigator also gives you access to detailed company profiles so you can quickly check if you’re on the right track. It will even build lists of executives at the businesses you’re targeting so you know who to reach out to.
Surfe: The Superior Option
Now, this isn’t going to be a takedown of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It’s simply not our style to bash another product.
Here’s the thing: LinkedIn Sales Navigator is great. But it just so happens that Surfe is even better. It’s got added features that will save you even more time and smooth out your workflows. Let’s take a look at these features and what it is that makes them so special:
Company Search: similar to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Surfe has a big (and we mean really big) database of companies ready for you to sell to. You can filter this database to find companies that directly match your ICP – by revenue, employee size, or HQ location, to name a few.
To give you a basic example, you’ll want to start by filtering by industry – manufacturing, in your case – and then move on to other filters specific to who you sell to.
Once you’ve got a business you like the look of, simply jump over to the ‘People’ tab to see who works there. You can then filter these employees down to the profiles of people you’ll want to speak to.
Surfe also lets you search for companies similar to others, using the ‘Company Lookalikes’ feature. You know those clients that are just perfect in every way? You can find even more of them using this tool – dream businesses, hello.
Data Enrichment: here’s where things start to get really good. Say you’ve found a company that looks perfect. Add it to a list, and then click the ‘Add to CRM’ button. Surfe will automatically do a free email lookup, company phone numbers and mobile phone numbers – in a matter of seconds. Woah.
Surfe’s power comes from its waterfall enrichment technology. This basically means it works through contact data from the best of the best databases, like Apollo, RocketReach, Dropcontact, Hunter and People Data Labs, until it finds contact details that look good. Once Surfe has run email addresses through ZeroBounce to double check them, it will show you these contact details, and, even better….
CRM Integration: ….feed them directly into your CRM. Yep, that’s right. Surfe integrates with your CRM of choice (whether that’s Salesforce, HubSpot, or a Google Sheet, to name a few) and sends the contact data straight there. This gives your sales team all the information it needs to engage with top companies efficiently – plus, it mitigates the risk of human error that comes with manual data transfer.
Why Surfe is Better for Targeting Manufacturing Companies
As you can see, Surfe improves and builds on the workflow you’d typically have when using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is fantastic at filtering profiles down until you have a list that matches your ICP – but after that, you’d still have to go elsewhere to find contact details and then get involved in some fiddly data transfer to get it all into your CRM.
Surfe takes the above workflow and combines it all into just a few clicks. You can filter its database to get a list of people you’d like to reach out to – and then find their contact details and send them over to your CRM in one go. By streamlining this process, you’re gaining valuable time back which can then be used to get on with the other parts of your job – actually selling, for one thing.
Surfe’s enriched data also minimizes the risk of you using an incorrect phone number or email address – which, as well as having the potential to be pretty embarrassing – wastes a lot of time. No thank you.
And when you’re prospecting at scale – which you probably are, given the size of the manufacturing industry – every second counts.
| Companies | Employees | HQ location | Revenue | Website | Industry | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alibaba | View 80,531 employees | 🇨🇳 China, Hangzhou | $ 500M – $ 1B | alibaba.com |  |
Wholesale, Manufacturing, B2B |
| Honeywell | View 120,551 employees | 🇺🇸 USA, NC, Charlotte | $ 1B+ | honeywell.com | |
Manufacturing, Software, Industrial Automation |
| Johnson & Johnson | View 103,420 employees | 🇺🇸 USA, NJ, New Brunswick | $ 1B+ | jnj.com | |
Manufacturing |
| Midea Group | View 16,947 employees | 🇨🇳 China, Foshan | $ 500M – $ 1B | midea.com | |
Consumer Electronics, Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, Cooking, Electronics |
| BASF | View 64,072 employees | 🇩🇪 Germany, Ludwigshafen | $ 1B+ | basf.com | |
Chemical, GreenTech, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Advanced Materials, Biofuel, Agriculture, Chemical Engineering |
| ArcelorMittal | View 57,973 employees | 🇱🇺 Luxembourg, Luxembourg | $ 1B+ | arcelormittal.com | |
Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Industrial, Mining |
| ZF Friedrichshafen AG | View 64,813 employees | 🇩🇪 Germany, Friedrichshafen | $ 500M – $ 1B | zf.com | |
Automotive, Autonomous Vehicles, Manufacturing, Fleet Management, Fuel |
| EssilorLuxottica | View 57,809 employees | 🇫🇷 France, Charenton-le-Pont | $ 500M – $ 1B | essilorluxottica.com | |
Eyewear, Manufacturing |
| Coal India | View 8,378 employees | 🇮🇳 India, Kolkata | $ 1B+ | coalindia.in | |
Manufacturing, Power Grid, Pollution Control, Mining |
| Mitsubishi Electric | View 5,227 employees | 🇯🇵 Japan, Tokyo | $ 1B+ | mitsubishielectric.com | |
Electronics, Manufacturing, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) |
Top 10 Companies in the Manufacturing Field
By now you should be feeling more than ready to go out into the big wide world of manufacturing industry prospecting, with your sidekick Surfe ready and waiting to help. Let’s take a quick look at some of the top companies in the manufacturing field.
If you’re selling to the biggest of the bunch – lucky you, we’ve done the work for you. If your ICP looks a little different from the list below – don’t panic. Download Surfe and you can build a list of companies most relevant to you, all in just a few minutes.
Alibaba.com
Alibaba.com is one of the biggest B2B commerce platforms in the entire world. It has over 200M products and is available in over 200 countries and regions. Hefty.
HQ Location: China
Annual Revenue: $500-1000M
Honeywell
Next on our list of the top 10 manufacturing companies is Honeywell. Honeywell’s got its fingers in many pies, so to speak – it makes automation solutions for industries like aerospace, oil and gas, healthcare and IT.
HQ Location: US
Annual Revenue: $>1000M
Johnson & Johnson
We’re sure you’ve heard of this one. Johnson & Johnson is a major player in the healthcare space, manufacturing a wide range of products including the US Covid-19 vaccine.
HQ Location: US
Annual Revenue: $ >1000M
Midea Group
Midea manufactures products you’d find in your home – dishwashers, laundry machines, fridges, and air fryers, for example.
HQ Location: US
Annual Revenue: $500-1000M
Basf
Basf is the world’s biggest chemical company. The clever people working there manufacture solutions to create chemistry for a sustainable future.
HQ Location: Germany
Annual Revenue: $ >1000M
ArcelorMittal
Steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal is next on our list of top companies in the manufacturing field. Like Basf, it’s committed to a sustainable future – which it works towards by making steel a vital part of low-carbon and other sustainability initiatives.
HQ Location: Luxembourg
Annual Revenue: $ >1000M
ZF Friedrichshafen AG
ZF Friedrichshafen AG is in the business of mobility. It supplies products and systems for cars, commercial vehicles, and industry technology to vehicle manufacturers, mobility providers and startup businesses.
HQ Location: Germany
Annual Revenue: $500-1000M
EssilorLuxottica
EssilorLuxottica specializes in all things eyecare. It covers every stage of the value creation business, from manufacturing right through to consumer purchases.
HQ Location: France
Annual Revenue: $500-1000M
Coal India
No prizes for guessing what Coal India specializes in. It’s committed to producing coal and coal products with conservation and energy security in mind.
HQ Location: India (shock)
Annual Revenue: $>1000M
Mitsubishi Electric
Mitsubishi is a big brand name – and with good reason. The business manufactures and sells electrical and electronic products in fields such as automation, mobility and home products.
HQ Location: Japan
Annual Revenue: $>1000M
Let’s Wrap It Up!
The manufacturing industry is kind of a big deal – but you know what? So are you. Use Surfe to help you find the businesses you want to sell to, identify the people you need to connect with and enrich your CRM with contact data, and you’ll be on the money.
Maybe we’ll see you on a top 10 sales professionals list one day.
Next step on your sales stardom journey
Sign up to Surfe – and there’s a free trial ready and waiting just for you.
FAQ’s About Companies in the Manufacturing Field
What Falls Under the Manufacturing Sector?
If you’re involved in the creation or production of goods, then it’s likely you work in the manufacturing sector. For example, you might be creating anything from a vaccine, to the parts of a car, to electrical appliances you have in your home.
What Are Two Top Manufacturing Businesses?
Globally, two of the top manufacturing businesses are Alibaba.com, which is a China-based e-commerce platform for global trade, and HoneyWell, which is based in the US and creates automation solutions for the manufacturing industry (among others).
What is the Number One Manufacturing Company in India?
The number one manufacturing company in India is Coal India, which produces coal and coal products for India. Its aim is to create energy security for the rapidly growing company, in an environmentally conscious manner.