Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales | Enterprise Edition

We have previous blogged about Dynamics 365 for Customer Service and how field service operators can drive customer experience and productivity with Dynamics 365 for Field Service. In this blog we will look at another role based app – Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales.

The new sales landscape – an increasingly complex sales process

Sales professionals are having to respond to several changes in the market. Customer experience is predicted to overtake price as the key brand differentiator by 2020, and the speed of business is increasing, as customers are increasingly mobile and social. Businesses must begin to embrace digital transformation in order to remain competitive. With these trends in mind it is vital that sales professionals are savvy with their time, and with 40% of a worker’s productive time being lost switching tasks and with internal demands consuming 67% of their time, the outlook is challenging.

There’s more information, more people, and more choices in this always on, mobile-centric world. As a result, today’s buying process is more complicated than ever, with buyers who are more informed, independent and highly influential. With access to so much information by the time buyers talk to salespeople, they are already 57% of the way through the buying process. What’s more, customers have already defined their needs, researched solutions, settled requirements, and are starting to benchmark price. So, by the time the customer reaches out, the only thing left for the seller to compete on is price.  This is a narrow sales conversation.

In addition, an average of 5.4 customer stakeholders are involved in a typical B2B purchase decision. As deals become increasingly complex, new stakeholders from different parts of the customer organisation are weighing in on purchase decisions, making it hard for sales to create consensus among customer stakeholder groups and build deep relationships.

Creating engaging relationships with Dynamics 365 for Sales

With this in mind it is clear that the sophisticated and more demanding customers of today expect to be engaged in new ways. Having the ability to have a deep understanding of and connect with customers is critical to any company’s business strategy. According to a CEI Survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience.

The key to long-term success in this new environment is freeing up salespeople to focus on engaging, developing, and building customer relationships. It means that sales leaders need solutions that help salespeople stay focused, win faster, and build trust. New “Relationship Insights” capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 allow sellers to define customer engagement and use insights to deliver the next best engagement. These capabilities include:

• Relationship analytics: Using rich signals from Exchange and Microsoft Dynamics CRM you are able to automatically determine relationship health, risk and next best action, allowing your sales team to focus on selling to the right account at the right time
• Email engagement: Track email interactions, such as open, reply and if they have opened an attachment, allowing you to stay on top of your email and prioritise those prospects or customers that are most engaged
• Auto capture: Automatically capturing data from email eliminates manual entry and ensures that relationship data is kept up-to-date
• Relationship assistant: The relationship assistant – Cortana – empowers your sales and service teams to engage with customers delivering business value goals by having all relevant details at their disposal without having to navigate between a variety of applications

Managing the sales cycle to best practice standards

With predictive lead scoring and contextual insights with social analysis; sales professionals are empowered to make better decisions about which prospects to progress, which customers to engage, and which business issues to tackle first. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales helps sales leaders evaluate sales pipeline health with confidence. Familiar analytical tools from Power BI help identify top performers, coach developing reps, and share best practices across the team.

Sellers need to be able to work more efficiently to accelerate deal closure. Microsoft provides seamless, familiar, easy-to-use solutions that eliminate the need to flip between multiple apps. Sales professionals can easily gain access to the right people, content, and information needed to collaborate, refine, and win with apps that work across phones and tablets using any platform – Windows, iOS, Android.

Dynamics 365 for Sales – empowering your sales team everywhere

Being free to work anywhere, anytime is critical for salespeople. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales helps sales teams be more productive and proactive whilst reducing the cost of sales by allowing salespeople to achieve more whether they are in the office or on the road.

As Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives organisations the ability to start with what they need and scale as they grow, you may find that one of the apps fulfils your current requirements. To discuss your business sales process and to find the right role based app for your business contact Prodware today.