Is your sales team empowered with a best-fit customer relationship management (CRM) system? If they’re working without one, they’re unlikely to make intelligent sales decisions and build strong, profitable relationships —and if they’re still working from an outdated legacy CRM system, it will become increasingly difficult for them to compete in the marketplace for business, and ultimately, help your company grow.
That’s why the CRM application market is one of the fastest growing business application markets today, expected to reach $81.9 billion by 2025—a nearly 600 percent increase since 2010, finds Grand View Research. As this market grows, we’re seeing Microsoft’s share in it increase, too.
Why D365?
Much of the success of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 (D365) for Sales platform stems from its balance between advanced functionality and an adaptable, intuitive interface. The CRM system helps streamline the entire sales cycle to make prospecting, forecasting and closing deals easier than ever for sales associates, leveraging tools your team is likely already using and familiar with.
Read on as we dive into five critical areas where Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales excels compared to CRM competitors—making it an indispensable tool for your sales staff.
A salesperson can’t expect to effectively sell anything if they don’t understand a potential client’s perspective. That’s where Dynamics 365’s advanced business intelligence features shine.
Uniting all prospect and client information in a single user-friendly interface—with real-time analytics and statistics viewable from the Live Sales Dashboard—your team can gain both big-picture and granular views into client trends, histories and behaviors to make informed and educated decisions regarding how to bring in new clients, maintain and cross sell existing ones and develop marketing campaigns.
As leads progress through various selling stages, Dynamic 365 provides the sales associate with a maneuverable sales funnel giving insights across the full lifecycle—with the ability to integrate customized automations, trigger alerts, gate requirements and more to keep the lead moving efficiently within your organization’s unique processes.
As Dynamics 365 is a Microsoft platform, it easily integrates with other key Microsoft applications as well as partner tools to automate and connect processes for a unified experience
You and your sales staff are probably already using many of the popular integrations that are native to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, which include but are not limited to:
Notable among Dynamics 365’s integrations for sales associates is its direct tie-in with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Microsoft, which acquired LinkedIn in 2006, has leveraged this asset to ensure salespeople can carry out standard LinkedIn activities—such as viewing and making connections, sending messages, adding content and posts, and interacting with users—directly through the Dynamics 365 interface.
Carrying out these actions through your CRM rather than separately through the LinkedIn app enables users to track and manage all activities and conversations in one place. This ultimately prevents overlap in your database, while enhancing its contents with additional useful sales data about people, organizations and relationships.
Across nearly every industry, mobility has become a critical necessity for sales professionals who travel often, working from cars and coffee shops. Without on-the-go access to critical work information, tools and resources through mobile CRM, they’d be hard-put to do their jobs.
In fact, research shows that 65 percent of sales reps who’ve adopted mobile CRM achieve their sales quotas, while only 22 percent of those using non-mobile CRM have reached the same targets.
With Dynamic 365’s mobile interface, your sales team can access your database anywhere, anytime, from virtually any device. They can keep up with key activities such as checking dashboard analytics, entering a new lead and moving an opportunity down the sales pipeline—boosting their productivity, as well as responsiveness to ensure high levels of customer service, regardless of when and where they are working on any given day.
With so many features and options available to maximize your sales process, Microsoft doesn’t leave your staff to figure everything out. The Microsoft team provides users with an extensive online resource library to help them stay productive without lost down time.
Microsoft also maintains an extensive, certified partner network to provide the highest level of competencies and knowledge of the latest Microsoft Dynamics and business applications technology.
A qualified Microsoft partner can not only help you create and implement a comprehensive Dynamics 365 strategy to meet your goals for developing sales, targeting your prospects and increasing customer retention—but provide training for system administrators and end users to ensure your team feels comfortable adopting the system for day-to-day use.
Want to learn more about Microsoft Dynamic 365 for Sales or test it out with a free 30-day trial to see if it’s the right fit for your organization? Contact Microsoft-certified partner TrellisPoint at 888-719-0248 or sales@trellispoint.com.
Assessing whether Dynamics 365 for Sales will integrate smoothly with an organization’s current technology stack involves a few key steps:
Comprehensive Assessment: Start by conducting a comprehensive assessment of your current technology stack and infrastructure. Understand how your users interact with your system, identify how your data is structured, how it flows within organizational processes, and identify all the business use cases.
Integration Capabilities: Consider the integration capabilities of Dynamics 365. It’s designed to integrate with your existing data, business logic, and processes. Also, consider integrating with your Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Power BI, and other Dynamics 365 solutions.
Consultation: Consult with TrellisPoint to understand the specifics of integrating Dynamics 365 with your current technology stack.
To ensure minimal disruption to existing sales workflows and processes during the transition to Dynamics 365, consider the following steps:
Pre-Migration Phase: Identify your business requirements and goals and understand how Microsoft Dynamics 365 aligns with your vision. Conduct a readiness assessment to evaluate your organization’s preparedness for the migration, identifying any potential roadblocks or areas that require attention.
Migration Phase: Plan the migration timeline and sequencing, ensuring minimal disruption to your business operations. Execute the migration process diligently, paying close attention to detail and employing robust data migration tools or services.
Post-Migration Phase: After the migration, validate the data and functionality in Dynamics 365 to ensure everything is working as expected.
Training and onboarding for sales teams to fully leverage the capabilities of Dynamics 365 (D365) should be comprehensive and tailored to the needs of the team. Here are some recommended steps:
Define Objectives: Clearly define what specific goals you aim to achieve with D365. This will guide your implementation strategy and help you measure success.
Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Identify KPIs that align with your objectives. These should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. By tracking progress against these KPIs, you can evaluate the effectiveness of the software and make adjustments as needed.
Create a Roadmap: Outline the steps and milestones required to achieve your goals. A well-structured roadmap provides clarity and ensures that everyone involved is on the same page.
Involve Stakeholders: Engage with stakeholders across your organization to gather their input and understand their needs. By including them in the planning phase, you can address concerns early and ensure a smoother transition.
Conduct Training Sessions: Microsoft offers a variety of training resources, including online courses, bootcamps, and deployment guides. These resources can help your sales team understand the capabilities of D365 and how to use them effectively.
To gauge the learning curve and ensure a smooth adoption process:
Adoption Framework: Microsoft provides an easy-to-follow Adoption Framework that guides you through the adoption process and helps optimize results. Each phase is broken into simple steps that guide you to the best practices, resources, and tools you need to build and deploy a customized adoption approach.
Monitor Progress: Regularly check in with your team to assess their comfort level with the new system. This can help you identify any areas where additional training or support may be needed.
Provide Ongoing Support: It’s important to provide support to new users during and after onboarding. This not only helps them get up to speed more quickly but also ensures they have the resources they need to overcome any challenges they may encounter.
Performing a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis for implementing Dynamics 365 for Sales involves looking at several key metrics or indicators:
To track and measure the return on investment (ROI) post-implementation, especially in terms of improved sales performance and customer relationship management, organizations can consider the following: