For any business to do well, its success has to be based on happy customers. Satisfied clients tend to share their experiences. Unfortunately, this is even more true for disgruntled, unsatisfied customers. Many companies therefore quickly find that success is a double-edged sword. If the growth of the business is not properly supported, it can become quite damaging.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales offers a solution. It provides the answer to a variety of problems businesses face as they scale up. Particularly in the sales department, where, many will argue, it matters most.
In this article, we take a look at D365, what it is, where it fits in the grand scheme of things from the perspective of your business, and what benefits it has to offer.
What is Dynamics 365 Sales?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a solution that provides businesses not just with a platform that helps them provide a better experience for their clients, but also gives the business the ability to draw insights from its data and use that to perform more in-depth analyses and even predict how revenue is likely to change. In general, the software is meant to help businesses, sales teams in particular, deliver personalized experiences to their clients on a large scale. The platform features tools to give a complete view of your customer at the individual level.
When is Dynamics 365 Sales Useful?
This platform is a great fit for businesses with high volumes that need to manage relationships with their customers. With D365 Sales, your business has a holistic view of the entire sales pipeline. Detailed reporting and analysis capabilities enable you to determine the source of your leads, and identify what proportion of them are converting. You can also drill down into the details of each individual to help your team build closer, more meaningful relationships with your clients.
It also helps reduce turnaround times throughout your teams as live data is instantly accessible across different departments and can immediately be actioned. This gives your reps the ability to quickly adapt their messaging based on, for instance, historical interactions with the client. Or to identify which client is a risky one to onboard. This instant access to information dashboards with current information ensures you eliminate inefficiencies across the pipeline and introduces greater cohesion into your business as a whole. Dynamics 365 Sales also makes it possible to analyze performance using historical reports to identify trends, strengths, and areas of weakness.
How Does It Work?
At its core, this solution helps businesses manage relationships with their clients. This is achieved using a combination of tools to automate certain processes, ensure that staff is complying with laid down procedures, and guarantee that information is readily available to the relevant people when they need it. This could be in the form of reminders, tasks, appointments, and more, all linked to data in the CRM repository that provides additional insights and context.
D365 Sales works within the larger spectrum of Microsoft Dynamics 365. It can therefore be combined with other services within the suite to improve its functionality. Adding AI, for example, will enable you to extend the capabilities of D365 and add predictive analytics to many different aspects of the software.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Features & Capabilities
D365 Sales enables your clients to talk to you using the channels they are most comfortable with, while you view all these communications in one unified platform.
With access to one unified store of information, staff from across your organization can benefit from having all the data organized in one place, with all the relevant context included to enable them to immediately familiarize themselves.
The platform also comes with an app that your reps can take into the field. It is available on the Apple App Store, as well as the Google Play Store.
Rich insights give you helpful tips on the best courses of action based on a series of parameters. For example, the platform might suggest the most likely sale to close and recommend that you prioritize it. You might also be alerted to certain risks, like deals that have stagnated and may fall through, client relationships that are weakening,
The store of data that accumulates provides a rich source of lessons learned and useful best practices that newcomers into your company can quickly learn and refer to when in doubt.
Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Edition Features
Power Automate
Power Automate is a feature of Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise that assists salespeople in setting up automatic workflow tasks like synchronizing important files and documents, sending out notifications, and gathering sales data. Its no-code/low-code functionality allows for very quick learning of how to use all the tools and features.
Sales Accelerator
Sales Accelerator helps you create pipelines of quality leads, which streamlines the process. In order to help you close leads more quickly, it also offers you automated recommendations throughout the sales process. With the help of the relevant sales data and context that Sales Accelerator provides, you can quickly prioritize your customer lists.
Contextual Insights
Based on your contact history, leads, or account activity, Contextual Insights analyzes the relationships you’ve developed with customers. You can use the information this feature provides to strike up meaningful conversations with your customers via emails or other means of communication.
Conversation Intelligence
Conversation Intelligence captures, transcribes, and examines consumer and sales representative conversations. The data can be examined by sales staff to gauge how interested a buyer is in their goods. It aids in the prioritization of sales leads and the personalization of customer interactions, resulting in an increase in sales and productivity.
Benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales
Better Sales Support
Every lead that comes in has a trove of information to support your sales rep and help them stand the best chance of closing the deal.
Better Customer Relationships
By equipping your staff with the relevant knowledge and context, they have both the tools and the confidence needed to provide better service and forge a better understanding with the customer.
Improved Staff Efficiency
By doing the heavy lifting for your sales reps, D365 enables your staff to focus on the more important aspect of the job – actually closing the deal. It also provides the reports that are necessary to review and improve operating practices.
Improved Operational Resilience
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales is based on a cloud platform. This means it is easily scalable and, unlike locally hosted servers, is safer, and not prone to technical failures.
Flexibility
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales solutions can be gradually deployed and developed through so-called releases based on your demands. The breadth of your Dynamics 365 solution in terms of licenses and applications can be adjusted to your company’s growth at any time thanks to the cloud architecture.
User-friendliness
The user-friendly and simple user interface of the CRM solutions from Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables you to perform complicated operations in a simple, automated manner. Regardless of your operating system, platform, or end device, Dynamics’s interface and integration capabilities with Outlook and other office applications guarantee strong user acceptance.
Contextual AI for Smarter Sales
Using AI-powered conservation intelligence to identify customer mood and priorities during sales calls can massively boost your revenue. The contextual AI assistant feature keeps track of your tasks, opportunities and communications while providing you with useful information. For instance, based on previous history, it may advise you on when to reconnect with a lead that has gone cold.
Collaborative Selling
Using Microsoft D365 Sales optimizes both individual and collaborative sales workflows. Individually, the solution offers powerful sales automation capabilities, boosting productivity. It also fosters more teamwork, providing a centralized platform for simple sales material sharing and integrates Microsoft Teams chats with Dynamics 365 for in-the-moment collaboration.
Interactive Reports
The full Power BI integration enables your team to see all created dashboards and reports. The reports are fully customizable and interactive, providing only the information that you choose as relevant.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales Pricing
Dynamics 365 is module-based, meaning you can purchase just the products your business needs. So your particular setup will determine the licensing mix you end up settling on.
In any case, the Sales module has a tiered pricing structure:
- Sales Professional starts from $65 per user/month.
- Sales Enterprise starts from $95 per user/month
- Sales Premium starts from $135 per user/month
- Microsoft Relationship Sales starts from $162 per user/month
|
Package |
Features |
Price / User / Month |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Professional |
Basic version of the app (web + mobile) Sales automation Forecasting capabilities Pipeline management
|
$65 |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise |
Dynamics 365 Sales Professional + Microsoft AI Assistant Contextual insights Advanced customization capabilities Email intelligence Business card scanner
|
$95 |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Premium |
Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise + LinkedIn Sales Navigator Personalized seller dashboards Relationship analytics and health tracking Conversation intelligence
|
$135 |
| Microsoft Relationship Sales |
Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise + LinkedIn Sales Navigator Enterprise (requires a minimum of 10 seats) |
$162 |
Dynamics 365 Sales Drawbacks
Despite the fact that D365 Sales is a very adaptable solution, it is not intended to handle all customer or prospect interactions on its own. For instance, customer service-related features, such as trackable tickets, are not typically tackled with D365 Sales. Instead, you should consider looking into another, customer-oriented solution, Dynamics 365 Customer Service.
Additionally, it lacks bulk communication tools that would be smart and adaptable enough to tailor to customer preferences and ensure privacy law compliance. For that, you’ll be well advised to look at Dynamics 365 Marketing or ClickDimensions.
Dynamics 365 Sales Integrations with Other Microsoft Tools
Outlook Integration
You may access the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales on your desktop, web browser, or mobile device using the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook. This will allow you to view important data and connect your emails to account, contact, or opportunity records. The D365 Sales app itself then links conversations, appointments, and tasks so that your users may view the same information from whichever application they are currently using.
Microsoft Teams Integration
Your team members can view and work together on D365 Sales records, such as Accounts or Contacts, from within the Teams conversation or channel thanks to the integration with Microsoft Teams. You can now place and accept calls directly from the Account or Contact record in D365 for Sales if Microsoft Teams is indicated as your primary audio communication tool.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration
The integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps teams create meaningful connections with current or potential clients, expanding their pool of opportunities and improving their chances of closing a deal. You can use live org charts to see the organizational structure of the target company as well as maintain a record of all actions, including calls, messages, notes, and emails. You can also contact leads via a direct message without needing to connect with them first. Not to mention, you get a vast range of powerful and smart filters to use when looking for prospects.
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales with OMI
A first-class Dynamics consulting partner with over two decades’ worth of extensive experience implementing Microsoft Dynamics solutions for different types of businesses, OMI has the expertise to help you implement the most efficient and cost-effective solution for your specific scenario, ensuring that the needs you set out translate into a fully functional system.
Conclusion
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a powerful set of tools that can do wonders for your sales team and business as a whole. However, you have to ensure that your overall strategy is already in place and that you have a clear understanding of what your goals are and where you need the software to deliver. That way, implementation can be clear and the expectations will be clear and measurable.