Dynamics 365 Sales: convert your candidates into customers as soon as possible
Sales can be a highly complicated environment, both B2B (Business-To-Business) and B2C (Business-To-Consumer). We are talking about a particularly competitive sector, in which you always have to have an advantage over the competition. The technology we use is, more and more, one of those advantages that we can sell to our clients over other companies – The tools of the sector have changed a lot since the beginning of this century
Step One: Prospect
The first question we must always ask ourselves is: Are we clear about our markets and segments to attack? It is important because it will help us choose which services to use to start looking for potential clients. Do we buy a database from a third party? Do we use LinkedIn Sales? Do we attend fairs, events and congresses to make ourselves known?
All of these are necessary steps in getting started with customers in what is, obviously, the beginning of any business transaction: searching. Once we find those, hopefully, potential customers and obtain the necessary information (no matter how minimal), it is key to create their profile in Dynamics 365 Sales. If we already have a customer list in another Microsoft suite or a third party, we can import it.
One of the advantages of Sales is the ease with which the information can be completed: we fill in some data and we can start managing the created profile. We access the Time Scale functionality to start acting on the potential client.
When there is interest, you have to qualify
As we see that our potential client has an interest in one of our products, it is time to rate it.
Dynamics 365 Sales creates, during a default qualification:
- An account, which is the organization to which our potential contact belongs
- A contact, more specific than the account since it gives us all the client’s details
- An opportunity, where we can base our value proposition
Without pause, start generating business
As we said at the beginning of the article, the sales sector can be dizzying to be able to get ahead of others when it comes to finding a client. That is why we must be the fastest at all times, since we never know how many potential suppliers our client has in the portfolio.
As we have seen when creating a profile, the opportunity also has a Time scale section, where more than one worker can collaborate to generate the offer.
To speed up the generation of an offer for our contact, Dynamics offers the possibility of creating our products and / or services within the suite and organizing it by different filters, such as the price. Thus, we can obtain at the moment an estimate of the costs that we can also present in real time to our client during our pitch or meeting.
When an offer is sent to the customer, it is activated. For this, there is the Activate Offer function.
Once the offer is active, it can only be edited from Review
Of course, you have to close the offer (whether successful or not) in order to close the opportunity
It should also be noted that Dynamics 365 has a tool to generate documents in Word. They can be edited so that they have their own or corporate style of the company, giving them a presentation format to the client.
The connections that Dynamics Sales allows between entities (accounts, contacts, offers, …) can be a great advantage. In this way, we can easily find a list of offers made on the same occasion.
Once we have the offer, we must continue with the business process. Now it’s time to fill in the Develop section.
If we have already completed all the necessary steps, we can proceed to Propose and fill in the form data.
In the same way, if we are sending the last offer before closing the opportunity, we can fill in the closing form in Close.
At this point, with the last offer sent and a response received by the client, we can close the opportunity by labeling it as Won or Lost.
Having obtained the opportunity, with a response from the customer, the corresponding orders and invoices can be created directly from Dynamics 365 Sales. However, taking into account the importance they have in the accounting department, they are still carried out within ERPs.
What does Dynamics 365 Sales offer my sales team?
Your sales force increasingly needs to be interconnected and in communication. Dynamics 365 Sales is one of the tools that best manages to keep those relationships open, while you share information and can alert you to changes in real time.
With Dynamics 365 Sales, it is easier to follow the process of attracting and selling all customers and prioritize those that require attention. With the ability to include key information such as a list of your services (with prices included), which gives you the ability to make instant quotes to present to your potential clients, Sales may be the tool your team needs.