The challenges of the modern sales environment are far removed from those of years gone by. Today, salespeople need to connect remotely with customers through multiple digital channels.
On these channels, customer behaviour adapts rapidly as new trends emerge, leaving sellers constantly fighting to stay up to date and deliver value.
Additionally, rising global inflation and a cost-of-living crisis has forced sellers to find new ways to remain competitive and convince customers to invest.
As a result of this, sales teams’ time is scarcer than ever with a lot to do to win deals. Without the right tools, you end up with ineffective sales processes, burnt-out staff and loss of deals.
However, Dynamics 365 Sales was designed to overcome the obstacles facing sales teams today. It allows for simpler management of sales opportunities, allowing sellers to easily collaborate, analyse and stay up to date.
As a result, their time can be redirected to creating stronger customer relationships, increasing close rates and filling pipelines.
Here’s everything you need to know about Dynamics 365 Sales and how it can empower your sellers to perform better.
What is Dynamics 365 Sales?
Dynamics 365 Sales is a CRM software application, created by Microsoft to help businesses manage their customer relationships and sales pipeline.
Here are some of the key things you can do within D365 Sales:
- Manage the sales pipeline: Track leads as they move through the sales process, allowing you track progress and identify those who become stuck
- Build relationships: Store information about customers and your business’s past interactions with them, enabling you to identify opportunities and personalise your approach
- Automate sales tasks: Automate repetitive tasks like sending emails and scheduling appointments, freeing up salespeople’s time to focus on closing deals
- Data analysis: Provide insights into sales performance, so your team can identify areas for improvement
D365 Sales integrates with your other Microsoft tools, meaning it works where your sellers do. Whether you’re sending a client email in Outlook or drafting a pitch deck in PowerPoint, you can get insight from D365 Sales, ensuring you always have the context you need to excel.
What features are included in Dynamics 365 Sales?
D365 offers several core features, designed to make it easier to manage sales opportunities and empower sellers to work better.
Most crucially, it’s a centralised platform. Dynamics 365 Sales can work together with other Dynamics 365 modules, including Customer Service, Finance, Operations and Human Resources. With everything on one platform, customer data is consolidated, providing a 360-degree view of insights across your business areas.
Here are the key features you should know about:
- Around the clock access: Dynamics 365 offers mobile apps and offline functionality, allowing users to access and work on data from anywhere, anytime.
- Analytics: Within Dynamics 365, you can access built-in dashboards and charts that visually present data. It makes it easier to gain sight and make better decisions.
- Advanced security: Dynamics 365 has a host of features to keep your organisational data safe. These include permissions, access levels, encryption and compliance with data regulations, including GDPR.
- Customer engagement support: Features like lead scoring and marketing campaigns make it easier to devote time to your most relevant leads, with targeted and timely activity to get them over the line.
- Automation: Automated workflows allow sellers to regularly stay in touch with leads and move them along the sales funnel, without constant manual intervention. You can also get automatic notifications about upcoming activities, changes to opportunities and relevant information.
- Business card scanner: This tool allows you to quickly capture important information and input it into Dynamics 365 Sales. You can then identify if there’s a past relationship with a customer and decide the next steps to take.
- Tailorable business process flows: BPFs in Dynamics 365 guide sellers through each stage of your sales lifecycle process. This process helps new sellers get started, ensuring they understand requirements at each stage.
- Timeline: The timeline within D365 surfaces any past and relevant communication with current leads and customers. You can then move forward with full contextual awareness.
- Product catalog: The dedicated product catalog allows you to quickly build sales quotes by adding products directly from it. Pricing details are updated automatically. It’s even possible to link products together to support sellers with product substitution and cross-selling.
- Quote management: Easily generate quotes directly from details stored in a sales opportunity. You can manage the entire sales negotiation process with easy quote revisions and quote delivery using familiar formats, such as Microsoft Word documents or PDFs. Sales orders can also be created directly from quotes when deals progress, and invoices generated from sales orders.
- AI embedded: Copilot works in Dynamics 365 Sales, helping you to analyse data, generate follow-up emails and guide you through the sales process, for easier lead management.
What are business process flows in Dynamics 365 Sales?
One of the core features in Dynamics 365 are business process flows (BPFs). They provide a guide for sellers on how to get work done, including the specific processes every opportunity should go through. This may include processes to qualify leads, manage it through the pipeline and generate quotes.
A business process flow consists of stages and steps. Commonly, a BPF stage might represent a stage in the sales process (such as the qualification stage). Within each stage, there are steps. These steps are ticked off by the seller within D365, so there’s a record the process has been followed for consistency.
Dynamics 365 Sales comes with two built-in business process flows:
- Lead to opportunity: A process consisting of four stages: qualify, develop, propose and close. It begins with a lead record and progresses through the closing of an opportunity.
- Opportunity: This uses the same stages as the lead to opportunity process, but it begins when an opportunity is created.
You can also create your own business process flows, allowing you to ensure your sellers are meeting the specific requirements of your organisation’s sales approach.
What are the benefits of Dynamics 365 Sales?
Given its numerous advanced features, Dynamics 365 Sales can bring significant benefits to sales teams, including making the management of leads and customers easier, more cost-effective and better.
We explore the key advantages:
1. Improved sales productivity_
D365 Sales offers a streamline workflow, with sellers able to manage their pipeline in one place and quickly get up to speed with changes. Automated features also make repetitive tasks faster, like data entry, scheduling and report generation.
Sellers’ time is freed up to focus on high-value work like lead nurturing and closing deals. As a result, productivity is boosted, and you get better output from your sales team.
2. Enhanced sales pipeline management_
D365 visualises the sales pipeline to track the progress of leads and opportunities at every stage. This allows for better prioritisation and ensures no opportunities are lost due to inaction.
You can also gain better data analysis. Reports and analytics enable you to learn more about sales performance. Identify trends, track individual and team performance against goals and use this data to make informed decisions about resource allocation and sales strategies.
3. Stronger customer relationships_
Great customer relationships are key to business success, and D365 Sales makes it easier to manage them.
Firstly, it stores a comprehensive record of all customer interactions, providing a full view of their needs and preferences. This empowers salespeople to build stronger relationships and deliver personalised experiences that delight leads.
This information can also be shared across the business, including to marketing and account managers. It ensures everyone is on the same page and provides consistently great service that encourages customer loyalty.
4. Focus on the right leads_
D365 Sales automates lead scoring based on pre-defined criteria. This helps you identify high-potential leads, so you can prioritise your efforts on those who are most likely to convert.
Using the data you already have stored on your customers, you can then nurture leads with targeted campaigns based on their interests for higher conversion rates.
5. Analyse and improve performance_
Gathering and analysing performance data is crucial to improvement. With D365 Sales, you can leverage data to pinpoint areas for improvement, such as lead conversion rates or sales cycle length. By understanding these areas, salespeople and sales leaders can continuously refine their approach and achieve better results.
It also has sales forecasting tools that use historical data and current pipeline information to predict future sales. You can then set accurate goals and plan for potential roadblocks before they arise.
6. Customisable and scalable_
Not every sales team is the same. Luckily, D365 can be configured to meet your specific needs, including following your organisation’s sales process or integrating with the range of tools you already use.
It’s also scalable. As your sales team and pipeline grows, D365 does too, meaning you’ll never outgrow it and go through the headache of getting a new system.
Get started with Dynamics 365 Sales_
Dynamics 365 Sales is a powerful tool for sellers. Leveraging data, automation and AI, it makes it simpler than ever to understand leads, manage the pipeline and maintain strong customer relationships.
Microsoft offer different licensing tiers of D365 Sales, allowing every business to find an option that suits their needs and budget. Prices start from £53.40 per user, per month, and there’s also a free trial version to get you started.
You’ll need to get your licence from a Microsoft Partner – and we’re one of the leading Dynamics 365 partners in the UK.
Our D365 Sales solutions are specifically designed to automate the sales and marketing process to cut down on tedious admin tasks and fast track the growth of your business.
We can use our expertise, product knowledge and extensive experience to discover, analyse, validate, build, deploy and launch a tailored D365 Sales solution for your business. We’ll also provide user enablement and ongoing support.
Find out more about how we can get you going smoothly with Dynamics 365 Sales.
