One of the biggest challenges in achieving adoption of a Customer Engagement system like Dynamics 365 Enterprise for Sales is getting sellers excited about what the system can do for them. Sellers always give me a enthusiastic response when I show them Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition Sales — Customer Insights. Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition Sales — Customer Insights is available as a preview for anyone on December 2016 online. You may be familiar with previous iterations of InsideView technology offered up in Dynamics CRM. Well Customer Insights is a new twist that takes it to a whole new level.
Customer Insights pulls together customer-specific data from multiple sources to deliver contact data, firmographic (my favorite new word) data, news, social media, etc., content sellers can use to help with lead development and prospecting. We’re going to look at the out of the box capabilities. You can go much deeper in respect to customizing Customer Insights data visualization, but that’s Admin blog stuff, not Sales user blog stuff.
Let’s use a common sales scenario to highlight the capabilities of Customer Insights. Salesperson is assigned a new account that is not a current customer. Let’s use Microsoft as an example. Open Customer Insights and use the Search function.
Find and select Microsoft. There’s a rich selection of data useful for sellers.
Import this data including company logo, contact information, website URL, ticker symbol into an account record. You’ve already saved time and increased the accuracy of your data because it’s done automatically. No manual entry. Important data you can use to research and explore the customer’s business is now right there, accessible from the account record.
Research
Do some quick research into what the company does, their industry in general, challenges they are facing, similar companies, etc. Use this information to establish rapport with the customer as a knowledgeable person and differentiate yourself from other potential vendors or suppliers.
Insights
Get the scoop on news, product releases, upcoming event and initiatives to frame your conversation and give it context.
Find Contacts
Search for contacts by name, title, or department. Import your LinkedIn, Outlook and Gmail contacts to find connections you already have under the account that you may not have been aware of.
After you find them, import them as a Lead or Contact record under the Account.
Family Tree
Let’s say you’ve established a successful relationship with an Account. This is where you can find subsidiaries, acquisitions, sister companies etc. that may be good candidates for additional prospecting.
That’s a good start to what you can achieve with Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition Sales — Customer Insights. Contact me if you want to get a look at this or the rest of Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition.
By Mark Abes, Vice-President Sales and Marketing, Dyn365Pros, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner, San Diego, Southern California.
