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“Microsoft delivers on intelligent seller productivity.” – Forrester 2017 Q2 report
The Satya Nadella Treatment
You might ask yourself what has given Microsoft the edge? While they have invested heavily in machine learning/artificial intelligence, and the now famous acquisition of LinkedIn, Forrester put it down to a “heightened focus on seller productivity”.
Sales software has traditionally focused on reporting and analytics. But with deep integration into Outlook, Microsoft has made it possible for sales reps to more productive on the go. Simple things such as not switching between apps has recently been shown to have a massive impact on revenue.
Forrester concludes:
“Microsoft is a best fit for companies looking to capitalize on the productivity gains of their other Microsoft cloud investments” – which is fairly obvious. But interestingly, they go on to say:
“..and those companies that are …looking to disrupt their peers with AI and machine learning”
Sales teams across the globe are already disrupting their competitors with Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 platform, but ironically, this disruptive ability is already being felt by Microsoft’s own competitors.
If you want to find out more, why not check out: Office 365 & Dynamics 365
[1] John Bruno, The Forrester Wave: Sales Force Automation Solutions, Q2 2017 (Forrester)
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Sounds like strange advice in the current market, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t. When times get tough, many make the mistake of losing confidence. They focus inwardly, looking to consolidate what they have, rather than outwardly: on what could be. This is unnecessary self-sabotage!
Rather: vision, guts and a little ingenuity can make all the difference, separating the winners from the losers.
A major opportunity every business should be exploiting is this: Creating extended sales teams. By viewing everyone in your business – yes, everyone – as a salesperson, you immediately increase your sales potential.
Selling is no longer about the gift of the gab – it’s about building trust. And that means that everyone in your business can – and should – sell.
In fact, those people who already work for you are actually in the best position to do so. For example, who better to up-sell a deal than a service technician who is always on the front-line delivering to customers?
It’s true – not everyone understands the world of sales. So, sales managers may need to step in to provide guidance at first – showing those new to the process how to identify opportunities. Putting incentive structures in place is key too, as it will change the behaviour people have in seeking out new sales avenues.
The first step? Focus on your service people. Service teams interact with clients every day, throughout every stage of the post-sales cycle. That interaction equates to trust – trust that’s been built up over time. Here are a few ideas on how to leverage their abilities:
Create referrals – Referral leads convert at a higher rate than typical leads. Not only that, but referred customers tend to spend more. If you’re not exploring this avenue with your service people, you may be losing out.
Ask for customer feedback – Develop a culture of gathering (and sharing!) feedback. Use that information to learn and grow. Ask your marketing team to develop a set of key questions, then get your service people involved deployment. Use the feedback gathered to help improve both your product development and sales processes. Your service people are on the ground – they can access insights others simply can’t. Change what needs to be changed on the basis of what you discover and, if need be, rethink your approach. Also, share the changes you made with customers who gave you the feedback in the first place. They will feel appreciated and are more likely to give you more feedback in the future.
Cross-sell, up-sell and even down-sell – Have a client with a basic plan or product? Get your service teams to ask well thought through, quality questions; they understand customer needs and pain points better than anyone else. This means they’re best positioned to make recommendations about how customers can access better services. Don’t discount down-selling either: if a client is wavering, a basic plan can be a way of retaining their business, with the potential for growth in future.
Capitalise on online chat – The market has changed. Digitisation, fluidity and instant communication are the order of the day. Customers have come to expect fast responses and real-time interactions. The right person providing the right information online can both improve customer experience and shorten the sales cycle.
There was a time when marketing teams simply handed over leads to sales. Those days are gone. Now, marketing is operating ever further into the entire sales cycle, taking customers ever deeper into the journey.
This means that your marketing teams are increasingly important to the sales process. It also means that they need to be more knowledgeable about sales (and how your business runs) than ever. Here are a few tips:
Here’s the key: customers are not only the people you sell to. They’re also the people who can help you sell.
Customers can be a great source of new sales leads. Leverage your customers’ networks to explore new opportunities and open new doors. If you’ve worked well with a customer and developed rapport, you’re well positioned to ask for references into other business units or departments in their company.
Existing customers can also be extremely effective last-inning closers too. If there’s a deal in the pipeline or a lead who’s on the verge of buying – but who is not yet quite convinced – ask an existing customer to help close the deal. ‘My experience with the company was great’ is often just that little bit more effective as a sales tool than ‘Your experience with our company will be great’.
Sales is no longer about smooth talking – it’s about building trust and long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with customers. With a little guidance and the right incentive structures in place, you can empower anyone in your business to build and grow the kind of connections every successful business needs.
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In our post, Microsoft Overtakes Salesforce.com, we shared an important market shift: Global analyst Forrester placed Microsoft ahead of Salesforce.com for the first time.
This is hugely significant. To understand this trend, we asked our customers why they chose Dynamics 365 over Salesforce.
Here were their top 6 reasons:
Most companies already use Microsoft’s products: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook etc. So, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is the leader in integrating those technologies with Dynamics 365.
Our customers love the fact they can work in Dynamics 365 without leaving Outlook. With Office 365 and Dynamics 365 built on the same common data model and hosted together on Azure, your data couldn’t be more integrated. And with Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s powerful Sales Navigator syncs directly with Dynamics 365.
While Salesforce also offers integration with Outlook, Exchange, LinkedIn etc. our customers said that the integration was more difficult and limiting in terms of functionality.
Our customers are being asked if they are seeing value in their technology investments – if it’s having an impact on their bottom line.
This is something Microsoft is very strong in. Feature-by-feature, analysts consistently find little to choose between Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. But when it comes to the price of those features, there is no comparison. Microsoft is consistently lower in cost. And lower cost means a quicker time to proving value.
For instance, if you compare the core enterprise offerings, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Plan costs $115/user/month. In contrast, Salesforce’s Lightning Enterprise Edition costs an extra $35 per user per month at $150/user/month. However, with the Customer Engagement Plan, you get Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service Automation, Powers Apps and Microsoft Flow – all included. In contrast, Salesforce only includes the sales elements.
Microsoft’s offering not only costs less, but it’s a complete, robust, multifunctional CRM. It’s much easier to get business value with a platform where you get more for less.
Your business isn’t static, so neither should your technology. The ability to customize and develop your platform should be a key consideration when choosing between Dynamics and Salesforce.
Unlike Salesforce, Dynamics 365 is only built on widely used programming languages (.Net, C# etc.) . This means it is easier to adjust your platform – because you have a broader pool of developers to draw on: either in house, or through Microsoft’s extensive partner network. And it also reduces the next issue…
Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning. There’s a huge technological wave coming. Companies will either surf on top of this wave or be crushed underneath. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft – all the big hitters are investing heavily in this. Salesforce realized this recently and went on a spree of purchases of AI start-ups. But in terms of spend, they can’t compete.
For instance, Microsoft’s annual R&D budget is $12Bn (at least $4Bn of this is AI). In contrast, Salesforce’s turnover is just $10Bn. Microsoft is pumping the benefits of this research into Dynamics 365 at a tremendous rate and have made it a key focus in future development.
In Conclusion
Dynamics 365 is at the forefront of helping businesses like yours become more efficient and improve your bottom line. It will cost you less than Salesforce and you’ll get more for your investment.
Why not join our customers and discover what Dynamics 365 could do for your business?
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The mantra’s stuck around for a reason, but the route to the promised land has changed.
Now, surprise and delight means not only delivering great customer experiences, but leveraging the power of tech in doing so – a fact that holds true for field service organisations in particular.
The reality is that in today’s hyper-competitive, tech-saturated marketplace, customers have come expect more than ever before from Field Service Organisations (FSOs):
At the same time, strategies that place too much value on new customer acquisitions through a short-term tech focus tend to be unsustainable.
So, how can FSOs navigate this new business landscape and use tech to power long-term sustainable goals? Here are five rules to bear in mind:
The next client … the next big sale … focusing too hard on these can come at the cost of your current customer base.
Remember: your existing customer base is your most profitable base. Also: it’s expensive to acquire new customers. Your current customers’ experience with your organisation should therefore be a high priority. So, improve the customer journey, making sure it’s studded with positive interactions and value-adds – repeat business and referrals await.
Consider this: a customer calls in, needing to have a piece of equipment repaired. The repairs are done, and the customer walks away happy. However, since the customer isn’t a specialist, what he’ll remember most about the process is the customer service he received. Sometimes it’s just as much about how you make a customer feel as the actual service you provide.
However, the reality is: your competitors get it. They know the value of tech. And chances are, they’re investing in it a big way.
The result? When enough businesses begin to transform, everything in the marketplace changes. The benchmarks customers expect service providers to meet go way up. The ways in which clients expect to interact with businesses (including yours) are completely remade.
Consider:
The right data analysis can reveal everything from up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, to ways in which to maximise your most profitable customer relationships, refine service delivery based on past feedback and identify your most profitable customer groups and product types. Gone is guesswork. In its place – data-guided decision making.
More importantly – data is the core of personalisation. And personalisation has come to define the most critical interactions in business today. Customers expect you to understand their needs and provide tailored, individualised service. To do that – and do it well, without draining your resources – you need the right tools to dig into your data.
For example, by knowing what products or services a customer ordered from you in the past allows you to streamline how you interact. It also allows you to suggest relevant options, upgrades and associated services.
Schedule optimisation is one internal process that can drastically improve profit. For example: by using Microsoft Dynamics 365, technicians can dramatically increase the number of appointments they’re able to fit in each day, improving both productivity and profitability.
As your business grows, increasing efficiency becomes paramount. Failing to put the systems in place to allow you to grow – without adding to headcount – can mean the difference between linear and exponential profit growth.
Field techs are the face of a business. So, make sure you empower them to consult with and add value to each client interaction.
This can mean anything from adding a touch of personalisation to every meeting, going the extra mile when it comes to fulfilling an order, or using tech to streamline order processing, parts ordering and payment. Doing so can be a powerful differentiator in the market.
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Get an hour back each day. That was the conclusion of global tech analyst, Nucleus Research when they looked at LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 for Sales. Putting it another way, using this combination gives you a 12-15% increase in your productivity. Think how many more deals you could close because of this.
This is a big claim. But it’s not unreasonable. We’ve been using LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 for months, and have been experiencing the benefits.
Now, when a lead comes to us we get all the data from LinkedIn alongside it. From this one lead, we can easily identify all the stakeholders associated with the deal – without leaving Dynamics 365. We can see their photos, job title, past work history, connections, etc. It’s incredible.
But don’t just take our word for it, you can read the report here. Or better still, see it in action in this short video:
Nucleus Research concludes:
“Clearly Microsoft has an advantage with the sheer volume and granularity of business relationship data within LinkedIn.”
What’s stopping you from having that advantage too?
Talk to us today.
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