The power of well-structured sales processes with Dynamics 365 Sales

What is the secret that keeps a company thriving while its competitors struggle under seemingly identical circumstances? The answer lies in discipline and well-structured internal processes that leave as little room for errors as possible.

While structure is important across all business units, from customer support to manufacturing, the sales department plays a unique role. The sales team connects with new customers, maintains relationships with regular clients, generates profits, and serves as the face of the company.

In this article, we will focus on how to understand your sales processes better, optimize them, and how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales can make your team more collaborative, efficient, and effective.

Types of sales in business

There are different sales approaches that work best for various types of companies and customers. These strategies can depend on the participants involved in the sales process, the methods used for customer acquisition, the emphasis on convenience and quick transactions, or the goal of nurturing long-term customer relationships. Each of these approaches can be tailored to meet specific needs and objectives.

B2B vs. B2C sales: How sales processes differ in approach and execution

Depending on who is doing business with whom, relationships and strategies can take entirely different paths. A business can engage with customers, other businesses, government entities, and even its own employees. However, for today’s topic, B2B (Business-to-Business) and B2C (Business-to-Consumer) relationships are of the utmost importance.

Aspect	B2B	B2C
Sales approach	Focuses on building long-term relationships, detailed touchpoints, and tailored solutions	Emphasizes quick transactions, emotional appeal, and convenience
Sales cycle	Longer sales cycle involving multiple stakeholders and detailed negotiations	Shorter sales cycle, often involving immediate purchase decisions
Decision-making	Rational, based on ROI, cost-effectiveness, and business needs	Often emotional, based on personal preferences, convenience, and perceived value
Challenges	– Navigating long sales cycles  – Aligning marketing and sales  – Building trust virtually	– Managing lead quality  – Handling a high volume of inquiries – Keeping up with evolving consumer expectations
Marketing strategy	Content marketing, relationship building, and personalized outreach	Mass marketing, social media, and personalized recommendations
Key metrics	Customer lifetime value (CLV), conversion rates, sales cycle length	Customer satisfaction, repeat purchase rate, average order value (AOV)
Technological tools	CRM systems, marketing automation, data analytics	E-commerce platforms, social media marketing tools, personalization engines

Inbound vs. outbound sales: The role of lead generation and customer engagement

Besides the type of participants on each side of the sales process, the initiator of the seller-customer interactions is also important for the strategy. For example, inbound sales don’t chase. They attract. This approach wins potential customers through valuable content and experiences. When it comes to outbound sales, the initiative lies in the hands of the sellers themselves. They actively reach out to potential customers through direct contact methods like email or phone calls.

Aspect	Inbound Sales	Outbound Sales
Sales approach	Customer-centric, providing value and building trust	Seller-centric, initiating contact and driving engagement
Initiation	Prospects initiate contact after engaging with marketing content	Sales reps initiate contact with potential leads
Sales cycle	Often a longer sales cycle, as it involves nurturing leads through content and engagement	The sales cycle can be shorter, with direct outreach and immediate follow-ups
Lead generation	Content marketing, SEO, social media, and inbound calls	Cold calling, cold emailing, direct mail, and networking
Challenges	– Generating high-quality leads – Aligning marketing and sales – Handling high volume of leads	– Sourcing accurate leads – Overcoming rejection – Building rapport
Marketing strategy	Creating valuable content, SEO, social media marketing, and lead nurturing	Targeted outreach, personalized emails, cold calls, and follow-ups
Key metrics	Website traffic, lead conversion rates, content engagement	Call-to-meeting ratio, email response rates, lead conversion rates
Technological tools	Marketing automation, CRM systems, content management systems	Sales engagement platforms, CRM systems, lead generation tools

To sum up, the inbound approach works better if you aim to build long-term relationships and trust with your customers. It suits those businesses that are willing to invest in content marketing and have a longer sales cycle. However, if you require immediate results and have a dedicated sales team ready to reach out directly to potential customers, the outbound strategy would be your go-to. It’s suitable for businesses that thrive on direct engagement and can handle a higher volume of outreach.

Transactional vs. relationship-based sales: The impact of long-term sales strategies

Research has shown that higher customer satisfaction is positively associated with increased spending, customer retention, and positive word-of-mouth. Satisfied customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and spend more with your company over time.

Moreover, prioritizing relationships and trust with the clients (relationship-based sales) over closing individual sales quickly (transactional sales) can be beneficial in the long run.

Aspect	Transactional sales	Relationship-based sales
Sales approach	Product-centric, emphasizing features, benefits, and competitive pricing	Customer-centric, focusing on understanding and meeting customer needs and goals
Sales cycle	Shorter sales cycle, with quick decision-making and minimal engagement	Longer sales cycle, involving deeper engagement and ongoing interactions
Lead generation	Cold calls, direct emails, time-limited offers, and promotions	Networking, referrals, personalized outreach, and content marketing
Challenges	– Overlooking customer needs – Being perceived as too aggressive  – Neglecting after-sales service	– Longer sales cycles – Need for deeper expertise – Pressure from sales targets
Marketing strategy	Highlighting immediate benefits, creating urgency, and competitive pricing	Building trust, providing value, and maintaining ongoing communication
Key metrics	Number of transactions, sales volume, and conversion rates	Customer lifetime value (CLV), customer satisfaction, and retention rates
Technological tools	Sales automation tools, CRM systems, and e-commerce platforms	CRM systems, relationship management tools, and customer feedback platforms
Examples	Retail sales, online shopping, and fast-moving consumer goods	High-value B2B sales, real estate, and financial advisory services

Understanding the sales funnel

Having looked into the different approaches in sales, we can move on to something more substantial: the anatomy of the sales process. The sales funnel would be a good visual representation of the customer journey from awareness to action. Traditionally, it consists of six stages: awareness, interest, consideration, decision, purchase, and retention:

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In this section of the article, let us focus on what these stages represent, the best ways to move prospects through the funnel, and some tips and tricks on making data-driven decisions at each stage.

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There is a reason why the sales process is often represented by a funnel. In the beginning, almost the entire world is your playground. Anyone who is somehow related to the field you do business in might come across an advertisement, a blog article, a YouTube video, a social media post — you name it. And the exact moment they learn about your products and services, they enter the funnel.

At this stage, it is best to use analytics to track the performance of marketing campaigns and identify which channels are driving the most traffic.

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At the awareness stage, the audience is filtered only by whether they know about the product or service. The interest stage narrows the audience even further.

Here remain those who are more likely to collaborate with you. Now, it is time to monitor their engagement metrics, such as website visits, social media interactions, and email open rates, to understand what content resonates with your audience.

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The consideration stage begins when potential customers go from researching your business to discovering that you can help them fulfill their particular needs. This is a crucial moment to demonstrate that your solutions offer more and suit their needs better than anything your competitors have to offer. Analyzing conversion rates and lead scoring would be a good idea to identify high-potential prospects and tailor your approach accordingly.

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Having considered all the pros and cons of your business and the competitors, the prospects are faced with a decision to make: “Who’s it going to be?”. To tilt the fortune in your favor, use sales data to refine your value propositions and address any objections that prospects might have.

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One might think that the purchase is the final stage of the sales process, and the job is done here. However, this is not quite true. Gaining a new customer is challenging, but keeping one is also important. To ensure long-term partnership with your clients, track sales metrics to ensure a smooth buying process and identify any bottlenecks that need to be addressed. For example, you need to keep an eye on the conversion rate, as well as the sales and revenue growth, to understand how well your sales team is doing and where improvements can be made.

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The final stage of the sales funnel is the retention stage. Here, you are mainly dealing with the already existing customers, supporting them, and gathering feedback. Use it along with the retention metrics to improve your products, services, and customer experience.

Understanding the sales process in Dynamics 365 Sales

If you are familiar with Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment, you already know that it is the next generation of CRM and ERP applications. It allows you to restructure your business and view it as one entity where all cogs engage with one another without obstacles.

As for Dynamics 365 Sales, it specializes in streamlining sales pipeline management, providing your team with tools to close more deals, capture and nurture leads, enhance client relationships, and efficiently generate orders. Taking a close look at the sales process within the application, we will be able to notice a pattern similar to the funnel we described in the previous section.

When a potential customer discovers your products or services, they become a lead, prompting the sales team to engage with them and convert that prospect into an opportunity. The outcome of this interaction determines whether the opportunity is won or lost. In a favorable scenario, the potential customer transitions from a prospect to a valuable asset for your business.

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How to automate and optimize sales with Dynamics 365

Let’s dive deeper into how different Dynamics 365 Sales functions benefit you and your customers (potential and existing) at every stage of your cooperation:

• Awareness: 
  • Lead creation triggers: Set certain triggers to automatically create leads in the system (a client clicking a CTA banner on your website, for example).
  • Lead management: Capture and track leads from various sources like web forms, emails, and social media.
  • Marketing integration: Integrate with Dynamics 365 Marketing to run targeted campaigns and track their effectiveness.
• Interest:
  • Customer insights: Use AI-driven insights to understand customer behavior and preferences.
  • Engagement tracking: Monitor interactions with potential customers through emails, calls, and meetings.
• Consideration:
  • Opportunity management: Track and manage sales opportunities, including details about customer needs and proposed solutions.
  • Competitor analysis: Identify and analyze competitors to refine your sales strategy.
  • Automated accounts creation: Create not only opportunities but also accounts and contacts automatically when qualifying a lead.
• Decision:
  • Sales pipeline: Visualize and manage the sales pipeline to ensure opportunities are progressing. 
  • Quotes and proposals: Generate and send professional quotes and proposals to potential customers.
• Purchase:
  • Order management: Create and manage sales orders directly within the system.
  • Contract management: Handle contracts and agreements efficiently.
• Retention:
  • Customer service integration: Integrate with Dynamics 365 Customer Service to provide excellent post-sale support.
  • Customer feedback: Collect and analyze customer feedback to improve products and services.

Business value: Why a well-structured sales process matters

In this section of today’s article, let’s take a step back from the picture we’ve already painted: from various approaches to sales and their impact on results to the sales process in general and within the Dynamics 365 Sales application. But what is the real business value of imposing a structure on the sales process?

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Higher sales productivity

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about the Sales app is productivity. It offers automation features and AI support, allowing sales representatives to reduce the time they spend on manual tasks and focus more on communicating with customers.

For example, Copilot can create highlights for you by analyzing all emails and conversations with the client and summarizing them into bullet points. This works for accounts, leads, opportunities, you name it.

Improved customer relationships

Dynamics 365 Sales helps you make the customers feel seen and appreciated by personalizing their experience and storing detailed information for future use. For instance, if you know your customers’ language preferences, you can send emails in their native language, enhancing their experience.

Moreover, you can view all communications between the customer and sales team members in one place. There’s no need to sift through every email to stay up to date. Copilot can summarize months of conversations into a few bullet points.

Better revenue forecasting

Accurate pipeline insights and data analytics allow sales representatives to make informed decisions and prioritize leads effectively. With Dynamics 365 Sales, they will be able to use out-of-the-box Sales Pipeline charts to see the revenue potential at each stage of the process, as well as identify key trends, patterns, and behaviors that indicate the likelihood of each deal’s success.

Scalability for growth

Standardized sales processes help businesses scale efficiently. For example, when a client is ready to check the price or is already willing to proceed with the purchase, no time is wasted on preparation. The application will do that preparation for you. If a quota is closed as won, the system will create an order, transitioning the client from sales to accounting in a matter of seconds.

Conclusion

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales app is more than just the cloud successor to Dynamics CRM. With embedded intelligence, Office 365 integration, and a wide range of other features, it is a truly innovative solution that goes beyond mere customer relationship management or sales force automation.

If you’re looking to revolutionize your company’s sales processes, we’re here to help. Regardless of your preferred sales strategy, proMX can tailor the experience to meet your needs. From day one, we consider your wishes and preferences, and even during the demo phase, we create a prototype specifically designed for your business. Feel free to contact proMX if you have any questions! Our seasoned experts will be glad to help.