Watch the second part of our webinar series on Dynamics 365 Sales. Building on last week's introduction, this webinar takes a closer look at how salespeople can use Sales effectively in their day-to-day work. We cover how to:

We follow a lead from the moment it comes in and becomes a sales opportunity until the order is sent. You’ll see concrete examples of every step in the sales process.

Watch the presentation, demo, and discussion here:

Read the webinar transcript:

Introduction to the webinar

Frode Stenstrøm: Do you want to double your sales team's efficiency? In today's webinar, we'll show you how top salespeople use Dynamics 365 to exceed their targets. But this isn't just a CRM system. Imagine, for example, a sales team where everyone knows exactly what to do at all times. They can use artificial intelligence to prioritize their day, automate routine tasks and free up their time, and gain deeper insights into customer behavior and customer needs.

Frode Stenstrøm: For today's seminar, we are joined by Edvard from ProsessPilotene, who will help show us how to use Dynamics 365 Sales. In last week's webinar, we had Stig with us in the studio, where he showed us what Dynamics 365 Sales is and why it is relevant. So today's webinar will focus heavily on the question of how, and we have Edvard with us today. Welcome to the studio—it's your first time here with us.

Edvard Angelsen: Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to it.

Frode Stenstrøm: A little exciting, isn't it?

Edvard Angelsen: It's a little exciting, it's a little exciting.

Frode Stenstrøm: But Edvard, you're a football fan, aren't you?

Edvard Angelsen: That's right, that's 100% correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: Who are you rooting for?

Edvard Angelsen: I support a German team, Borussia Dortmund. It’s the best team in the world.

Frode Stenstrøm: Have you discussed with Emil and the others who is the best, or what?

Edvard Angelsen: There are always some discussions about that. That's how it is.

Frode Stenstrøm: It’s going to be great. We have a bit of friendly rivalry here at ProsessPilotene over fantasy football, who’s best at predicting the league, and so on.

Edvard Angelsen: No, I won the Fantasy Premier League at ProsessPilotene last year, so...

Frode Stenstrøm: Well, listen, Emil, you’ll have to come back to our webinar and join us for the next one too. We’ll see.

Anyway, my name is Frode Stenstrøm, and I’m today’s host. As usual, we’ll just briefly go over a few things about the broadcast. As always, we’re streaming live on YouTube, which means this is an interactive broadcast. You can ask questions along the way, so go ahead and say hello now and tell us who you are. If you have specific questions about how you use Dynamics 365 products as salespeople, feel free to ask them now, during the broadcast, or afterward.

And we add captions to the entire broadcast and divide it into chapters, so these topics—how to use leads, how to work with opportunities, and how to work with quotes and orders—will all be available as chapters in the broadcast after the webinar. It normally takes a day to get everything in place. Next week, we hope to explore sales reporting, which means showing how Power BI can be used with Dynamics Sales to create the best possible sales forecasts.

So turn on notifications for the webinar there.

Today's agenda and demonstration

Frode Stenstrøm: So, Edvard, what's on today's agenda?

Edvard Angelsen: First, we'll talk briefly about the benefits, and then we'll move almost directly into the demonstration. We'll start the day in Outlook, as many salespeople might do. Then we'll move over to Dynamics to see how we can get an overview of what we need in our day-to-day work.

And then we move on to the sales process, where we start with leads, move on from there to opportunities, then quotes, and then orders. So we'll go through that process afterwards.

Frode Stenstrøm: And as you can probably tell, we’re not going to spend much time on all the preliminaries—we covered that last week—so today we’ll get straight to showing you a lot.

But I just want to take a quick look at why this is relevant to you. When I talk to salespeople and my colleagues, and based on my own experience in sales, salespeople are competitive by nature, and we really have no problem working hard and putting in a lot of effort. What is often a challenge for us is keeping track of what is happening and when, so that we can prioritize and work purposefully on our tasks.

And it’s about staying focused on your customers and knowing who needs to be followed up with, when, and where. We may have promised to follow up next week, but then it’s also important that we actually do so. So I thought we’d get ready for the demonstration, which is really just about showing the workflow.

Work scenario and sales process

Frode Stenstrøm: And in today's webinar, we're going to have a little fun. We've set it up so that I'm Edvard's customer. I attended ONS in Stavanger and met him at a booth. I found it incredibly exciting to hear that ProsessPilotene in Stavanger has so many fantastic consultants with expertise in sales and CRM systems. So, as Frode the private individual, I've sent him a short email.

And then we also have another customer named Stig, who has also sent an email to Edvard, our salesperson here. So this will be a kind of work scenario, where we'll go through the sales process from A to Z, and hopefully you'll close a sale with one of us.

Edvard Angelsen: Hopefully.

Frode Stenstrøm: And then I thought we'd simply switch over to your PC screen.

Using Outlook and Dynamics

Frode Stenstrøm: Most people simply start their day with Outlook, right?

Edvard Angelsen: That's right. And now, as you just mentioned, Frode, we've received an email from Stig. This is very exciting. He sees that you're launching a lot of exciting new products this autumn and is wondering whether we could get some demonstrations during September.

So of course we need to follow up on that right away.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I'll just move us away from that window for a moment, but what I find interesting about what you're showing now is that everyone in sales works in Outlook. And being able to work—we're using Outlook on a regular PC right now, but this also works on mobile devices and phones, so you can sort through your email.

And now you're going to turn this into a lead, basically.

Creating and managing leads

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, that's what I'm going to show you.

Frode Stenstrøm: Then I turned off my own video, and now it’s showing.

Edvard Angelsen: I don't need to go into Dynamics; I can do this directly from Outlook, as Stig showed a little earlier, using the Dynamics app in Outlook.

Yes.

And then you can, well, last week we showed how to track emails, but you can also, for example, as we're going to show now, create leads from here.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, and what’s interesting about what you’re showing now is that it’s the standard process everyone in sales works with: you create the contact so that you can link the email to a named contact. And I can see here that you’ve done this before, so the contact is actually already registered in Dynamics, yes.

Edvard Angelsen: If it hadn't already been registered, you would also have had the option to do that now. But up here, by the little arrow, you have the option to create a new one. This is a person who is showing an interest in what we do, so they naturally become a lead. We can just create it here now, and then later, when we go into Dynamics, we'll see how we can find this lead again.

This one is pretty cool too, Frode. It’s the one I used on you when we met at ONS.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, I scanned my business card.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, that's right.

So it’s really handy if you’re attending conferences and things like that.

Frode Stenstrøm: I can see now that not many salespeople or others use business cards in Norway anymore, but they’re still big in the US and abroad. If you have a booth where people can perhaps drop off a business card to win a prize, it’s really cool to be able to simply scan the business cards one after another.

Edvard Angelsen: So let's just register this here. "Interesting lead".

Frode Stenstrøm: «Lead» is «kundemne» in Norwegian and «lead» in English terminology.

Edvard Angelsen: So we'll just go ahead and register it now.

Frode Stenstrøm: And in what you're showing now, Edvard, which I think is the most relevant thing here, or at least a very relevant point, is that in the early stages of the sales process, you very often don't have complete information about the person you're talking to. Fortunately, we've received an email now, but Stig hasn't told us what his phone number is. All we really know is his name and email address.

When I worked in sales myself, I often attended seminars and trade shows and discussed things with someone. All I might remember is that her name was Kari and she worked at Company B. But that alone is enough to let you take your time afterward and try to find out more. The entire lead structure is designed so that you can register the lead quickly and easily without having all the details right then and there, whether in Outlook or the mobile app.

Both are the starting point of this sales process and are very easy to do.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, I agree with you 100%. But if we take a closer look at what he writes, he's wondering whether we have any demonstrations during September. So we'll need to check our calendar. We're in August now, but if we scroll down to September, there's plenty of availability.

Frode Stenstrøm: you do have

as a salesperson, you didn't have much to do.

Edvard Angelsen: No, I might have to work a little harder.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but it

is the thing about sales planning, you know.

Edvard Angelsen: So then, before we go into the CRM, I would of course have replied to Stig that we can arrange a meeting on September 7.

Frode Stenstrøm: Exactly. And I’d just like to add something here. We’re in a transitional phase, so if you bring up those Outlook add-ons now, you’ll see that we’ve been using the classic Dynamics 365 add-on for Outlook, which has actually been with us for a good 12–13 years.

Microsoft is now transitioning to a new product called Copilot for Sales, which provides the same functionality but also incorporates artificial intelligence. And we expect that within about a year, all salespeople will be using it exclusively. It offers several advantages. One is that when you create a new contact, it will extract and read text from the email and fill in the contact form based on information such as what is included in the signature.

So you save on data entry. It will also help you compose the kind of reply you just wrote. So when you use it to respond to the salesperson or customer, it will suggest a reply to the person asking. And having started experimenting with it a little, I think it saves time.

Unfortunately, not everything available in Dynamics Add-on is 100% in place in Copilot for Sales, so we are working with what is currently available, rather than everything that may be coming.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, it has to be.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, let's move on then.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, let's move on. Let's just imagine that we've replied to Stig and given him a date. He may have replied to us, but now we're going to open Dynamics and the Sales Hub, which you can see in the top corner here. We're now in the Dynamics Sales module.

Dashboards and tasks

Edvard Angelsen: There’s a lot you can do here, but as a salesperson logging into Dynamics, I would probably start by looking at my personal dashboard. We’ve set that up here, and it’s a dashboard that gives me the overview I need when I log into Dynamics, so I know what to work on.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I'd like to add one small thing. When we give these demonstrations, we show the product as it is, without any customization by us at ProsessPilotene. This is to show how complete the product actually is. The dashboard metrics you're showing now can be created for the department as a whole.

But as a salesperson, I can also create my own private dashboard.

And what I see many of my colleagues at ProsessPilotene doing is pulling Power BI reports and adding them to the dashboard as well. One example could be customers who have not paid their invoices. If that happens, I know that something has occurred that I need to get involved in.

So, you’ve created a good starting point for a dashboard here. But you can customize it however you like.

Edvard Angelsen: And there’s something to what you’re saying: if you want these polished reporting dashboards, then Power BI is king. But if, like now, we just want to look at what we’re working on in terms of tasks, appointments, and so on, then this is pretty good.

So you can switch views and create your own views. For example, if we wanted to see which tasks we have today, then, if I’m consistent about this, I know that, okay, this is where I start my day: follow-up calls with customers.

Frode Stenstrøm: And again, I think this is the kind of thing that is so specific—it tells you as a salesperson what today's focus is, so you don't have to think about everything else under the sun.

And because it is part of the Dynamics platform, if the customer service center has created a task concerning a case involving that particular customer, it will appear there. If the marketing department has indicated that a customer has responded positively to an inquiry via a contact form, the task will appear there.

So you don't have to go searching to get an overview of your tasks for the day.

Edvard Angelsen: You can also create tasks well in advance, and they’ll be there when you need them. So you don’t have to go looking for them.

Frode Stenstrøm: Case planning.

Edvard Angelsen: The same applies to my appointments and my appointments today, and these appointments now—or meetings—we also saw them initially in Outlook.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I would just like to emphasize, for anyone who may be wondering, that we really only use your calendar. There aren't lots of different solutions; there is one calendar for you as a salesperson and one task list for you as a salesperson.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, it’s very convenient that it works that way. And then further down here on this dashboard, you have your own leads and your own sales opportunities, whether you want to start fresh with them or continue working with someone you know.

And here we have you, Frode.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, I sent that email and said I was interested.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, you are registered, and then right down here we have the customers, or business associates.

Frode Stenstrøm: And translating the word “customers” as “business relationships” may seem a little odd, but the English term is “account.” It is structured this way because your CRM system always has a list of companies you work with, contacts you talk to, and activities, which are things you do. That is essentially the entire solution offered by the vast majority of CRM tools.

And “account” is translated as “business relationship”; it could also have been translated as “customer account,” but I don’t really meet many salespeople who talk about customer accounts.

Edvard Angelsen: No, it’s like you say, it’s much, much better.

Frode Stenstrøm: So this gives you a very good overview of your day, and just to follow up on that, you can see that under My Tasks on the left-hand side of the menu bar, you also have the activity register, where you can work with each activity individually.

The sales accelerator and the features we'll cover involving sequences—sales sequences. The copilot is also available here, and it helps summarize your day. One thing I use it for a lot is checking what has happened with a customer before I go into a customer meeting, for example. If any of my colleagues have worked with that customer, or other employees have interacted with them, I want to know about it before I go into those customer meetings.

So, we've covered the dashboard briefly, haven't we?

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, let's move on.

How to qualify a lead

Frode Stenstrøm: Now we're going to talk about the first part of the sales process, which is the lead.

Edvard Angelsen: That's right.

So, Frode, we met at the ONS conference, as you confirmed earlier, so I’ve already registered you. But if I had just met you now, I could click New. Since we’ve already met, though, we’ll open the lead we already have. And this is basically a form; if you’ve seen these forms before, they’re all structured in much the same way.

On the left-hand side here, we have information about you as a contact, which we have already filled in to some extent, and below that, information about the company. On the right-hand side, we have related records, for example if there are competitors that need to be added.

Frode Stenstrøm: And stakeholders.

Edvard Angelsen: And stakeholders, yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: And when leads are registered, they basically only enter the person's name. That's the only requirement, along with the subject it concerns.

So those are the three small pieces of data you enter. When you start working with the lead, the goal is really to get into a position where you can make a sale to the lead and have a process like the one we see at the top, where you qualify the lead and turn it into a sales opportunity.

Edvard Angelsen: It's the same.

Frode Stenstrøm: And again, this is a standard form you see in Dynamics.

So the process is essentially out of the box. What is often done when implementing Dynamics is to customize the process form to have either fewer or more stages. Sometimes it is simple, with very short processes. Other times, the sales process can take several years, so having a stage where you work on this is crucial.

Here at our studio, we want to create a webinar focusing exclusively on the lead process, because what is so exciting about this is that when you connect it to the marketing part of Dynamics, you can start scoring the customer to determine how likely you are to make a sale to this person. This is a powerful tool for narrowing down who you talk to, what you talk to them about, and when, allowing you to prioritize sales efforts where you have the greatest chance of success.

Well, you can continue.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, I'll do that. And here in the middle, you have the timeline, so if I send you an email or we have a meeting or something like that, all of that activity will show up here. And if we'd had enough activity here, I could have used Copilot to ask for highlights, just to get a summary.

Create a sequence of standard activities

Frode Stenstrøm: And then there is what I think has really found its place now, and what is relevant to those of you who work in sales. It is not really about the history or last year's snow, but about what we should do next to win a sale.

Edvard Angelsen: We have set up a sequence that essentially consists of standard activities that can be added to, for example, a lead or a sales opportunity, specifying exactly what the next step is and what I need to do now to move forward in the sales process.

So if we had clicked Update here on the next one.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, now I'm excited.

Edvard Angelsen: Then it should have appeared. I think it's one more time. Yes. Yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: Was it the wrong type of topic, work?

Edvard Angelsen: This worked yesterday, but yeah, yeah. But then it had, I can explain

Frode Stenstrøm: Take a look at Stig's lead; maybe it's already there.

Edvard Angelsen: Look here, yes.

So then it could be a matter of entering the information by voice, as you mentioned—you just register the lead quickly and then fill in the information later. Plan the follow-up, decide when to follow up, schedule the first meeting, that sort of thing.

Frode Stenstrøm: In my view, sales sequences are something of a hidden gem in Dynamics that not many of our customers are aware of.

But it’s about sitting down and deciding how to work with a lead from the moment it comes in until it actually reaches the next stage of the sales process. For example, this could involve having a certain number of meetings and phone calls, and it could include qualification, which you have as step 6 there.

The nice thing is that a sales process is often the same: find the lead, turn the lead into a sales opportunity, create a quote, secure an order in a contract, and finish. That is the process. The sequences address the tasks that need to be completed to get there. And creating sales sequences like you have done here is great, because it drives sales forward, as reflected in the dashboard overview you showed earlier. I also find it interesting that you can create different types of sales sequences depending on the type of sale.

Edvard Angelsen: That's right. So you can do that.

set it up exactly the way you want.

Frode Stenstrøm: But I also think it’s cool that you can just mark it as completed. Working with it isn’t a big hassle.

Edvard Angelsen: No, and if you use email templates and such, you can also send automated emails, or say, “Here is this informational email; this is the next step.”

So there are quite a lot of cool things you can do with it. But I think we should go back to you, Frode. Up here, as you mentioned, we have the process bar that you continue working through when qualifying, and then you move on to the sales opportunity and develop it.

Frode Stenstrøm: Now I see that I've been waiting for 47 hours for some kind of response from you, so perhaps I've lost interest.

Edvard Angelsen: We’re trying. We’re going to qualify you. We’ve spoken by email, and now we just have to consider that we’ve talked a lot and you’ve shown more interest. We’ll hear a little more about what we do and what products we have. And then it’s only natural that we’ll qualify you as a sales opportunity.

Frode Stenstrøm: And as you can see now, when we qualify the sales opportunity, you'll see that they try to create the Account. One of the good things about this is that we're addressing one of the major challenges faced by all sales departments: data quality and duplicates. So if the company already exists, it tells you that you don't need to create it, and if the contact already exists, you don't need to create that either. You can link the two together and thus avoid creating duplicates in the CRM tool.

Edvard Angelsen: That's right

Frode Stenstrøm: And that brings us to the next phase of the sales process, which is qualifying the lead as a sales opportunity. I would also like to add that when qualifying leads as sales opportunities and doing that sort of thing, you can either do it manually by assessing them yourself. Some have a qualification process where they qualify them in a sales meeting, for example, and decide which salespeople should get which leads. You can also use rules to route the lead to the salesperson who actually has the most time available or the best chance of succeeding.

And it is possible to create quite a few effective processes here for qualifying leads, where you might have to specify who our competitors are and how many there are. If there are more than five competitors, the lead is automatically disqualified, with a clear explanation to the customer that we do not respond to inquiries involving a full competitive bidding process, and things like that.

But then again, you've now reached the next stage, which is the sales opportunity.

How to move sales opportunities forward?

Edvard Angelsen: We’re now looking at the sales opportunity, which we can see, for example, in the list here. In other words, we’re at the sales opportunity stage; we’re no longer dealing with leads. We can also see that we’ve completed the qualification phase and are now in the development phase, where, for example, we would have entered the customer’s needs, proposed a solution, and so on.

And then we can see that it is essentially structured in the same way, with the information about the sales opportunity, and then you have the Next section and the timeline.

Frode Stenstrøm: This is also where the sequence comes in, so if you’re now going to try to find customers you can talk to. The goal now is really to get into a position where you can submit a proposal. So, what do we need to do to make that happen?

Edvard Angelsen: That's right, and we haven't set up any sequences here, but we've talked a lot, Frode. We've had several meetings and clarified some of your requirements and what you need to move your sales process forward. So now we just have to imagine that we've already done quite a bit of work on this sales opportunity.

Frode Stenstrøm: I'm just going to reply, “Great,” and I'll reply to him by email, and we'll talk later. Because what's interesting is that when I send an email directly to Edvard here, he receives an email. A new email has arrived. And he can now link this email to the items in the CRM.

So if you click this Dynamics app again, you can show it.

Edvard Angelsen: So what happens is that we track this email, and then we can also see it in Dynamics.

Frode Stenstrøm: And it says set regarding there, and when you set regarding here, you simply take the email that comes in here and specify what it relates to.

And then, for example, you can say that this email concerned a phone call, a prospect or lead, or it could also concern a specific company or sales opportunities. And that's what's so useful, because if I were complaining about something related to a specific case, it could be linked to that case.

So the salesperson can now receive the email, add it to Dynamics, and then simply delete it from Outlook and, in principle, be done with it.

Edvard Angelsen: We might as well just track it now, and then go back to...

Frode Stenstrøm: And this one is from me, so I see you need to create a contact here.

Mm-hmm.

Add contact in Dynamics

Frode Stenstrøm: And you can also do that directly from Outlook.

Edvard Angelsen: Add contact.

Frode Stenstrøm: So the message is, you can get a mobile phone and a name and so on, but we'll deal with that... Yes, you and I were already there... You can just say merge. Then you have to choose the other one.

Right. So there will only be one contact.

Log and manage phone calls

Frode Stenstrøm: And I think this is actually a big part of everyday life for a lot of people who work in sales: you sit in Outlook and communicate back and forth with customers, or you call them. But what's pretty cool about this is that if you had just called me, you could click the plus sign, then New Phone Call, Activity, and Phone Call.

And there you can briefly describe what we talked about. We also discussed buying a good CRM system from ProsessPilotene. Which, of course, you should also do after watching this webinar. You can specify who you called, so you can search for my name.

Yes, I actually came up at the top there. That was pretty cool. There you have it. Yes, and in this case you can also say that you called several people. You can also specify the direction—whether I called you or you called them—and add a brief description. And perhaps you need to remove my phone number there, Frode.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, I think so.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, that's right. Here you can enter a brief description of what we discussed. We agreed to have a product demonstration of Dynamics.

Edvard Angelsen: Dynamics, right.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, and save and close. The great thing about it is that I'm actually using a CRM tool, but without using the CRM tool. I'm working in the tool I use most often, namely Outlook or Teams, for that matter. All of this could have been done in any of the three workspaces. And that allows us to move the sales process forward.

If we switch to Dynamics, this will appear there, under my name, for example.

Edvard Angelsen: Let's see, like this.

Frode Stenstrøm: If you look at me as a person and click on Frode as a contact,

then it says so.

Edvard Angelsen: We did have several people named Frode here for a while, so that may be what caused things to get a little mixed up, but yeah.

Frode Stenstrøm: So, in any case, it's easy to register contacts, and the same plus sign in the top right corner of Dynamics also makes it easy to tap the plus sign and register a new phone call. If you also tap the phone call here, you can make the call, and if you use the Dynamics app on your mobile phone, you can tap the phone number to call directly, which may be the easiest option.

Then I can have my phone and an AirPod in my ear, and I can have that conversation and write notes directly in the customer record while the call is in progress.

Edvard Angelsen: That's right.

Sales opportunities and probability calculation

Frode Stenstrøm: But okay, so you're going to create the sales opportunity. Could we take a closer look at our sales opportunity? There are quite a few things to discuss.

By default, many of our customers ask about the probability of winning in order to get a weighted pipeline, and you can now enter that here. You can specify the probability of winning the sale, from 0–100%. Here, you can use Copilot again to make a forecast. Okay. If the communication between you and your customer is very curt, terse, and snippy, there may be a slightly negative tone or a lack of chemistry, so the probability of winning is very low.

And there is a relationship analysis feature in the sales module that looks at how frequently your company communicates with the customer—not only you as the salesperson, but also your colleagues. It also analyzes the tone of the emails and provides a score indicating whether the dialogue is healthy and positive. If there are many positive emails, frequent communication, and a good rapport, there is a greater chance of winning the sales opportunity.

And this is where Microsoft's models will predict the probability instead of the salesperson having to do it. Most salespeople are optimistic: we're going to win this deal. But this can provide a much more accurate assessment if desired. The other fields shown there provide some information about the type of purchasing process involved.

Are we in a competitive process, is there a single committee and so on, is it a public tender process, and so forth.

Adapt the product to the market

Frode Stenstrøm: This is where you will often adapt the product to the process and the market you operate in. And this will always vary somewhat depending on whether, for example, you are considering e-commerce, integration with the consumer market, or whether you work business to business, or business to business to consumer.

And then it’s really just a matter of working through it and describing the sales opportunity. You can see that at the bottom left. Some information has been entered here about the relevant institution, needs, and so on, as well as the current solution, and that’s essentially what it’s all about. And there’s one more thing I find interesting about sales opportunities, which is that salespeople very rarely work alone.

On the right, you have two key elements: stakeholders and the sales team. This is where you add anyone who can influence your sale. They may be employees of your customer, but they could just as easily be a third party—people who know your customer and have a close, positive relationship with them.

Similarly, when it comes to the sales team, are you working alone or do you have Stig with you?

Edvard Angelsen: Today? Stig isn't with me today, but we don't work alone. I do work with Stig, but he's not available right now.

Frode Stenstrøm: No, but here you can enter who will be working with the customer. And the last thing I want to point out in order to move this forward to submitting an actual quote is that it is often useful to write notes about what has happened.

So you can add notes to the timeline, for example, I know this person, I know that person. And if you have access to LinkedIn, for example, this would be a natural point to map out who knows whom and whether there have been any product updates in the market. LinkedIn information about this customer will then also be displayed on the same screens we are currently looking at.

So perhaps there was one last thing, and that is that if I had sent a document—this is now connected to SharePoint, as we mentioned earlier—then by uploading documents, I can add the supporting material I receive from the customer as files to the relevant sales opportunity. And the great thing about this is that, from a CRM and salesperson perspective, I can now upload documents here and create new documents. But all the documents I add here can also be visible to others in the organization.

It doesn't have to be limited to those who work in sales. And this—the fact that people can view it—can be important for everyone. It makes it much easier for those around us to create estimates, for example, and that sort of thing. Absolutely. Let's move on.

Edvard Angelsen: Let's move on. We've talked a little about the overview, and now we'll continue with this sales process, because we've had some good conversations, Frode.

Things are moving forward.

Create and manage offers

Edvard Angelsen: So, we're going to start preparing the quote, but I'd like to begin with products. The first thing you do is select a price list containing the products you intend to add to this sales opportunity. So right now, I only have one

Frode Stenstrøm: standard project in the system.

Edvard Angelsen: Here you can choose whether the estimated revenue should be entered by the user or calculated by the system.

We'll see how that works when we add products. You wanted a super consultant, didn't you?

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, absolutely.

Edvard Angelsen: Let's see, we have a project manager, a technical consultant, and a functional consultant. We can add this. Here we can see the hourly rate, what unit it is calculated in, and it is calculated in hours, so we need to enter the number of hours here.

Frode Stenstrøm: And now you're actually building this up before we've reached the quotation stage, and that's a very important point when using Dynamics. Before we've got as far as creating a formal quotation, we can build it up in this way and specify what the sales opportunity itself involves. And here you can either do what you're doing now and select from a product catalog if you have structured products, but you could just as easily enter, for example, that you think the customer needs a project involving 10,000 hours, 50 tonnes of goods, or something like that.

This gives you a forecast of the sales opportunity before you have submitted a quote to the customer.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, that's exactly what you're mentioning here: we could have selected a product that wasn't in the product catalog, and we could also have chosen to override the price here if it was too high or too low.

Frode Stenstrøm: In our webinar a few weeks ago, where we demonstrated product information systems, or a PIM system, we explained that Dynamics itself has a good built-in product information system.

It contains a wealth of information about products, their characteristics, qualities, attributes, units, prices, and all that. And that is what we use when it is built in, and for many companies, that is good enough. The PIM product information system takes this a step further, allowing you to manage marketing materials and workflows related to product innovation and product maintenance.

For some of our customers, instead of choosing from existing products in Dynamics, we can connect to external product information systems. One example is the construction industry, which has the NOBB database, an extensive database of building products. We can use that database directly and select from those products when filling out a sales opportunity in Dynamics.

And the same really applies to other industries as well. Yes.

Edvard Angelsen: Let's just enter a quantity here, and then add this product to the sales opportunity. Enter 100, and then I'll click Save and Close. And we could also add more products here, Frode. We would most likely do that if there were other products as well.

But here we get the list of products, if we had more of them. This will give us an amount and a total amount. We could also add discounts, for example when ordering large quantities or a very large amount, or add shipping costs and similar items.

Frode Stenstrøm: Exactly, exactly. So as you can see, it’s really just a simple way to build quotes before we’ve actually reached the quoting stage, but as you can see, if I remove us now, it now says that this sales opportunity has an estimated revenue of 150,000.

We get an expected date for when this will come in, and if we also have a probability estimate, this starts to build our sales pipeline.

Edvard Angelsen: That's correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: But then we've gone through the products and could build it up.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, then let's move on to the offer.

Frode Stenstrøm: As I’ve already told you, we’ve discussed it and agreed roughly how the project should be carried out and approximately how much it will cost. At that point, you say that you’d like a quote for it.

Edvard Angelsen: And I actually do that here as well, on the quote tab from the sales opportunity, so I can create a new quote here.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I just want to clarify one thing. A great many of our customers do not use the quote module. They are happy to simply have the figures in the sales opportunity and close it, with the rest perhaps taking place in other specialized systems.

Maybe they have an online store or something else, although I think connecting e-commerce to CRM is a smart move. Yes. But the advantage of doing it the way you're showing now is that you can have quote revisions. You can create quote versions 1, 2, 3, and 4 as I, the customer, get a little picky and change my mind ten thousand times.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, that's absolutely right. And what we see now when we create a quote is the product we added here in the middle. It appears right away, so everything is closely connected. And then you get a quote page showing who owns the quote, the currency, and the price list we entered earlier. It's very convenient that everything is transferred automatically, so you don't have to do anything more than once.

Frode Stenstrøm: Right, and I can see that now—everything you entered in the sales opportunity has simply been copied automatically into the quote. But now I might want to add a brief quote description, choose delivery methods and payment terms—the usual things you would include in a quote.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, that's right.

And perhaps now we want to add a new product because you also wanted a technical consultant. Or a project manager, for example. Then we simply enter 50 hours here, save, and close.

Frode Stenstrøm: Then the quote will be updated, yes.

Edvard Angelsen: Then the offer will be updated.

Frode Stenstrøm: But how do you communicate this offer to me as ...

Edvard Angelsen: No, if I had been satisfied with that offer after the conversations we had, I would now activate the offer, and then I would have to tell you about it.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes.

Edvard Angelsen: Then you have this Export to PDF button, which is actually very useful and comes as standard in the quote table. You can see that we can choose from several different templates, such as this one, Print Quote for Customer, when it appears. It then generates the quote for us, and we can choose whether to download it, save it in SharePoint so we have it for later—perhaps, as you mentioned earlier, so others can view it—or send it directly by email.

That's what we're going to do now. We'll send it by email, and then we can see what it looks like.

Then this little pop-up window appears here in the CRM. We can see that the quote has been added as an attachment. It has now been sent to Energibedrift A, where you work, Frode. And then, of course, you would add some appropriate text. Then we can simply send it. This one isn't going to me, but I've done this before.

So we can see what it looks like when it comes in. Here we have it, a project quote from myself, but actually from... to... And then you can see what it looks like. Dear customer, I am sending you this quote regarding whatever you call it. When is the quote valid from? The total amount is shown here, and you also get the product name, price per unit, quantity, and total.

Frode Stenstrøm: Exactly. And this is a completely standard quotation letter as it appears in the product before we have made any changes. Normally, you would customize this Word template with a logo, sales terms, and so on. But it provides a very good way to communicate quotations in writing. One of my main concerns is that we are moving further and further into the digital age, so I am very passionate about connecting e-commerce platforms and websites to this, allowing quotations to be sent to your customer via a hyperlink in an email, so the customer can simply click confirm and sign the quotation electronically.

But you can create quotation letters right out of the box, of course you can.

Edvard Angelsen: We can go back to the quote here. As you mentioned, Froda, perhaps you weren't happy with the quote, so now we just need to revise it.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, do that.

I'd like a few more consulting hours.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, you do?

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, I suppose I have to.

Edvard Angelsen: So we could either add more products, or we could just go into one of the ones we already have.

Frode Stenstrøm: So it says that perhaps we should have 100 consulting hours, then.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes,

save and close, and then we're back in the quote. And we can see that this updates automatically. Up here, I might also add the dates the quote is valid from and to, so that it's clear.

Frode Stenstrøm: Absolutely.

Edvard Angelsen: And then, yes, what happens after the offer?

Order processing and integration with accounting systems

Edvard Angelsen: Once you've accepted the quote, the next step would be to create an order.

And then, when we click this one, it will... It will be marked as won, and we can close the sales opportunity, choose whether it should calculate the actual setup, and add a description, yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: And that's really great, because as a salesperson, I don't have to keep two sets of records. I won the order, I closed the sales opportunity, and everything is closed.

What is useful to keep in mind here is that, in the areas we are looking at now, most companies often have an interface between finance and accounting. So what often happens is that once the order has been created, we send it to a financial management system. You do not have to do that; it can also be entered manually into a financial management system, but there is often an interaction between a salesperson using a CRM such as Dynamics Sales and the finance and delivery department. In principle, the order process is where they meet.

And this is then sent there as the basis for an order. Regardless of which financial system you use, the order is sent there. So that's basically it. You've now won this one. But it would be interesting to close it, mark it as won, and then see what it actually looks like afterwards.

Edvard Angelsen: Sure, we can take a look at that.

That was nice, since we'll be working together.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, we will. So now we're looking at the orders, and it's marked as won, yes. That's the status, yes. So if we look at the sales opportunity, then.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, so this will be something... Now we're closing this sales opportunity, and it will then appear here in the views we had, as either a closed sales opportunity or a won sales opportunity.

Frode Stenstrøm: Won sales opportunities are a little further up, yes,

Edvard Angelsen: it was there

Frode Stenstrøm: Now we're system administrators, so we can see all the views. Normally, we only see two or three, and there it is closed. I think that chart provides a very good summary because it shows the progress going forward as well as the historical development. The size of the bubble indicates how big the deal is, and you can also see the probability of winning, from 0 to 100%.

And when you click on a bubble, the list below will also be updated, so you can use this not only as a graphical representation, but also to view the relevant sales opportunity directly and make corrections to it. So if you notice—as many salespeople often do—that a sales opportunity that was supposed to close today won't close for another month, then the salesperson has to go through the never-ending process of updating the sales opportunity with a new date.

Well, then you can use the graphical view, click on it, edit the date, or bulk edit with Excel.

Edvard Angelsen: You can do that too, yes. So that was what we wanted to show today.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, we've gone through most of it now, but I'd just like to click on it so you can see the whole thing. I'll also bring up that company, in addition to the business we've selected now, and we've opened its customer card.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, to access the business partner here.

Frode Stenstrøm: Something has now happened on this customer record. As you can see, the sales opportunity's status has changed to closed, and the quote has been closed. We haven't entered anything manually; we've just clicked Order. And we can see the entire history of all the work and communication related to the customer.

And that means that if I’m wondering what has happened with a company, I look up the company and check the history. What has happened with a person? I look up the person and check the history.

Collaboration and communication in Dynamics

Frode Stenstrøm: As for what has happened with the other things, that's that. And then I thought there was one thing that I think is quite useful to demonstrate in this context, which you will increasingly see being introduced across all Microsoft products, and it concerns collaboration with other colleagues in the company.

At the top right, there is a small chat bubble. And that means I can do one of two things now. If I were a salesperson and wanted to talk to a colleague about this customer, the quote, or the sales opportunity—perhaps because the customer asks me questions I cannot answer—I can start a Teams chat directly from Dynamics with the people in the department who specialize in that area.

If it is a very important customer, perhaps one with whom we even have a permanent Teams channel, you can also link a Teams chat channel or Teams channel to that customer record. This creates a very close connection between you as a salesperson, your company, and your customers, and brings all communication together without you having to leave the products you are using.

So I’d like to give that a quick mention. And then there’s the other part, which is the Copilot add-on. When I open this customer card without clicking anything, Copilot tells me what has happened on the customer card over the past seven days. So I no longer need to search for information; I can go straight to the customer card and see what has happened with that customer since last time.

And I can now start asking Copilot questions about this type of sale. Here you can see what has actually happened: the revenue figure throughout the entire history is now trending downward. You can also get the latest news, unanswered changes, and so on. The same applies to Copilot in general for salespeople.

You can see what has happened on the Dynamics platform since you last visited it. In the old days, without the copilot, you would have had to set up a message exchange and send messages to each other on what was almost a kind of Facebook wall in Dynamics. The copilot automates that entire process of staying informed about what is actually happening in Dynamics.

Summary and conclusion

Frode Stenstrøm: So, to sum things up a little, Edvard, we've gone through the simplest things.

Edvard Angelsen: We have talked about the overview.

Frode Stenstrøm: The Outlook.

Edvard Angelsen: We have explored Outlook and seen how it works together and interacts with the Dynamics sales module.

Frode Stenstrøm: We've really focused on sales.

Edvard Angelsen: We have.

Frode Stenstrøm: So we used that email.

Edvard Angelsen: Yes, and we've also taken a look at what happens after the sale.

Frode Stenstrøm: After the sale, yes. So using Dynamics 365 Sales is no more difficult than that, ladies and gentlemen. Isn't that actually rather nice? We've gone through it all, and now we'll just wrap things up with the summary. That's how easy the product is to use.

Edvard Angelsen: And you can start using it right away. Straight out of the box!

Frode Stenstrøm: You do, that's exactly it. And I actually think it's time to wrap up this broadcast. So, with those words, I'd like to thank Edvard from ProsessPilotene for his contribution to today's broadcast. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments or contact us using our online contact form.

Was this useful? Like the demo and share the video with your colleagues. If you want more professional content, subscribe to our channel. The broadcast is available on our YouTube channel and on the ProsessPilotene.no website. The broadcast is produced by ProsessPilotene, which increases the value of your customers through the use of Microsoft technology.

Our analytics team can create the world's best insights and analytical reports, artificial intelligence, data warehouses, and so on. Our collaboration team can, for example, create the best customer website to help drive your sales forward. I, Frode Stenstrøm, have been responsible for this episode, and the project manager is Oddbjørg Berge. We wish everyone better work processes. See you again.

Here, you’ll get an in-depth overview of how salespeople can use Dynamics to work purposefully and efficiently on their tasks—from meetings and “actions” to leads and sales opportunities. We’ll explain how to set up automated sequences, create optimal worklists, and use other features. Finally, we’ll look at Sales from a management perspective and discuss task assignment options.