How to maximise sales with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Accelerator

As seen in the photo, the user interface for the sales accelerator has a neatly organised and prioritised work list along the left hand side – with leads & opportunities grouped dependent on what the next action is. Furthermore, AI Insights are used to prioritise the items in the list and present ‘better’ opportunities first, improving the user experience and hopefully increasing potential revenue.

Some of the key features of the interface in the sales accelerator include:

 Timeline of actions for the leads & opportunities

• Shows previously completed and planned future activities
• Emails and calls tracked on the timeline
• Microsoft teams embedded into the interface allowing easy access
• Transcripts from these meetings are stored on the record, with key business insights highlighted

 Predictive opportunity/lead score

• Calculated by various AI services and data points
• When calculating, takes into consideration : the region, estimated revenue, time frame, competitors involved, the outcome of similar details
• Compares to other successful leads and opportunities
• Gives insights on how the team can make changes and improvements to have an increased chance of closing the deal successfully

Relationship analytics

• Similar to the Opportunity/Lead score, AI generated classification of the relationship strength between the sales team and respective customer
• Shows analytics of all interactions between two parties
• Shows real time statistics and data for suggestions on how to improve relationships
• Compares to similar cases which have failed/succeeded

Within the ‘Sales Insights’ settings section of the app, the app administrator (typically the sales team manager) can configure how sales are approached and dealt with step-by-step, how sales are distributed to the sales team depending on their attributes, and which members of their team can actually see and interact with the sales accelerator.

The main features which the sales admin can configure are:

Security Roles

• The administrator can choose whether all users or just specific security roles can see and interact with the sales accelerator

Sequences

• Use the sequence designer to configure sequences of activities that define steps to help salespeople prioritise their activities for the day, be productive in their jobs, and focus on sales
• Create a flow of action steps to take on a sales
• Can make sequences unique for specific segments of sales

 Segments

• Allows the system admin to group opportunities and leads into filtered groups depending on attributes of the sale
• For example, could have a ‘Big deal opportunity’ segment for opportunities with estimated revenues greater than £100,000 – grouping all opportunities with said estimated revenue in one segment
• Segmenting sales into groups like this allows sales to be assigned in an optimal way (For example – can have it so ‘Big deal opportunities’ are only assigned to senior sales members)

Team Assignments

• Assign leads and opportunities to sellers depending on the attributes of the cases (Eg: Where the case came from, estimated revenue, lead score)
• Adjust capacities and work schedule of team members

Assignment rules

• Choose how segments are assigned across a team
• Choose which team members to assign them to
• Can spread the distribution evenly, or consider the team members capacities, schedules and capabilities