Latest: Dynamics 365 for Sales & Viva for Sales & features I feel are under-utilised + short Demo videos!

This article will run through some of the latest features in Dynamics 365 for Sales as well as Microsoft Viva for Sales. I shall also explore some of the more under-utilised features and functionality of the Sales stack with example brief video demonstrations.

My hope from this brief easily consumable article is to widen awareness of the features that exist. I have purposely not made the content overly detailed so that it can be assumed quickly and by all. If any assistance is needed with configuring any of these features or understanding the limitations please do just reach out ??.

Contents:

Deal Manager, Note Analysis, Teams meetings, Chat & Collaboration (Connected records, Collaboration sharing & Chat), Sales Accelerator, Sales playbooks, Sales Literature, Forecasting, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Viva for Sales (Outlook & Teams). I have not included the Lead and Opportunity predictive models in this blog....as the article was getting too long, ha!

Deal Manager

The deal manager is the report that was needed for both round table weekly sales discussions as well as that quick snapshot of pipeline success especially when your target discussions are getting close!

The Deal Manager allows you to see both a Deal Tracker and Sales Funnel.

1. Deal Tracker - a quick view of the probability of success and estimated close date with a visual view displaying the size of the deal. Hover over the various opportunities on the graph to see some key stats, select the opportunity to see key summary information and interactions as well as add new ones - update the status of various relational information.

If you have Teams Chat and Collaboration setup - see the connected chats for that opportunity. All the salient points to do a successful roundup of the various deals in progress.

1. Sales Funnel - The same informational drill-through and functionality as the Deal Tracker but with a graphical view of the Pipeline Phases (Quality, Develop and Propose).

Note Analysis

Note analysis is a really handy productivity and efficiency tool. Allowing for Dynamics 365 for Sales to contextually understand your notes against contacts and accounts and understand if follow up activities are required such as meetings, phone calls or even a new contact creation with the option for these items to be created for you.

Teams Meetings

Now create Team meetings from Appointment activities! What more needs to be said.

Chat & Collaboration (Connected records, Collaboration sharing & Chat)

Dynamics 365 for Sales (Dynamics 365 in general) and Microsoft Teams now have deep contextual integration with one another.

• Teams chat: Allowing you to use the Instant Messaging functionality without leaving Dynamics 365.
• Connected chat: connect conversations relating to opportunities, Accounts and other relational tables at a record level. Whenever you go back to that record you'll see associated conversations that are contextually relevant.
• Collaboration: Easily embed records from Dynamics into teams channels and chats aiding with discussions.

One item that is not shown within the presentation as has been a feature for quite sometime is the ability to use the Dynamics experience from within Teams. Shown in the image below:

Sales Accelerator

Ensuring the Sales specialist that use Dynamics 365 for Sales know what activities they need to complete especially if they are managing many contacts, accounts, leads and opportunities at once can be quite overwhelming. This is where the "Sales Accelerator" is phenomenal - it provides a configurable and easily filtered sequential prioritised task list displaying your various committed activities and connected sequences that you need to work on.

Let's quickly dip into Viva for Sales -

Microsoft Viva for Sales is a relatively new product by Microsoft to help Sales people work effectively from both with Dynamics 365 for Sales and also from within Teams without having to switch apps or even contexts.

Regardless of where you are currently interacting within your Microsoft estate you should be able to see the information you need on your customers.

I have broken this section down into two Microsoft Viva for Teams and then for Outlook.

Teams:

The current functionality for Microsoft Viva for Sales within side Teams allows you to share information deeply integrated with your fellow Team users such as share contacts, accounts, leads and opportunity records that they can see a summary of before opening up, inline within Teams, and interacting with the record - with the option to go back to the main Dynamics 365 application if they so wish to.

The other fantastic piece of functionality is "Meeting summary", quite similar to Microsoft's 'Intelligent Conversation' functionality without the automated ability to create tasks. It will show you a transcript and voice recordings of the conversation allowing you to drill back easily to particular sections of the conversation, it will highlight whether parts of the chat were positive/negative/neutral, there is an element of 'recap' (highlights and follow ups) where the functionality tries to summarise the conversations (GPT-3 is my big bet here) and also mention functionality where it calls out and allows you to drill back where you or they may have mentioned people/products/questions/times etc. I find this really useful in general for getting a summary of the call that you can go back to - to refresh your memory.

Outlook:

A cleaned up version of the original Outlook connector. Provides the ability to contextually receive account and contact information based on the email you are looking at. Update any information from Dynamics 365 that may be wrong including personal notes, easily view related records such as opportunities and drill back to Dynamics if you need further information and you can also add new contacts to Dynamics using Viva for Sales too.

Back to Dynamics 365 for Sales -

Sales Playbook

A great feature that has been around for quite sometime but I often see not leveraged is Sales Playbooks.

This is an aid for the sales specialists that can help in a myriad of ways whether it's a new starter unsure how to onboard a new client, maybe an event has popped up that the sales specialist is unsure of such as their budget has suddenly decreased or has been pushed out etc. These are flexible and configurable - they can be task, appointment or phone call focused with supporting documentation to assist along the way.

Sales Literature

Sales literature is another overlooked feature - it can provide a central repository for your entire Sales department to have quick access to the most frequently used/requested literature/documentation from brochures to agreements.

Forecasting

Another fantastic feature is forecasting - brilliant for creating flexible slice and dice views of your sales forecast!

Setup often for allowing managers to quickly see how healthy their pipeline is and assess target revenue numbers against hot-weighted etc.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

For business that leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator I see it all too often that they do not use the integration features within Dynamics 365.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator integrates nicely within Dynamics 365 Model Driven Apps allowing for the user to received up-to-date information direct from LinkedIn relating to the account or contact they are viewing. This can include; being introduce to an Account/Contact as it'll display mutual connections, Ice-breakers if you have a call coming up and need something to discuss, relevant leads that are similar to the contact you are viewing and news displaying what the latest updates are they the account has posted.

Coming next: Lead & Opportunity Scoring & Relationship analytics

I do hope you found this brief summary document of some new and old under-utilised features useful ??!