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How would your company benefit from a greater connection to your end customer data? You can probably think of a couple of different use cases in which this may be beneficial. By mapping Dynamics CRM to our sale process we began to explore how these kinds of scenarios would impact our business. This week we’ll share the top 3 ways mapping our Microsoft Dynamics CRM software to our selling process has attributed to our growth, collaboration — and above all else — our sales teams ability to address customer needs and new opportunities effectively. For us, it all started in our expert internal implementation. Get all the details below.

What Datix Has Done By Mapping Dynamics CRM To Our Sales Process

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1.) Internal Tracking

At Datix, a primary reason we initially looked into mapping Dynamics CRM to our sales process was to better track items of opportunity the way we understood them internally. For example, we  created unique fields on the interface to display specific attributes and information about leads, contacts and accounts. Those attributes enable our team to determine the orientation of these entities and gauge where they may be in their buying process. We can essentially design a personalized selling approach to those entities depending on the stage we determine them to be in based on their initial and follow up engagement.

After the preliminary information is entered into Dynamics CRM, our front office joins forces to create scenarios around what the opportunity could be, and should be, at this point. These meetings then channel back to the very front of the CRM selling process as we clarify what pre-qualifications need to be met to determine if an opportunity truly exists for our business. Those decisions are then fielded into Dynamics CRM.

In addition, marketing strives to regard every engagement with a prospect as a high priority for a number of reasons, and channel this information into Dynamics CRM as well. As leads convert, those engagements are reassigned to the account’s new appointee — a sales team member. We meld this approach to our selling process because it provides Sales and audit personnel with points of contact for quality assurance purposes. For sales, those engagements may not have been their own. For that reason, they’ll need to be fully involved in the contact that occurred prior to their appointment to make certain no bits of information fall through the cracks. As for our audit team, they have the ability to determine which engagements resulted in a conversion and pin point the differences in our approach to refine our templates, policies and procedures, as they pertain to customer retention, going forward.

2.) Mapping Dynamics CRM Data On-Demand

At some point, all the data entered into CRM will benefit someone in one department or another at some stage of the buying process. For instance, our marketing folks leave bread crumbs for our sales personnel. At our company, marketing often experiences contact with prospects first. The details of those engagements are then documented through automation from our Outlook application to Dynamics CRM. Additionally, our marketing team refreshes a situation field for Sales to gauge the timeline of the prospects next step and the type of solution they may really need.  This done through the inclusion of a custom field that the organization finds very meaningful, called “current situation”.

Our other departments utilize the data to make decisions at a higher level. In a monthly status meeting our senior leaders look to the data entry to determine revenue forecasts, and trends in prospect behavior. Budgets, forecasts and incentives are then determined based on the inputs in CRM.

For example, our marketing team may present the amount of inbound leads attributed to their efforts in a given period — all tracked in Dynamics CRM. Then they can take revenue generated from a marketing-based lead that closed and divide that across the total number of leads for the period. This determines the return for investment in the silo for our senior leaders. Additionally, those numbers can be used to gauge improvement in the next cycle.

3.) Gives Us Meaningful Insight into Our Most Profitable Customers

After we’ve closed or lost a prospect, we walk through the process backwards to define determining factors in reasons why those investors chose to work with us or move in a different direction. It is this electronic account in CRM that allows us to improve and streamline what we already have done best, and take time to reflect on lessons learned. This was only achievable by mapping Dynamics CRM with our exact selling and marketing processes.

Another important aspect of CRM is the storage of former leads and prospects whom did not convert in the past, but may have the resources to look into their project once again. Ironically, we have a large number of former employees from one company carry the idea of using our solutions to their next job or project. Because we have created a unique field to capture both accounts and contacts, those contact names are stored in CRM. We can query these and see the data we captured the last time that individual contacted us for a solution. These individuals are very important to us as it shows us we are generating a loyal ban of followers and that our solutions and models are a fit for their industry. We then look to determine if the given industry is a market in which we’d like to move our resources into.

Lastly, adoption of transparency is key for our organization. It’s in our DNA. And mapping Dynamics CRM to our sales process allows us to use the system as a platform to instill this characteristic across channels. As our team builds the data in CRM, others thrive off its review. It pushes them to induce more data into the system and creates a flow of data entry back and forth between departments. This is critical for us, because we rarely miss opportunities.  

However, enormous amounts of data aren’t always the answer for a CRM system as it can become a cumbersome process for team members, render it laggard and hold unnecessary items which may cause problems when we go to upgrade Dynamics. For that reason, we have a clearly defined sales process with clearly marked fields in Dynamics unique to our own needs. In addition, we perform a bi-yearly scrub on the system to ensure all data is relevant and purposeful. This system maintenance also gives us the notice contacts in the system whom have not been contacted in six months, thus creating an opportunity for our sales and marketing team to contact those whom may now have the ability to approach a new project.

Wrap Up

Why did this work so well for us? This is a core part of our business. Businesses hire us to map their CRM to their sales process, so we thought it was necessary for these cobblers kids to have shoes.

Businesses whom desire improved collaboration are going to have to work for it. Checkpoints and data entry are a product of a successful business today. However, we do always caution that software alone will not solve any challenges. Businesses must have a fundamentally perfect idea of how the software needs to work inside of their business to implement it (and its modules) correctly. Often it’s best to source a 3rd party expert for these types of projects.

For more information about process collaboration models, or software and businesses processes that can increase revenue and decrease costs contact the Datix team today.