Technology has transformed the way we do business today. On one hand, it has made selling more difficult because customers often get most of the information they need online and tend to make buying decisions based on what they find.
According to Olatomiwa Williams, Microsoft Business Solution Lead for Microsoft Nigeria, responding effectively to these better informed and more demanding buyers, Sales organizations and professionals need to make that shift.
Not only that, they need to embrace social media to take advantage of relationships and utilize technology to quickly respond to buyers.
This often time poses a great challenge to SMEs that cannot afford costly Customer Relationship Management solutions, Williams said.
She disclosed that Microsoft in its wisdom rolled out Dynamics CRM Online which helps SMEs use technology to close more deals with less effort.
“With Dynamics CRM online, your organization does not have to incur huge hardware cost. You can have the Dynamics CRM Sales, Marketing and Services available for you on demand and also extend the capability to fit other business requirements,” she told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek.
Williams who oversees Microsoft Dynamics Business, both CRM and ERP solutions, also noted that, “Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a breadth of sales capabilities to empower you to sell effectively. Sales persons can access easy-to-use tools that provide content relevant to specific stages within the sales cycle. This solution also helps sales managers focus on the right information by providing powerful dashboards with real-time visualizations”.
Such real-time virtualizations, she said, include, “Planning & Management: Enables sales managers maintain a strategic focus while driving the business forward; account & opportunity management, delivers solutions that are intuitive and easy-to-use, so sales reps have more customer- facing time and social & market insights: provides sales reps with deep and valuable insights.
“Others are, collaborative selling: boosts your Sales rep’s selling power, by providing access to experts and information across the organization; mobile sales: enables sales reps work how they want, anywhere, anytime and sales analytics: Turns data into actionable insights”.
She who been with Microsoft for over 4-years and has served in multiple roles including Technology Solution Professional for Microsoft’s Enterprise Voice covering different segments and industry across West East and Central Africa, Account Technology Strategist for Telco, Oil $ Gas and Financial Services, added that the solution will help organization “Work as a team”.
“Win faster by working as a team to create compelling and differentiated customer interactions, and ultimately sell more. Microsoft provides a streamlined experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and its interoperability with Microsoft Office 365 (Microsoft Outlook, Lync, Skype, SharePoint and Office) and Yammer. Salespeople can go to one place for all of their tasks from viewing sales leads, researching companies, finding social connections, communicating with prospects, reviewing sales insights, and creating sales proposals”.
Similarly, Organisations can turn social insight into sales
She said, “If your customers are using social networks to learn more about you and your products, should you not also use them to gain social insights? You may learn that a prospect is dissatisfied with a competitor’s product or you may learn that they are dissatisfied with yours. You may also learn that your customer has recommended your services to a contact and get a new lead. With social network data from LinkedIn and Twitter integrated right into the CRM system, it becomes a natural part of your sales process.
“Dynamics CRM Online delivers the latest market buzz and news along with corporate data so that you are always up to date on your customer’s activities.
Market Smarter
Great marketing starts with good planning, but with the increasing complexity in marketing experiences, planning is not a straight-forward task.
This, Williams said, “Dynamics CRM Online helps to deliver a single marketing cloud for marketing organizations across marketing planning, execution and analytics – across all channels (whether they are digital, social or traditional – like print and broadcast), hence be able to achieve: Unified Marketing Planning; Multi-channel Engagement and Marketing Analytics.
Ola who brings a wealth of years of industry experience and technical expertise to help organizations meet and exceed their business objectives, added that Microsoft is committed to helping SMEs leverage easy to use tools and resources that will help their business have insightful engagement and achieve amazing customer experience.