Dynamics 365 Sales – feature overview

Dynamics 365 for Sales is a feature rich product which support contact and opportunity management. An overview of that product can be found at Dynamics 365 for Sales feature highlights. However, the most commonly used features are also described below:

Dashboards

evergreen sales uses Microsoft’s “Sales Dashboard” as its default dashboard:

There are several other built-in dashboards available, each of which can be made the default by a user if they wish:

• Marketing
• Sales activity
• Sales overview
• Sales performance

It is also easy to create new dashboards, either by modifying existing dashboards or creating completely new ones.

Accounts and contacts

Accounts and contacts store information about clients and the people who work for them.

Accounts

An account is an existing client (or prospect). Dynamics 365 for Sales supports the capture of basic (names, addresses and contact details) and useful analytical information (classifications, size, recent contacts) about the organisation:

The Account Summary screen

Contacts

A contact is a person know to the organisation. THey can be defined as an individual or as someone associated with an account. Either way, their existance in Sales means that they can be linked to sales or marketing activities.

Leads and Opportunities

The opportunity lifecycle starts with a Lead; a contact from a person who is expressing an interest in a product or service:

When confirmed as valid, it is qualified and becomes an Opportunity. This can be tracked and followed until it is either won or lost. Along the way, the business development team can record additional information about the opportunity – who the key stakeholders are, the competition, key dates and events, its predicted value etc. It is advisable to capture as much of this information as possible as it will make the user experience richer, both in terms of reporting and in terms of future use (recording competitors stores them forever and so analysis about who you are winning or losing against becomes possible).

Campaigns

Campaigns enable you to record and manage promotional activities using marketing lists. Marketing lists are, as the name suggests, a list of names that can be used for marketing. The people on marketing list must be contacts in the system.