Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be customized, extended, changed and developed on top of, but
"as much as Dynamics CRM can be customized and changed it is still a packaged solution with a well thought out and vetted design." - Anne
With so much understandable buzz around Twitter and Twitter's impact within the world of relationships and relationship management I was pleased to see this article about how the various CRM vendors are considering tying to the tool.
What is particularly nice about this article, from DestinationCRM, is that it does not only discuss the concept, it actually lists exactly how each specific vendor is approaching the feeds.
It seems that the concept of an "Opportunity" is one that trips a number of people up and as such I wanted to post some thoughts on this. The core concept of an opportunity is that it is the "thing" that you would consider closed when a sales process is completed.
For instance the opportunity is the tracking of a dollar amount, a close date, a sales stage and a probability percentage. When closed the dollar amount is set in stone, the sales stage is "the end" and the close date is firm and the probability percent is 100. You also have a win/lost concept to consider.
Now for any given Account you can possibly have multiple opportunities. The key here is that as you close these opportunities you are building a historical context. You are also doing analytics and analysis on these open things. You might report on where an opportunity is in the funnel or how likely it is that this opportunity will close.
An "Account" (a client or prospect or other) is ideally a relationship with a company that you maintain forever, but what you are doing with that account might change.
Why would you have multiple Opportunities?
1) Multiple years - Such as a software licensing renewel
2) Multiple projects to close and complete
3) Multiple products to sell to different people
4) Different departments selling different things to different locations
An opportunity is the tracking of the potential received dollars and sale. It is associated with an Account or a contact, but in and of itself it is not a company(account) or person (contact).
An opportunity tracks the expected close date, the estimated revenue and the probability of close, as expected, but it can also track the associated competitors, the sales person, the sales stage and the completed and to be completed action/task/activity list to push the opportunity over the end line.
An opportunity can track every person who works on or touches that opportunity through the completion of activities and an opportunity can have a long list of associated potential products or services and each of these products or services can have a related price list, discounts and special circumstances.
The potential of the "opportunity" is limitless
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM there can be a specific difference between the understanding of "LEAD" versus "PROSPECT"
A lead imported into the leads pool is often considered unqualified and perhaps not even real. This could be a person from a purchased marketing list, a casual meeting, an association member or a bogus entry such as "mickey mouse" from a web form.
The first goal around any given lead is initial qualification. Do they exist, are they worth the potential of engagement?
Within the software Microsoft offers a "leads pool" where once qualified a lead can be marked qualified and closed and then leave this area of the database and be further expanded into Contact, Account and Opportunity.
A prospect on the other hand is or can be a type of contact or account. A prospect represents a company that has the real potential to be a new client. They have passed initial qualifications (as in they actually exist) and they are currently engaged or are worth pursuing for engagement.
Tracking all that happens on a prospect is often done within the Account or Opportunity record. This includes the gathering and documenting of all contacts within this prospect, the projecting and scheduling of activities needed to close this prospect and the historical notes.
One of the areas that often becomes a chore in a CRM system is the managing of data that has become inconsistent or messy.
Dynamics CRM offers you the ability to do Bulk Edit for a quick cleanse. In this example we will change all state fields set to Texas to TX.
1. Choose Accounts
2. Pick a nice View that allows you to sort on the fields you might want to update. In our example sort by the STATE field by clicking on the column header.
3. Click on the first record to select, CNTL click on the last record to select all accounts where state equals Texas.
4. Choose Edit
5. Change the state field to TX
6. Save and Close
All better!
If you have thousands upon thousands of records then you can also use a manual work flow or setup an onchange event. Microsoft gives you lots of choices.
I have yet to meet a sales person who takes pleasure in the task of updating any CRM system and yet most have to submit a sales pipeline report at the end of the week to the Director of Sales.
When I was doing enterprise sales the exercise was painful for despite using a CRM system (that was not Dynamics CRM) the Director of Sales and the CEO wanted an Excel spreadsheet.
Now only if we had Dynamics CRM! I could have saved myself at least an hour or two a week of work.
With Dynamics CRM you get the best of both worlds (even at the most basic out of the box level). You can update your unique opportunities from within Outlook in a nice user friendly entry screen. You don't have to reenter account names or contact people or even the total dollar value of the opportunity (although you can). Instead you update a few fields (percentage, stage, maybe the close date) and instantly your pipeline view is updated.
Additionally if you have a boss who wants the sales pipeline in Excel he can open his Dynamic Excel Sales Pipeline spreadsheet (or CRM) and as soon as he opens that Excel spreadsheet (or CRM) it is updated with the data you just entered (believe me it is a timesaver).
