TOP FIVE: Reasons Your Company Needs Dynamics CRM

1.  You are tired of customers leaving for no apparent reason.

You aren’t tracking important data, so you have missed critical trends that could point to reasons for customer dissatisfaction that can be corrected.

DYNAMICS CRM is customizable, so you can track all information that is pertinent to your industry, as well as create views and notifications to alert you to trends in sales and service.

2.  When you think about pipelines, your thoughts go to gas and oil and you aren’t in that industry!

In study after study, the best-in-class companies were far more likely to have formal, well-communicated and broadly adopted sales and/or service processes. The use of a standardized sales process allows you to pass the best practices of your best people to the rest of the team.

A sales pipeline represents your sales process consisting of all of your sales steps that you need in order to sell your product to your customer.  It works a bit like a gas pipeline.  If it’s not full from beginning to end, eventually there will be no sales.  Good Sales Pipeline Reporting will quantify the potential sales at each step of your Sales Process.  This translates into a forecast of future revenue and profits.

DYNAMICS CRM allows you to track all sales steps in your process and quantify the value of those potential sales to your future bottom line.  This information will identify where your sales team achieves their greatest successes – and where they find their biggest challenges.

3.  You have to ask the same five questions, yet again, to an annoyed customer. 

The Service Rep you are filling in for did not record the customer’s complaint before she left on vacation. Now your already grumpy customer has to tell the story again.  Maybe they have a reason to be grumpy!

DYNAMICS CRM gives you a logical place to WRITE IT DOWN so it can be easily retrieved by anyone – from your computer, your phone, your tablet or any other device.  Items on your to-do list will quickly take you to all past notes and activities, organized by account, contact, sales opportunity or service case that may have an impact on your future actions and your relationships with your customers.

 4.  You just quoted a product at a 15% discount that you probably could have sold for full price.

Customer intimacy is the act of tailoring your products and services to fit your customer’s business or industry.  Failure to fully understand your customer can lead to reduced or lost sales.  The personal touch of birthday email or a quick conversation with a customer about their favorite football team can make you the most memorable provider in a competitive market.

DYNAMICS CRM gives you a scalable way to track several little details for thousands of customers at a time. By looking at a customer’s account record, you get a quick visual recap of the most important info to them.

5.  Employee turnover results in a drop in service to your customers.

Customer information is the lifeblood of your business.  When your business does not have a company-wide store of customer data, your business is exposed to risk when employees leave or become unable to work.

DYNAMICS CRM creates a single repository of company data that details all the information and processes that keep your customers happy and your business thriving.  When an employee leaves, a few clicks will assign all of the information they collected on the customers that they serve to another member of the team.

If your company is ready to look at a Customer Relationship Management product that will result in happier customers and more sales, email crmindy@sbsgroupusa.com.

 

Creating a New Record From Your Outlook Inbox

Using Dynamics CRM, you can quickly and easily create a new record from an email in your Outlook inbox. If you also have IPM project management, that functionality extends to all the IPM record types as well. With a few simple clicks, you can move from your Outlook inbox to creating new records, and then be right back in your email – all with a single sign-on.

Here is an example of how it works:

You receive an email with a question from a client (Alfred). You decide to create a new RFI record to hold the information and to send out inquiries. Right from within the email itself, you can create the new record.

To create the RFI:

1. From within the email, select “Set Regarding” in the menu bar.

2. Choose the type of record.

• In our example, we’ll choose RFI as our record type.
• You may see the record type you want in the drop-down list. If this is the first time you’re choosing a specific record.

 

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3. Select the type record. (For our example, we’re choosing RFI.)

4. To create a new record, select “New.”

5. The new RFI form appears on the screen.

• Fill in as many details as you want, being sure to fill in the required fields at a minimum.

6. Close the new RFI.

7. The RFI you just created will be highlighted in the Lookup Window. Click Add.

8. The email is now attached to the new RFI record you created. It will appear in the Activity Feed on the record.

ADDITIONAL RFI FUNCTIONALITY OFFERED BY IPM

If you have the IPM software within your Dynamics CRM, you also have access to even more functionality designed to make your job easier and you more productive. When you send out an RFI request (by clicking the “send email” button on the RFI record), IPM creates an email with all of the RFI information included.

Even better, it also includes space in the email for a response and recognizes the response in a return email. If you have the email scraping feature enabled, IPM will pick up the return email and copy the information in the “Response” block to your RFI record in IPM.

EXTEND THIS IDEA TO OTHER ENTITIES

Although we used an RFI in this example, you can add any IPM or CRM record from your Outlook Inbox by using this method. When the lookup window appears, you will have the option to select any entity in use in your system (step 3 above).

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility

Have you ever wondered what software is compatible with your current version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Have you had issues with the software you used in your previous version of CRM? Do you want to know if the issue is one of compatibility?

Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Below are compatibility links to help you determine whether or not your current (or future) software is compatible with your version of Dynamics CRM.

Compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

CRM 2016: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3124955

CRM 2015: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3018360

CRM 2013: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3005167

CRM 2011: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3005163

CRM 4.0: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3005186

 

Compatibility for Tablet Browser, CRM for Tablets, and CRM for Phones with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

CRM 2015 and 2016: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3019557

 

Compatibility with CRM for Outlook

CRM 2016: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn832152%28v=crm.8%29.aspx

CRM 2015: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn832152%28v=crm.7%29.aspx

As of March 1, 2016, Microsoft has not yet published a version that is compatible with Windows 10.

Compatibility for imported Solutions by Version Number.

Note: Both 6.1 and 6.1 (Opt-In) have the option of exporting solutions in a 6.0 format and use the 6.0 matrix for compatibility.

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Join us for our 30-minute CRM Webinar on Wednesday, March 16 at 2 PM EST. The webinar will address how you can improve your sales productivity in CRM and eliminate the manual entry of leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities. Spend more time selling and less time entering data! Register for the webinar here.

SBS Group Maintains Microsoft Partner Network Gold Competencies

SBS Group has achieved Gold Competencies in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) from Microsoft. SBS Group has maintained gold competencies in ERP and CRM since Microsoft started the program over ten years ago.

To earn a Microsoft competency, partners must successfully complete exams (resulting in Microsoft Certified Professionals) to prove their level of technology expertise. Partners must also submit customer references that demonstrate successful projects. For gold competencies, partners must also implement a yearly customer satisfaction study and, for many competencies, meet a performance commitment. Gold competency is the highest level of competency a partner can attain under the Microsoft Partner Network.

“Continuing our Microsoft Gold Partnership with gold competencies in ERP and CRM was an essential requirement for our business,” explained James Bowman, President and CEO of SBS Group. “We are happy to continue our partnership with Microsoft, which enables us to continue providing our clients with high-quality service.”

SBS Group is a Microsoft Master VAR and Microsoft Gold Partner providing consulting and IT services to organizations across the United States and Canada. SBS Group works with a variety of business solutions, on-premise and in the cloud, and works with clients in various industries. Maintaining its Microsoft Gold competencies in ERP and CRM, SBS Group will be able to continue to leverage its partner status to better serve its clients. The Microsoft Partner Network helps partners strengthen their capabilities to showcase leadership in the marketplace on the latest technology, to better serve customers and to easily connect with one of the most active, diverse networks in the world.

About SBS Group
SBS Group is a national Microsoft master VAR (Value Added Reseller) with Gold level competency in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Over the past 25 years, they have been recognized as Microsoft Partner of the Year, Inner Circle Member and Microsoft President’s Club member multiple times. The company is headquartered in Edison, New Jersey and operates offices across North America. For more information, please visit SBS Group’s website at http://www.sbsgroupusa.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/sbs-group, on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/sbsgroup and find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SBSGroupUSA.

Read the original release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/02/prweb13227264.htm.

Pros & Cons of Tracking Prospects Using Leads vs. Accounts/Contacts

Should I use Leads to track my Prospects?

Or maybe using Accounts/Contacts it the way to go?

First, there is no “right” answer. What we can do is give you information about the benefits of doing it each way in order to help you decide which method you want to use.

The Argument in Favor of Using Leads

One of the benefits of using the Lead entity is that it is a way to park information that you are not sure has value yet. This can include people that might come up to your trade-show booth and hand you their business card. Are they interested in your handouts and gifts, or are they truly interested in your product? Entering that business card as a Lead allows the capture of their information, which may or may not have value later. This can also include anyone that signs up for your website or newsletter, and people who download your whitepapers.

By recording information as a Lead, you keep reports clean, and also assure you don’t have to scroll through multiple pages of information looking for your actual customers (Accounts and Contacts.)

Introduced in CRM 2013, Cross Entity Business Process Flows allow the unification of the Lead qualification with the Opportunity in the same process flow. This allows the easy navigation straight from Lead to Opportunity and back.

Data Management Concerns

Another benefit to use the Lead entity to track your prospects is the ability to easily cull bad data. For example, if you are buying Leads from a re-seller, you may be importing 5,000 leads at one time and 4,500 of those 5,000 may turn out to not have an interest in your product, with only 500 becoming customers. It is far easier to separate the 500 who are doing business with you from the 4,500 who has no interest in your company if they are stored in separate entities within Dynamics CRM. If all 5,000 of those original leads are turned into Contacts and tracked there, eventually all these non-value contacts could affect performance, if they are not purged on a regular basis, slowing the user interface for everyone.

If you decide to put prospect information into Accounts and Contacts and create opportunities from there, you end up with a lot of accounts and contacts that are not currently customers, and who may never be customers. Their passing interest in your product has waned, they have unsubscribed from everything and are just sitting out there and you have no easy method to keep them out of your reports or views.

As time goes on and more and more of similar and same named individuals are added to the system, you can end up searching for John Doe and pull up 1,200 John Doe’s that you will need to search through, looking for the John Doe you really want. 1,100 of these John Doe’s may have never purchased from your company, have never shown any interest in your product, have no interest in your marketing or newsletters, and are not signed up for your Blog.

Why would you want them on your interface, making it harder for you to find the 100 John Does that actually have an interest in your product?

Potential Issues

While Leads used properly can be extremely helpful, they should never be allowed to get old. The longer a lead sits in the lead entity, the more likely it will be that data issues will arise. Also, when a lead is qualified, it is deactivated and most, but not all, of the data is moved to an Account and Contact record. For example, without customization, notes associated with the Lead do not copy over to the newly created Account and Contact.

It is also possible, when a new Contact is created, to create a duplicate record as there is no fool proof manner of duplicate detection between Leads and Contacts.

When a Lead is disqualified, the lead is deactivated and if the person calls months later, the salesperson may be unaware of the previous record and its notes.

Some CRM Users do not want a Contact and Opportunity created when a Lead is qualified, but there is no method to stop this from happening.

Qualifying Leads

There is one other detail to consider when deciding whether to use Leads to track Prospects, or to use Accounts/Contacts. Dynamics CRM has a built-in process for qualifying Leads who are interested in your product. This process can automatically create an Account, a Contact and an Opportunity for a qualified Lead. There is no such automated process to create opportunities for Accounts/Contacts that express an interest in purchasing your products.

The Argument in favor of using Accounts and Contacts

It is quite possible to use the relationship type field and add a type called “prospect” to differentiate between prospects and actual customers. You can use this field to help create targeted marketing lists that contain new product information that can be shared with your new prospect and current customers alike. So it is convenient to be able to group everyone who has an interest in this particular product together, whether or not they are a customer or a lead, and whether or not they are just a newsletter subscriber. So, there is an argument for some companies to have all that information in one place.

For example, when creating a Marketing Campaign, two separate marketing lists would need to be compiled, one for Leads and one for Contacts, before being sent out to tell them about your new Product X. However, if Leads are not used and prospects are recorded in Contacts, only a single marketing list for Product X would need to be created and recorded.

The upside of using Accounts and Contacts in that the information about who is interested in what products gets grouped together and thus easier to report on. It would be easy to record on a Contact, by use of check boxes, who is interested in or a customer of Product X, Product Y, and Product Z, allowing for easy sorting, reporting, and viewing prospect and existing customers all at once. In the same situation with both Leads and Contacts in use, that information would be spread out and not as easily and quickly reported together.

But…which is better?

Based on your business processes, is it more efficient to have all the data in one place for easy reporting, or better to not have to sift through hundreds (if not thousands) of records that offer no value to the company? Are records searched daily, versus a monthly marketing campaign? Is 1,100 extra John Doe records slowing even the simplest of tasks when required to be searched through on a daily basis?

Okay, so while we said there is no “right” answer, in most cases we find it is better to keep prospects separated from active customers, due to the multiple day-to-day usage functions within Dynamics CRM. This means using the Lead entity to track Prospects, and saving Accounts/Contacts to track people who have shown an interest in your product. The small gain in efficiency found when reporting on all Prospects and Customers (when all info is entered in Accounts/Contacts) is quickly nullified every time a new Advanced Find is performed, and records need to be sorted appropriately.

Using the out-of-the-box processes, views, reports and functionality supplied with Dynamics CRM gives you a process advantage. However, there is still nothing wrong with using Accounts/Contacts to track Prospects, so long as your company has a clear data management process established.