Basic CRM terms, part 3 – Leads and opportunities
As we continue our look at basic Microsoft terms, this month we look at Leads and Opportunities. If you strip D365 down to its essence, Leads and Opportunities represent the core of any sales-based organization.
Your ability to effectively manage your pipeline is vital to your success and D365 is an ideal tool for helping you do just that.
In this article we will review how Dynamics 365 deals with Leads and Opportunities.
Leads
A lead is simply any outreach that you receive from a person or organization that you potentially could do business with. represents any person or organization that a company might have the potential to do business with.
With Microsoft Dynamics 365 that lead will be stored in a secure system. A common way this happens is when a potential customer. This represents the beginning of the sales process.
A lead should be thought of as something temporary. In fact, you should look to move the lead through your sales process as quickly as possible.
Information at your fingertips
You can customize the lead fields to fit your needs as an origination. However, there are some basic features that we will review now.
The basics: The bread and butter of the lead. Here you’ll see the basic information of the lead – the first name, last name, company name, job title, phone numbers, email addresses and how they want to be contacted. Additionally, you can store CASL (or other anti-SPAM regulations) permission information here to assist in remaining compliant with the law.
Origins: The field will tell you where the lead was generated from. This is vital in understanding and shaping your marketing efforts.
What’s a going on: Most importantly, Dynamics 365 lets you know with a glance what is going on with each lead. They are categized in one of three ways:
Open. An open means that there hasn’t been a movement on the lead yet. It’s just arrived and is needs to be qualified through your lead triage process. Businesses should aim to see leads stay at this level for as short a period as possible.
Disqualified. A disqualified lead means that it’s been determined that the lead is either not reachable, looking for something you can’t provide or from a region that you do not serve. This represents the end of the line for the lead.
Qualified. A qualified lead has been determined to a worthwhile sales opportunity for your sales staff to pursue.
Opportunity is the key word above. From this point the lead is moved into a different field – the Opportunity.
Opportunities in D365
Opportunity Field Definitions in Dynamics 365
An opportunity is a qualified lead that your sales staff is actively pursuing. There are several key fields in Opportunities that will we will review now:
Estimated Close Date: By entering the date that you believe that the opportunity will be closing you are able to have a better idea of your businesses’ expected workload to allow you to effectively
Estimated Revenue: It’s important to have an understanding of expected revenue for Sales Pipeline reporting. Here you can track that.
Status: A quick view to let you see what the status of each opportunity is.
Owner: This lists the sales professional that is responsible for managing the account.
These are just a few of the fields that can be used in an Opportunity. You can customize the system to meet your needs and specific sales processes.
If you’d like to learn more about how Dynamics 365 can benefit your company, why not sign up to our Learning Academy, or give one of our experts a call?