How can you improve your business development with Microsoft Dynamics 365?

How can you improve your business development with Microsoft Dynamics 365? Once you realize that business development is tied to sales, you’ll understand that successfully developing your business requires selling your product or service. To achieve your business (sales) development objectives, you also need to be able to boost your production, etc.

This marketing strategy focused on strategic accounts, better known as Account Based Marketing (ABM), is easier than you think. Keep reading to learn how implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help you plan your business development strategy.

What is Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Account-based marketing is a highly customized B2B marketing approach based on data targeting high-value accounts. It delivers messages based on an account’s specific qualities and needs. With ABM, you can easily overcome the usual challenges associated with B2B, such as identifying the right clients for a product and reducing sales time.

Furthermore, ABM represents a critical tool for B2B businesses seeking to reverse the funnel. Instead of working with a high volume of poorly qualified prospects, ABM focuses on a set of roles within organizations that you have identified as valuable prospects (leads). A reverse sales funnel tells you how many prospects your business needs to generate at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the sales marketing pipeline to achieve your targets. By predicting the number of prospects needed, a reverse sales funnel helps management teams set appropriate targets and key performance indicators for every step of the sales process.

The stages of the reverse sales funnel are as follows:

1. Select target accounts

2. Identify key contacts

3. Develop

4. Convert from prospect to lead

Once your sales team has evaluated and prioritized the prospects that correspond to these roles, they can collaborate with the marketing team to create an accurate profile of the best clients to target. This gives marketing experts the information they need to craft relevant messages and personalize them based on these clients’ needs and interests.

Why use Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

ABM is a highly targeted approach usually used for strategic accounts for which you can develop personalized campaigns with potentially significant impact.

With ABM, businesses can modify their marketing budgets based on clients’ purchase probability. This allows them to more effectively market to clients that are most likely to be converted. Businesses that use ABM deliver a much higher quality experience to their prospects than their competitors that forgo this strategy.

Lastly, ABM focuses on a set number of targets, helping to boost your ROI. 97% of marketing experts have achieved a higher ROI using ABM than with any other marketing strategy. The ABM framework out-performs other marketing strategies; in fact, 84% of marketing experts report that account-based marketing strategies yield better results than other marketing investments. Strategic account marketing (ABM) results in more conversions, generating revenues that are 208% higher than those produced by other marketing strategies.

Improve your business development with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365, getting the most out of your business development budgets is easy. ABM consists of targeting, engaging and evaluating your prospects. Microsoft Dynamics 365 lets you easily integrate these as core elements of your program. By focusing on a smaller number of targets, you’re well positioned to offer a much more highly personalized product to your clients.

Segmenting and targeting client accounts

With Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can set account parameters to target, including geographic location, population density, etc. You can then sort these accounts based on their assigned priority level (Tier1, Tier2, Tier3), and target and manage the accounts that are worth your time and that bring you the highest ROI. You will then be able to target and manage accounts in a more centralized manner instead of managing and syncing accounts and lists across multiple applications.

The type of accounts that you target depends on your organization, but those that meet the following criteria are a good place to begin your targeting efforts: higher and faster return, product suitability, strategic importance, competition, and location. Additionally, Microsoft Dynamics 365 lets you target your contacts based on their role relative to your client (decision maker, influencer, end user, etc.). You’ll save considerable time by following up on your prospects.

Integrating LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM also gives you direct access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, providing you with another channel for communicating with your previously targeted prospect.

Engaging on all channels

You need to be able to plan out and execute coordinated, personalized campaigns on each of your marketing channels from a single platform instead of managing them individually. This requires an account-based marketing solution that links each of your channels and forms a foundation for leading informed, comprehensive multichannel campaigns targeting your chosen accounts.

Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics 365, your marketing and sales channels can collaborate effectively to implement the best ABM strategy for your needs.

Evaluating and improving programs

You need to be able to evaluate your ABM strategy so you can demonstrate its success and improve it over time. To do this, you need to find a solution that helps you create account dashboards that review specific accounts, programs and targets and generate coherent analyses of accounts based on revenues, all in one place.

With a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, you can do all this and more, as it gives you access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, an indisputable benefit. Not familiar with LinkedIn Sales Navigator? It’s a sales management tool designed to help sales professionals make the most of LinkedIn’s vast network and, ultimately, boost their business. Generating qualified leads will be easier than ever! By using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you’re ensuring that you’re targeting the right contact for each of your accounts. You’ve already implemented the foundation of your business developement strategy!

Effectively track your business development plan

Dynamics 365 lets you easily monitor and clearly define your business development/prospection activities. Your marketing team can quickly view the communication history for a particular account using the account overview feature. You can add any useful notes about details or follow-up.

Sales funnel for business development

The sales funnel for your business development plan consists of the following steps:

1. Not yet contacted

2. No answer

3. In communication

4. Not interested

5. Upcoming project

6. Client

The list of accounts that you have targeted will go through the funnel, and clients “not yet contacted” will have their status updated to “no response” or “in communication.” In the first scenario, the person in charge of marketing will attempt to contact the client using LinkedIn Sales Navigator or other means available to them. Once they have received a response, the status will change to “in communication.” In the other scenario, an alternate method of communication will be attempted with the list of key contacts.

Depending on the response received, the account’s status may change to “not interested,” in which case the next step would be “development” to maintain an open line of communication with this account. If the account progresses to the “upcoming project” stage, you’ll need to do the follow-up required to advance them to “client” status.

Track your prospecting efforts using Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes it so much easier to track your prospecting efforts. As soon as you open the account overview, you’ll see its status, the next step to take and the date by which this needs to be completed. With Dynamics 365, the business development team can create dashboards with graphs based on your tracking needs.

Implement an ABM strategy with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Gestisoft

To achieve their objectives, many businesses searching for high-value clients often report that implementing an ABM-based strategy is more useful than casting a wide net. You can think of it like the difference between fishing with a net versus with a spear. You’ll hit your target more easily using a spear—Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Implement a marketing strategy that will propel your business to new heights. Turn to Gestisoft’s experts to learn how to optimize your business development strategy using Microsoft Dynamics 365.