Dynamics 365 & LinkedIn Sales Navigator | Part 2

Most of you probably have heard of the integration between Dynamics 365 Sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but don’t exactly know how everything works. Last week I wrote about the technical side of things, how to set some of this stuff up, how to enable some of the features, synchronization, etc. (If you haven’t read that article yet, you can do that here.)
In this article I am going to focus on how you and your users can use LinkedIn and Dynamics 365 together.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Widget

As mentioned in the previous article, system administrators can configure Dynamics 365 to show the LinkedIn widget directly on the entity form vs having to click on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tab. (The LinkedIn Sales Navigator tab is added to certain forms when the integration between Dynamics 365 and Sales Navigator is enabled.) Users can add the widget to a form by adding the last name field to a form, then double clicking on the field to open the field properties window. Click on the controls tab and click ‘Add Control’. Select the LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead(Member Profile) control. The actions available on the widget (I.E showing icebreakers, showing connections etc.) depend on how the form control is configured.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Tab

The LinkedIn Sales Navigator tab is added to the out of the box lead, contact, account and opportunity forms. Admins have the ability to add it to custom forms for those entities as well. There are three sections on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator Tab; LinkedIn Member Profile, LinkedIn Account profile and the LinkedIn InMail section.

LinkedIn Member Profile Pane

When you view the sales navigator tab on the lead or contact forms, the lead or contact record in Dynamics 365 is the person who should be matched in the LinkedIn member profile. When you open the tab from the account record, this is the contact records populated in the primary contact field, when you open the tab on the opportunity record this is the contact populated in the opportunity contact field.

Profile
There are a few tabs available on the member profile section. The profile tab shows information about the LinkedIn member such as name, current and previous title, location, the total connections this person has on LinkedIn and the (shared) connections you have in common with this person. Next to the connection’s name on the right side, there are three dots that show a few commands when you click it . The commands you’ll see depend on if you’re already connected with this person or not and if you’ve saved this profile in Sales Navigator or not. The commands you’ll always see is ‘Message’, which allows you to send a LinkedIn message or InMail to this person, and ‘not the right person’. As explained in the previous article, the system can match contact, lead and account records automatically, but if needed users have the ability to unmatch and to manually ‘rematch’ a LinkedIn profile with a Dynamics 365 record. When users click ‘Not the right person’, this immediately ‘unmatches’ the person from the LinkedIn profile, and a search window is shown where the user can start searching for a different LinkedIn profile to match it with. Once the correct profile is found, the user clicks the ‘Match’ button to match the LinkedIn profile to the Dynamics 365 record.

Icebreakers
The icebreakers shows you different types of information you can use as a conversation starter, like the connections you have in common with the LinkedIn member. When you click the arrow on the right side of ‘Highlights’ you can see additional information like companies you have both worked at or group memberships you have in common. Below the ‘Highlights’ section is the ‘Recent Activity’ area which shows you the LinkedIn members’ activity like articles they shared, etc. When you click on the ‘View All Activity’ link, this will open their LinkedIn member profile in Sales Navigator.

Get Introduced
When users click on the ‘More’ tab, they can see the ‘Get Introduced’ option. This also shows users connections they have in common with the LinkedIn member but from this page we can also see what these connections have in common with the LinkedIn Member, such as mutual groups or work history. Users can ask to get introduced by one of their connections. When the ‘Ask for Introduction’ button is clicked, this will take the user to the message page in Sales Navigator. The ‘to” field will already be populated with the LinkedIn contact you’re requesting the introduction from.

Related Leads
The related leads section shows related LinkedIn members that work at the same company as the LinkedIn Member, who also match your sales preferences in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Account Profile Pane

The account profile shows relevant information of the account the LinkedIn member works for. The profile tab shows general information about the account, such as account name, industry and number of employees. You have an option from here to review all the employees related to the account in sales navigator. You can also save the account in Sales Navigator from here.

NOTE: TeamLink is a Sales Navigator feature that can be turned on or off. TeamLink allows users to view and search their team’s connections. You can also see who on your team is connected to your leads and contacts, and ask for an introduction. Likewise, your team can view and search your connections.

Recommended Leads
This tab shows LinkedIn profiles of people who work at the same company or account. Users can save these profiles directly in Sales Navigator from this screen.

Connections
The Connections tab shows the logged-in user’s 1st degree connections, their TeamLink connections and their second degree connections related to this account. From here there is a link users can click to view all employees of the account.

News
The news tab shows the account’s activity on LinkedIn. For example you can see when an account shared an update on LinkedIn or when it was mentioned in the news.

LinkedIn InMail Pane

The section on the far right on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tab is the InMail pane. From here users can send InMails and messages to LinkedIn members without having to leave the Dynamics 365 application. There is a checkbox on the bottom that reads ‘CRM’. When this is checked before a message is sent, the message or InMail will be saved to Dynamics 365 as an activity. When users send a message from the Sales Navigator application, they will see the same checkbox. The message content will be stored in the description field of the Dynamics 365 activity.

Org Chart

Another place users can access LinkedIn information in Dynamics 365 is the org chart. The org chart can be accessed by opening an account record and clicking on the ‘Open Org chart’ button on the command bar. This shows an org chart of contacts at the account. As mentioned in my previous article, data validation can be configured which adds a ‘Not at Company flag’ field to the contact entity. If this field is set to ‘Not at Company’ this will be visible on the org chart as a red dot next to the contact image.
When a user double clicks on a contact image from the org chart, the LinkedIn pane opens up on the right hand side of the screen. If the ‘Not at Company flag’ is set to ‘Not at Company’, users will be prompted to update the account the contact is related to from this screen.

Sales Navigator Mobile App
Users can download the mobile app for Sales Navigator to their mobile device. Among other things, this app allows users to make calls to LinkedIn contacts. If there is no contact information in the LinkedIn member profile, but there is contact information on the matched record in Dynamics 365, the user will be able to access that information from Sales Navigator.
After a user makes a call, they have the ability to log a phone call in Sales Navigator. This form also has a button which allows them to save the activity in Dynamics 365.

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