Sales Accelerator (Preview)

Today’s article is about Sales Accelerator, which is a preview feature that is starting to roll out this week in the US for Dynamics 365 Sales. This is another feature that will be part of Dynamics 365 Sales Insights. Please keep in mind that preview features are not complete yet, and they are not meant for production use. Microsoft makes preview features available so we can take a look and provide feedback before it’s generally available.

What is the Sales Accelerator?

The Sales Accelerator is another tool in the Dynamics 365 Sales Insights toolbox which sales managers and sales reps can utilize to stay on top of their top leads and opportunities. Before people can start using the Sales Accelerator, we need to create one or more ‘sequences’. A sequence is very much like a to-do list or a checklist (and reminds me a little of a playbook) and is made up of activities that need to take place in a certain order. Think about a sequence for a tradeshow. The Sales Manager might want the sales reps to use a checklist when they start working on leads that were generated from that tradeshow. Maybe they should first send an email to the prospect, followed 24 hours later with a follow up call. If there is interest, maybe another call after a week, after which we should have enough information to decide if the lead should be qualified or disqualified. A task reminding the sales rep of this (dis)qualification action would be helpful.

We can configure these actions for each sequence. In order to start creating sequences I logged into the Sales Hub App and navigated to the ‘Sales Insights Settings’ area, then I clicked on ‘Sequences’ under ‘Acceleration’. The actions are added as a ‘step’ and the activity type related to the action is selected. There are three different types of activities to choose from: emails, tasks and phone calls. The order of the steps also represent the completion order of the activities. Between steps we can configure ‘wait conditions’; this is the amount of time that should pass before the next activity needs to be completed. We can add days and hours in the wait conditions.

Once all the steps in a sequence have been configured, the sequence needs to be activated before it can be used. Keep in mind that the sequence or any of the steps can no longer be edited after activation. Once activated, users can ‘connect’ their lead or opportunity records to a sequence. Keep in mind, these records can only be connected to one sequence at a time. Users can connect leads or opportunity records to a sequence by selecting them from a view and clicking on the ‘Connect Sequence’ button on the command bar. If users need to disconnect from a sequence, they can do this by navigating to the ‘Sales Insights Settings’ area, selecting ‘Sequences’ and opening the sequence. The Connected Records tab is where we can see all the connected lead or opportunity records. Users can also disconnect the records from here by selecting the records and clicking the ‘Disconnect’ button on the grid.

Most of you probably know that when we add a playbook to a record, the system automatically ‘copies’ the activities that we configured in the playbook, and attaches them to that record. It’s important to understand that connecting to a sequence is slightly different from adding a playbook to a record. When a record is connected to a sequence there are no activities being created. Instead the steps/actions we configured in the sequence are ‘copied’ and attached to the lead or opportunity record. They are almost like reminders for lack of a better word. These reminders or actions are accessible through the work list.

Work List

Current actions are visible in the work list (3) which can be accessed through the Sales Accelerator section in the Sales Hub App under ‘My Work’ (1). All actions are tied to a lead or opportunity record. When a user selects an action on the work list, the associated opportunity or lead record to will load on the right hand side (4) of the work list. Users can filter, sort, group and search for current actions (2) in the work list. Users can view the next action that’s due for the given date in the ‘Up next Widget’ (5). The current action (6) needs to be completed to get to the next action (8). Actions can be skipped or postponed to a later time. Actions can be performed by clicking the action button*(7) (which is different per activity type). Once the action is done, users can mark the action as completed. After the action is completed (or skipped), it’s closed and moved to ‘completed items’ and the next upcoming action (8) will become active. Upcoming actions (8) allow users to see what’s coming up next. They are are grayed out as they are view-only.

*If you want to allow users to make a call by using the call button in the ‘up next widget’, or by clicking the call icon in the worklist, a softphone needs to be integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales. This can be done by utilizing the channel integration framework.

If users (or their managers) want to manually create ad-hoc activities to show up as an action in the ‘Next Up Widget’, all they have to do is create an activity from the timeline section of the lead or opportunity record. Please keep in mind that only phone call, email and task type of activities will show up in the ‘Up Next Widget’. The activity will be displayed in the ‘Up Next Widget’ based on the due date. Users will can identify manually added activities easily as it shows who added the activity in the widget.

Using the Up Next Widget

What happens when users click the action button in the ‘Up Next Widget’ or from the work list depends somewhat on the configuration of the step in the sequence:

Call Action: As mentioned above, if you have integrated a soft-phone and a user clicks the call button this will initiate a phone call. When a call is made a phone call activity is created related to the lead or opportunity the action is linked to. Some fields in the phone call records will automatically be populated: Subject(name of the activity), call from and to, phone number and direction (if making a call the direction will always be ‘Outgoing’)

Email Action: This action will open an email activity in Dynamics 365. If an email template was added to the email step, the template will automatically be applied. The ‘To’ and ‘Subject’ fields will be pre-populated. The subject field will be the name of the action.

Task Action: Clicking the task button will open the quick create form for the task entity. Most of the fields will be pre-populated with the information from the action.

Users also have the ability to skip an active action or postpone it. They can do this by clicking on the three dots and selecting Skip Item or Postpone. When ‘postpone’ is clicked, the user will need to select a new date and time by which the action should be completed.

If you want to take a look for yourself you can enable this preview feature by logging into the Sales Hub app and navigating to Sales Insights Settings > Global Settings. NOTE: If you don’t have a Sales Insights license I would recommend getting a trial.
You’ll see Sales Accelerator (Preview) on the left hand side. Check the box to agree to the terms and click the ‘Get Started’ button. For a demonstration check out the video below!

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