How to Become a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant

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Careers, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Sales

How to Become a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant

Read on on to learn how you can diversify and accelerate your IT career by becoming a Dynamics 265 Sales Functional Consultant.

Julia Yeh

September 30, 2022

Introduction

Are you a Sales or Information and Technology Specialist looks to diversify your career? Are you a functional consultant looking to accelerate your career in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem? Do you thrive on solving complex business problems and helping enterprise customers digitally transform their organization? Read on to learn more about becoming a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant.

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then you should consider the role of a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant. Functional consultants that specialize in the Dynamics 365 Sales application play a vital role in guiding customers in selecting, implementing, and solving complex business problems through the customization of this Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement software application.

This article will outline the following:

The importance of Dynamics 365 Sales in the Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement software suite
The role and responsibilities of a Dynamics 365 Sales functional consultant
The skills and Microsoft Certification useful to Microsoft Dynamics Sales functional consultants

What is Dynamics 365 Sales?

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is one of four applications in the Microsoft CRM software suite, Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE). This application allows organizations, and salespeople to manage and track their customers in a centralized, cloud-based Customer Relationship Management System. Within this application salespeople can track contacts and accounts, and nurture customer relationships across the entire sales cycle and business processes.

Dynamics 365 Sales can be customized and leveraged further in conjunction with the three other applications that make up Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. These are:

An organization can select and utilize these applications separately however Dynamics 365 CE is a comprehensive cloud-based software solution that is designed to integrate with a variety of Microsoft products and third-party applications. With Microsoft Power Platform as the foundation of Dynamics 365 CE organizations using this software can centralize their data and generate customer insights to improve in their sales, marketing, customer, and field services.

What is a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant?

A Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant is someone with deep product knowledge of Dynamics 365 Sales, and a strong working knowledge of sales endeavors, strategies and business processes. They must be able to deftly utilize Dynamics 365 Sales in order advise enterprise businesses on how to customize this application for them to successfully manage the sales process with this software solution. As a Dynamics 365 Sales functional consultant you are responsible for gathering business requirements to translate an organization’s business needs and address their challenges to design, implement and scale sales software solutions.

What are the roles and responsibilities of a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant?

Dynamics 365 Sales functional consultants leverage their sales expertise to design, implement and advise on sales software solutions that enhance and optimize an organizations sales lifecycle and processes. They ensure the Dynamics 365 Sales application comprehensively allows customers to meet their revenue targets, execute their business strategies and meet their organization’s sales objectives. The core responsibilities involve being able to design implementation sales solutions that predict customer connections and relationship developments, manage the full sales life cycle end-to-end, and help accelerate the performance of the sales team through data analytics and reporting.

Core responsibilities of a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant include but are not limited to:

Working with the client’s key stakeholders, and your company’s project delivery team, developers, and solution architects to identify functional requirements and design solutions
Leading requirements gathering sessions and translating requirements into solution design documents
Configure, implement, and test Dynamics 365 Sales application solutions
Integrate or extend Dynamics 365 Sales with other Microsoft products or third-part applications
Manage sales environments and applications
Implement security and adhere to industry best practices

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What skills are necessary to be a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant?

To be a successful Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant you must have strong business knowledge and have experience in one or more sales role. This experience is the foundation of your functional consulting expertise, that you can leverage and combine with deep Dynamics 365 CRM product knowledge, to create complex software solutions for your clients. Therefore, the position of a Dynamics 365 functional consultant is a mid-level starting point for specialists looking to advance a career in the Microsoft ecosystem because of the required related industry experience per application area.

Due to the software solutioning required of functional consultants, and the advisory relationship they have with an organization’s stakeholders, individuals interested in this role require both soft and hard skills to perform successfully in this position.

Consultants are responsible for fostering strong relationships with clients based on trust and expertise as they provide and create solutions designed to help businesses grow and succeed. A combination of interpersonal skills, business acumen and industry experience are useful to individuals looking to develop a career in consulting.

There are many soft skills associated with this line of work, and can include but are not limited to:

Collaboration: consultants must work with key stakeholders of a client’s organization, software implementation and project delivery teams to interpret and implement software solutions for customers.
Problem Solving: using an analytical approach to requirement gathering, and customer relationships enables consultants utilize their industry expertise to generate solutions that solve complex problems
Communication: to understand a client’s business needs, and to collaborate on the software solution design, management and implementation, consultants must have strong written, verbal and presentation communication skills.

The hard skills necessary for Dynamics 365 Sales functional consultants center on CRM software product knowledge, and Sales business processes to analyze client’s business and project needs, and growth goals. They can include but are not limited to:

Knowledge of and experience with Customer Relationship Management systems and software configuration
Knowledge of sales lifecycles, entities, and processes – essential to functionally mapping, and gathering requirements to customize the Sales application
Knowledge of Microsoft Power Platform including but not limited to Power Apps integration, configuring DataVerse and creating and managing Power Apps
Knowledge of sales environments and applications – necessary to understanding how to integration Microsoft Sales with other Microsoft and third-party applications

What are the Microsoft Certifications required to become a Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant?

Due to the combination of industry experience, Microsoft product knowledge and consulting skills there a variety of ways to approach the Microsoft certification path. It is important to understand how Microsoft sequences the certifications starting with Dynamics 365 fundamentals through to the application specific functional consultant associate certifications. The skills each exam focuses on is designed to solidify and measure your product and process knowledge accordingly.

Due to the data relationship and software architecture between Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement and Microsoft Power Platform it is important to have a working knowledge of Power Platform as a functional consultant. The PL-200: Microsoft Power Platform Functional Consultant exam was a prerequisite to the MB- 210: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant exam.

In July 2022 Microsoft announced the streamlining of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 certifications for customer engagement applications. Microsoft still encourages individuals to pass the PL-200: Power Platform Functional Consultant exam before earning a Microsoft certification for Dynamics 365 CE apps. However as of July 28^th, 2022, the PL-200 exam certification is no longer a requirement before earning a certification in any of the four Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement application certification.

Therefore, when considering, and preparing to take the MB-210 exam required to earn the certification of Dynamics 365 Sales Functional Consultant Associate you should assess whether your knowledge of Power Platform is suitable to pass the associated skills measure in the Sales application exam. In the case of the MB-210 exam the core Power Platform skills assessed are:

Configuring Microsoft Dataverse
Creating apps using Microsoft Power Apps
Create and manage Microsoft Power Automate
Implement Microsoft Power Virtual Agents chatbots
Integrate Microsoft Power Apps with other apps and services

Those skills ensure that as a Microsoft functional consultant on customer engagement applications you can implement solutions that leverage the extensibility of Power Platform applications with customer engagement service integrations and enable you to customize the solution to meet your customer’s needs.

Conclusion

The role of a Microsoft certified Dynamics 365 Sales functional consultant can lead to a rich and rewarding career path within the Microsoft careers ecosystem. This position allows you to strengthen your experiences within the sales industry through extensive Microsoft Dynamics customer engagement application knowledge and functional consulting skills. In choosing to focus on a specific customer engagement application, through the Microsoft Dynamics 365 certification process, you are able to demonstrate your skills as a functional consultant and leverage the sales area of expertise to drive a career in the customer engagement application consultant field.

Are you interested in a career as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement functional consultant? Now that you know the core skills, experiences and responsibilities to become a Dynamics 365 Sales functional consultant, explore your career opportunities further by visiting Avantiico’s Careers Page.