Improve lead conversions by aligning sales and marketing

With the new Lead Assignment Rules in Dynamics 365, it’s easier than ever to increase your lead conversion rates and accelerate sales by automating workflows and processes. Realize the true power of one platform for Sales and Marketing – no need for code and connectors. Just configure, and off you go.

You can leverage Dynamics 365 Marketing to generate leads, and then let Dynamics 365 Sales Insights automatically assign these leads to the right sellers, based on the data provided in the lead, and seller attributes. Even leverage best practices to increase seller effectiveness – all enabled via the great Sales Accelerator that comes with Dynamics 365 Sales Insights.

For a powerful alignment of Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Sales, we can consider an example, in which we wish to increase our lead conversion, by assigning leads generated by a Dynamics 365 Marketing Form, that includes an Industry drop-down, to the seller focusing on the selected industry. Todays prospects more than ever expects a seller, that reaches out to them, to be knowledgeable of the topic in question

So, a prospect visits a marketing page, fills out information in a form (including her industry – e.g. “Insurance”), and submits the form.

The lead is created in the shared platform for Dynamics 365 Marketing and Sales. Thanks to the power of the new lead assignment rules, the lead is assigned to the seller taking care of Insurance leads (Karen Borger)

In Dynamics 365 Sales’ Sales Accelerator, Karen can immediately start working the lead using the best practice (sequence “Industry Leads”) for such leads.

Configuration

What happens behind the scenes is

• The lead is added to a Sales Insights segment, since I have configured the condition for the segment to be Lead Source = “Landing page” (all leads generated by Dynamics 365 Marketing Pages will have that value for lead source)
• The lead is automatically routed to the ‘right’ seller due to a lead assignment rule, that takes its leads from the above segment
• The ‘right’ seller is determined by matching the leads Industry field with the seller’s attribute value for Industry
• The lead surfaces in the sellers Sales Accelerator because I have configured a sequence (“Industry leads”) and connected it to the same above segment.

To make this automated handover happen all we have to do is configure a few things in Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Sales Insights

Dynamics 365 Marketing

Create a Marketing Form that generates leads. Add a field to the form that allows the prospect to indicate which industry is of interest (the value in that field will be compared to a seller attribute (see later)). Finally add the form to a Marketing Page (or embed the form in your own CMS)

Note: all leads generated from a Dynamics 365 Marketing page will have a value of ‘Landing page’ for the field Lead Source

Dynamics 365 Sales Insights

Navigate to the Sales Hub app, open the Sales Insights settings area, and click the Sales Accelerator section. Notice how you can setup segments, sequences, team settings, and assignment rules to help your team focus on what matters most with a prioritized work list and seamlessly integrated engagement

Without going too much into all details I’ve outlined the configuration I used below

Segment

I configured segment with the condition Lead Source = “Landing page”

If you look a the Details tab you’ll notice the record type is Lead, and a few other configurations which I’ll cover below (a connected sequence “Industry Leads”, and a connected assignment rule “Landing Page Industry 100”)

So all leads generated in my environment will become a member of this segment if the leads Lead Source value equals “Landing page”

Team Settings

To enable the routing of leads to the right sellers, I configured an attribute for the sellers (“Industry”).

I then assign one or more values (industries) to the sellers I plan to route leads to, e.g. assign the “Insurance” industry to the seller Karen Borger

In the assignment rule I will cover later, I compare the value in a leads Industry field with the value in the sellers Industry attribute.

Leads will only be assigned to the sellers I enable for lead assignment

So I now have to foundation to match leads to sellers based in the values in the Industry fields.

Lead assignment rule

To match leads coming from landing pages with the correct sellers based on the industry indicated by the lead I configure an Assignment rule “Landing Page Industry 100”

The rule looks at leads in the segment “Landing page” (2), it assigns these leads to sellers with matching records, i.e. seller attribute Industry matches the leads value in the Industry field.

I leveraged dynamic matching (Lead.industry) to reduce the effort of having to write and maintain multiple static rules for each permutation and combination of values.

Sequence

To surface the leads from the segment in each sellers work list in Sales Accelerator, and ensure the follow my “best practice” of sending a mail, wait a day, and then call the prospect, I created a sequence and connected it to the segment

That’s it – I have gone through a few configuration steps, no coding or connectors, and my sellers and marketers are now aligned to accelerate sales and personalize customer experiences.