This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Overview
Charting in Excel has long been an important tool our customers use to explore, analyze, and tell stories about their data. Until a few years ago however, Excel for the Web primarily served as consumption-based companion app to our desktop versions – this meant that users were limited in their ability to create and edit charts on the web. As part of the broader effort to evolve Excel for the Web, the team has been working hard to elevate the charting experience and is excited to share several major improvements we have made over the last couple years that are available to all free and paid customers. In this blog post, we’ll cover some of the most significant upgrades we’ve made, which provide users with a more robust chart editing experience.
The Format Pane and On-Chart Interactions
You can now leverage the format task pane and on-chart interactions to format charts on the web. The format pane provides formatting support for critical chart properties (axes, legend, data series, etc.) and makes it easy to view and navigate to each editable chart element. You are now able to make property edits to elements of a chart such as the fill/outline color, number format, axis bounds, and more.
You can now also directly select the individual elements within a chart to launch and navigate to their respective formatting options in the format pane. Previously, users could only select the entire chart but not any contents within the chart.
To explore these new capabilities, launch the task pane by double-clicking anywhere on the chart or by right-clicking and selecting “Format”. From there, you can view each chart element’s formatting options by either selecting an element within the chart or expanding the options in the format pane.
Launch and navigate the Chart Format Pane by directly interacting with chart elements
Support for Adding & Removing Chart Elements
You can now also add and remove chart elements without having to leave the format pane. Users can leverage the new on/off toggles in the pane to choose whether to include a chart element in the chart. Alternatively, you can use the delete/backspace keys to remove a chart element that is selected. We have also added support for adding/removing trendlines and error bars.
Use the Chart Format Pane’s toggles to add/remove chart elements from your chart
Other Improvements
You can now select data from non-adjacent rows to create a chart. Previously, users were limited to creating charts from a continuous range of cells.
You can now freely change between all different chart types. Previously, some chart type changes were not supported.
We have also added undo/redo support for all chart commands and enabled sheet duplication for worksheets containing any chart type.
Stay tuned as we continue to improve Excel’s web charting experience – we’ll be sharing more updates as new features become available!
Your feedback is important for us! Tell us what you think about these improvements to the charting experience in Excel for the web by writing a comment on this blog post or Send us a smile or frown. You can also submit new ideas or vote for other ideas via Microsoft Feedback.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
If sales were simple, then every seller and every sales organization would be successful. But there’s more to it, especially in the current landscape.
We’re seeing a fundamental shift in the way customers want to engageinstead of relying only on direct contact with sellers, customers more frequently use digital channels to get answers to questions and even to make purchasing decisions. The seller is moving from guiding every step of the sales process to being a trusted advisor. To fill this role, sellers must regroup and look for other ways to make a difference to their customers.
One way is through understanding the complete 360-degree view of the customer. The seller is not limited to just information from their sales force automation system, but can use data and insights on customers from across the organization. A 360-degree view provides a way to maximize the limited time a seller has with a customer and to engage them in a personalized, relevant conversation for a greater chance of success. But sellers today are suffering with digital overload from disparate systems that draw focus and time away from their customer engagements. How do we help sellers focus on actions that accelerate revenue?
The cutting-edge AI and collaborative capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales take the 360-degree view of the customer and give sellers the power to focus on the highest priority activity that has the best chance of moving the opportunity forward. Sellers can learn from customer history, access information from external data sources, and get next best actions to takeall within one tool, all within the sellers’ control.
And now, four AI-powered and collaborative digital selling capabilities, previously available only to Dynamics 365 Sales Premium customers, are available for all Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise customers. You can now use these capabilities in your current environment, with your data and in real sales calls, transforming how your sellers engage with customers.
Digital selling capabilities in action:
This embed requires accepting cookies from the embed’s site to view the embed. Activate the link to accept cookies and view the embedded content.
The AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales are a seller’s superpower. Sellers see, and can act on, suggested actions and collaborate with colleagues all within their flow of work. AI assists in that flow of work, identifying and suggesting actions, but the seller is in control on what to do next.
AI recommendations aren’t just in the context of working on an active deal. Sellers and managers can be proactive and drive successful deal closures with prioritized AI driven recommendations on at-risk or stalled deals. Sellers can see account relationships that are at risknot just customers with active deals.
We believe sellers will be more productive and close more deals with these digital selling tools assisted by AI. That is why we are enabling them for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise customers. We want sellers to be able to experience this new level of productivity and customer connection.
It’s easy to activate these features on your existing Dynamics 365 Sales product, just follow the in-app ‘Get started with digital sales’ guidance, complete with step-by-step videos.
Help sellers accelerate revenue in these four ways
1. Allow real-time call insights to drive better call outcomes. Conversation intelligence uses analytics and data science to help a seller be more efficient and productive. Calls are recorded and analyzed in real time with key insight and committed actions generated in the call conversation. We even programmatically generate meeting summaries to save time in capturing the outcome of a call.
2. Enable sellers to collaborate more effectively in the moments that matter. Sales is a team sport. Sellers need to access subject matter expertise in the context of a deal, collaborate with account teams across the globe, and share artifacts with customers throughout the sales lifecycle. With Microsoft Teams chat embedded within Dynamics 365, you can collaborate with stakeholders directly from within Dynamics 365. This allows you to use Dynamics 365 data as an organizing layer for your Teams collaboration activity and link chats to Dynamics 365 records, such as leads or opportunities, for convenient access for all participants.
3. Help sellers prioritize activities that will have the highest impact. The sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers to sell smartly by building a strong and prioritized pipeline, offering context, and surfacing automated recommendations throughout a sales sequence that helps to speed the sales process.
4. Help sellers focus on the leads and opportunities that are most likely to close. Predictive lead and opportunity scoring uses machine learning models to calculate a score for open leads and opportunities. The score is designed to help a seller prioritize their day and identify records which require immediate attention. With effective prioritization sellers should be able to quickly tackle the right leads and opportunities to increase conversion and close rates.
Conversation intelligence, sales accelerator, and lead and opportunity scoring are available in limited capacity each month, with enough quantity to see the daily productivity difference. Customers who hit the monthly limits, or simply want to enable broader use of these benefits, can upgrade to Dynamics 365 Sales Premium. Note that Microsoft Teams chat is not limited in capacity and is available to all Sales Enterprise and Sales Premium customers.
Digital selling is here to stay
With conversation intelligence, sales accelerator, and lead and opportunity scoring, sellers get best-in-class AI capabilities to remember the actions they have committed to, summarize meetings, and help prioritize their worklist. All of this helps your sellers to be more productive and save time by removing manual effort, spending more time selling.
I’m excited to share this update and encourage you to switch to these Dynamics 365 Sales Premium capabilities to take your business to the next level with best-in-class selling solutions.
Learn more
To learn more about these digital selling capabilities, click the links to these online documentation and video resources.
If you’re not already a Dynamics 365 Sales customer, to learn more about how your organization can supercharge your digital sellers, visit the Dynamics 365 Sales webpage and sign up for a free trial.
This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.
During Identity Theft Awareness Week 2022, we’ve talked about reducing your risk of identity theft. Credit freezes and fraud alerts can help. Both are free and make it harder for identity thieves to open new accounts in your name. One may be right for you.
Credit freezes
A credit freeze is the best way you can protect against an identity thief opening new accounts in your name. When in place, it prevents potential creditors from accessing your credit report. Because creditors usually won’t give you credit if they can’t check your credit report, placing a freeze helps you block identity thieves who might be trying to open accounts in your name.
A freeze also can be helpful if you’ve experienced identity theft or had your information exposed in a data breach. And don’t let the “freeze” part worry you. A credit freeze won’t affect your credit score or your ability to use your existing credit cards, apply for a job, rent an apartment, or buy insurance. If you need to apply for new credit, you can lift the freeze temporarily to let the creditor check your credit. Placing and lifting the freeze is free, but you must contact the national credit bureaus to lift it and put it back in place.
Place a credit freeze by contacting each of the three national credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. A freeze lasts until you remove it.
Fraud alerts
A fraud alert doesn’t limit access to your credit report, but tells businesses to check with you before opening a new account in your name. Usually, that means calling you first to make sure the person trying to open a new account is really you.
Place a fraud alert by contacting any one of the three national credit bureaus. That one must notify the other two. A fraud alert lasts one year and you can renew it for free. If you’ve experienced identity theft, you can get an extended fraud alert that lasts for seven years.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
CISA has released an Industrial Controls Systems Advisory (ICSA) that details vulnerabilities in the Airspan Networks Mimosa product line. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to achieve remote code execution, create a denial-of-service condition, or obtain sensitive information.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Cisco has released security updates to address vulnerabilities in Cisco Small Business RV160, RV260, RV340, and RV345 Series Routers. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. For updates addressing lower severity vulnerabilities, see the Cisco Security Advisories page.
CISA encourages users and administrators to review Cisco advisory cisco-sa-smb-mult-vuln-KA9PK6D and apply the necessary updates.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The SMTP protocol isn’t secure and wasn’t designed to be. Email sent in the early days of the Internet were the digital equivalent of sending a postcard through the postal system. Eventually, Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption was added to protect SMTP communications. But to maintain backward compatibility, it was never made compulsory and even today it’s used only opportunistically by senders.
TLS uses certificates for encryption, but they aren’t used for verifying the identity of the destination server. This exposes SMTP connections to DNS tampering that can redirect connections to an attacker’s server. Senders have no way to confirm that destination server is the intended email server. Even worse, after intercepting traffic, a savvy attacker can relay it to the intended destination, and neither the sender nor the recipient would be aware that a man-in-the-middle attack ever took place.
The SMTP MTA Strict Transport Security (MTA-STS) standard was developed to ensure that TLS is always used, and to provide a way to for sending servers to refuse to deliver messages to servers that don’t support TLS and have a trusted certificate. The MTA-STS standard was developed by several email industry companies brought together by the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG). We have been validating our implementation and are now pleased to announce support for MTA-STS for all outgoing messages from Exchange Online.
Outbound Protection
All outbound Exchange Online email traffic is covered by this new security feature, and there’s nothing admins need to do to leverage it. Our outbound implementation respects the wishes of the recipient domain owners via their MTA-STS policy. MTA-STS now forms part of the security infrastructure of Exchange Online, and it’s always on (like other core SMTP features).
Inbound Protection
Nothing new is needed from Exchange Online to leverage MTA-STS protection for your own domains. Exchange Online supports TLS1.2 and offers the TLS certificates that are required by the standard. As domain owners ourselves, we secured several of our own domains, including primary domains such as outlook.com, hotmail.com, and live.com. Therefore, we’re now assured that connections from senders who support MTA-STS are much better protected against man-in-the-middle attacks. If a sender does not perform MTA-STS validations, email will still be delivered as normal, and TLS will be used if the sender chooses to use it.
NOTE: Messages will be delivered when only one party supports MTA-STS. For example, when an MTA-STS-protected domain receives a message from a sender domain that doesn’t support MTA-STS, the message is delivered. The message is also delivered when the recipient domain doesn’t support MTA-STS, but the sender domain does. The only scenario where messages aren’t delivered is when both sides are using MTA-STS and MTA-STS validation fails.
How To Adopt MTA-STS
MTA-STS allows a domain to declare support for TLS and communicate the MX record and destination certificate to expect. It also indicates what a sending server should do if there’s a problem. This is done through a combination of a DNS TXT record and a policy file that’s published as an HTTPS web page. The HTTPS-protected policy introduces another security protection that attackers must overcome.
A domain’s MTA-STS TXT record indicates MTA-STS support to a sender, after which the domain’s HTTPS-based MTA-STS policy is retrieved by the sender. The following TXT record is an example that declares support for MTA-STS:
_mta-sts.contoso.com. 3600 IN TXT v=STSv1; id=20211201000000Z;
A domain’s MTA-STS policy is located at a predefined URL that’s hosted by the domain’s web infrastructure. The URL syntax is https://mta-sts.<domain name>/.well-known/mta-sts.txt. For example, Microsoft.com’s policy is found at: https://mta-sts.microsoft.com/.well-known/mta-sts.txt
Any customers whose MX records point directly to Exchange Online can use this same policy. The unique, required information in the policy is the MX record that points to Exchange Online, and the same certificate is shared by Exchange Online customers.
To be protected by MTA-STS, a domain owner needs to create the DNS TXT domain record and host the policy file at the required HTTPS URL with a valid certificate that contains their domain. Details about MTA-STS are available in RFC 8461.
Staying Informed Through TLS-RPT Reports
Accompanying MTA-STS is an extremely useful industry specification that outlines a standard mechanism to allow email services to report sending issues that occur when sending to a specific domain. This is the first time a channel is available for domain owners to get direct reports of actual issues that senders encounter when sending email to the domain. This reporting mechanism can avoid the need for senders to report issues related to sending email to your domain.
The TLS-RPT standard provides reporting for MTA-STS (and DANE for SMTP) with a single daily report from each email service that supports it. To receive TLS-RPT reports, a domain owner can create a DNS TXT entry to indicate where they would like to receive reports. For most admins, it means sending the reports to an email address, as shown in the following example:
TXT Record example: _smtp._tls.example.com. 3600 IN TXT TLSRPTv1;rua=mailto:reports@example.com
Email services that send email to your domain and that support both MTA-STS and TLS-RPT send daily reports to the provided email address. Details about TLS-RPT are available in this RFC 8460. Microsoft has started sending TLS-RPT reports to domains that have requested them.
MTA-STS Failures
If an MTA-STS check fails and the domain’s policy is set to enforce, an NDR will be generated and the message will not be sent. The following list describes the errors that might occur due to MTA-STS failures:
Destination server does not support TLS
551 5.7.4 STARTTLS is required by recipient domain’s MTA-STS policy
Destination server does not support TLS 1.2 or above
We try to respect RFCs to the best of our abilities. The goal is to achieve the best interoperability possible. In a small number of scenarios, there may be unexpected behavior, and we’ll do our best to document that behavior.
For example, one difference in behavior involves CNAME records and MX records. Having a CNAME record for an MX record doesn’t comply with the SMTP RFC, but in the interest of successfully sending the email of our customers, we currently resolve CNAMEs to the servers that they point to for message deliveries. For MTA-STS, we’ve taken a stricter approach to supporting the RFC. We do not support CNAMEs when MTA-STS is used. If a domain uses a CNAME and follows the MTA-STS RFC, that domain will fail our MTA-STS checks, and will not receive emails from us. However, it’s possible for a domain to include the final server in their MTA-STS policy and pass our MTA-STS checks, even though that would not strictly follow the MTA-STS RFC.
MTA-STS Vs SMTP DANE
MTA-STS came about because of the slow roll out of DNSSEC to protect the DNS records that are associated with SMTP. MTA-STS can be seen as a lighter-weight mechanism to secure your mail flow. Although MTA-STS offers a much-needed upgrade to current SMTP protections, DANE for SMTP (with the support of DNSSEC) is the gold standard for securing SMTP connections. However, many customers might find MTA-STS good enough for their security needs.
We’ve been working on support for both MTA-STS and DANE for SMTP. At the very least, we encourage customers to secure their domains with MTA-STS. You can use both standards on the same domain at the same time, so customers are free to use both when Exchange Online offers inbound protection using DANE for SMTP by the end of 2022. By supporting both standards, you can account for senders who may support only one method.
Both MTA-STS and DANE require adoption from domain owners on the receiving side and services/servers that send email. We strongly encourage everyone to adopt these standards to improve the overall security of SMTP connections. Currently, we successfully validate connections to over 35K MTA-STS-protected domains, and this number is growing every month.
Future Work
We’re actively working on features that are related to the MTA-STS and DANE for SMTP standards with the goal of making it easier for our customers to make the most of them. We’ll announce these features as they become available.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The past year has cultivated many personal and professional changes. No person or industry has been untouched. Even field service has embraced seismic changes as a result of the ongoing global pandemic. For many field service organizations, being dispatched to the customer’s location to diagnose and resolve an issue became more complex than ever before. In response, a shift began within field service to less hands-on, more remote, and more dynamic and proactive service operations.
We believe this placement recognizes Microsoft’s continuous investment and authority across our service solution and cloud functionality.
IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the icons.
Noted capabilities
IDC MarketScape objectively noted the strengths, challenges, and considerations of each vendor. For Microsoft, the IDC MarketScape noted one of our strengths as “The ability to deliver specific capabilities to support the market is critical to rapid adoption and ROI. Customer references also noted that Microsoft’s integration with other enterprise applications and technical capabilities of the application helped speed deployment and achieve value quickly.”
IDC MarketScape also noted “Microsoft’s primary challenge with regard to field service management is with regard to industry-specific innovations. Microsoft has established a culture of innovation around many of its products and highlights service-specific offerings, which demonstrate the future of field service collaboration and execution. However, manufacturers and some service organizations lag behind those in other industries, and companies like Microsoft will need to provide both transformative offerings and incremental innovations that closely align with the risk aversion of the specific subvertical industry.” Fortunately, Microsoft caters to everyone from the intrepid to the risk-averse with both transformative offerings and incremental innovations that closely align with the customer’s palatable level of risk.
The study advised “Manufacturers and service organizations should consider Microsoft when they are looking for an integrated field service product offering that can seamlessly integrate IoT data, remote collaboration, AI, and AR/mixed reality capabilities to enable more predictive and proactive service outcomes. The ability to collaborate in real time and have on-demand insights is transforming the way field service and support can be conducted. Microsoft is helping manufacturers that are on this journey around servitization and the convergence of AI, IoT, and AR in the field.”
And the transformation is occurring in real-time. Take for example, Burckhardt Compression, a global leader in manufacturing and servicing, headquartered in Switzerland. The company builds and services massive compressors weighing up to 240 tons, creating pressure three times higher than at the deepest point in the ocean. This high pressure transforms gas to a liquid state so it has less volume and is transported easier. If the compressor fails, the liquid turns back to gas and the build-up of pressure can be critical for the ship and the crew.
Because maintenance is so critical, Burckhardt Compression had to send a service engineer to wherever the compressor was locatedwhich was time-consuming, resource-intensive, and simply not scalable. To provide support at any location, Burckhardt Compression adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service for field service management and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, a mixed reality application. Now remote service engineers have access to real-time service data and can support the ship’s technicians by engaging in on-demand video chat, providing instruction augmented with a schematic overlay, and creating markups onscreen over the actual compressor. And a case is automatically created in Dynamics 365 Field Service when a call is initiated by Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, and a recording of the repair work is saved.
Burckhardt Compression is serving customers faster by eliminating travel time and sharing expert knowledge across the globe in a matter of minutes increasing trust, safety, and business continuity. Now the company is looking to expand to add non-Burckhardt compressors to its service roster, thereby expanding its market presence and generating additional revenue. Burckhardt Compression is just one of many manufacturing and servicing organizations that have reaped value by deploying Dynamics 365 Field Service and harnessing its capabilities to build stronger, more collaborative, and proactive service delivery.
The bottom line
Many service organizations consist of dispatchers answering service calls, putting customers on hold, asking the same questions repeatedly, while searching for the next available technician to dispatch. This process is inefficient, costly, and unsatisfying to the customer.
The world of field service is changing. Today, service organizations are evolving into profit centers, redefining business models, and creating powerful and fulfilling customer experiencesall supported by leading edge solutions like Dynamics 365 Field Service.
We’re excited to be positioned as an IDC MarketScape Leader and are committed to bringing you the best and most featured field service application available. Depend on the multidimensional capabilities of Dynamics 365 Field Service to help you better personalize customer engagements, improve employee effectiveness, and optimize service operations now and tomorrow.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Google has released Chrome versions 98.0.4758.80/81/82 for Windows and 98.0.4758.80 for Mac and Linux. These versions address vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system.
CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Chrome Release Note and apply the necessary updates.
This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.
Taking steps to protect your personal information can help you minimize the risks of identity theft. But what if a thief gets your information anyway? Here are some of the ways thieves might use your stolen information and signs you can look out for.
An identity thief could use your information to get credit or service in your name.
How to spot it: Get your free credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com. Review it for accounts you didn’t open or inquiries you don’t recognize. A new credit card, a personal loan, or a car loan will appear as a new account. A new cell phone plan or utility service — like water, gas, or electric — will show up as an inquiry.
An identity thief could use your credit card or take money out of your bank account.
How to spot it: Check your credit card or bank statement when you get it. Look for purchases or withdrawals you didn’t make.
Bonus advice: Sign up to get text or email alerts from your credit card or bank whenever there’s a new transaction. This could help you spot unauthorized or fraudulent activity on your account.
An identity thief could steal your tax refund or use your Social Security number to work.
How to spot it: A notice from the IRS that there’s more than one tax return filed in your name could be a sign of tax identity theft. So could a notice that you have income from an employer you don’t work for.
An identity thief could use your health insurance to get medical care.
How to spot it: Review your medical bills and Explanation of Benefits statements for services you didn’t get. They could be a sign of medical identity theft.
An identity thief could use your information to file a claim for unemployment benefits.
How to spot it: A notice from your state unemployment office or employer about unemployment benefits that you didn’t apply for could be a sign of fraud.
If you discover any signs that someone is misusing your personal information, find out what to do at IdentityTheft.gov.
And remember to check out our daily free events and webinars with our co-partners during Identity Theft Awareness Week.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In sales, planning is everything. Without a plan, a sales rep might give up too easily on a prospect or appear too aggressive. A potential customer might forget about a proposal or become annoyed by too-frequent contacts. Creating a step-by-step plan for how to follow up with prospects in each stage of the sales process is the basis for a sales cadence. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales tools help you create, manage, and scale customized sales cadences across your organization.
The top salespeople have a well-crafted plan to get their desired results, whether they are demonstrating a product or following up with leads. A successful plan, or sales cadence, involves knowing where your prospects are in the buyer’s journey and understanding how to reach them the right way, with the right message, at the right time to move them to the next step.
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
A modern proverb
In this post, you’ll learn:
What a sales cadence is
What to consider when designing a sales cadence
What an effective sales cadence looks like
How Dynamics 365 Sales can help you build a sales cadence
What is a sales cadence?
A sales cadence is a detailed plan to connect with prospects and close deals. A sales cadence includes a prescribed sequence of activities, like reaching out on LinkedIn, sending emails, making calls, sharing case studies, arranging meetings, and sending text messages, which happen at specified intervals.
An effective sales cadence improves the efficiency of sales reps. A sales cadence guides sellers on which prospects to connect with, what communication channel to use, and what information to share at each touchpoint. This structured approach reduces guesswork and aims to grow the sales pipeline and conversion rate.
Managers create a sales cadence to guide sales reps in handling different types of prospects and sales scenarios. For example, one cadence could be used for inbound inquiry leads, and another cadence could be used for upcoming renewals.
As organizations mature, they can evolve their cadences to adapt to specific geographies, industries, companies, languages, and other parameters.
A strong sales cadence library also helps you scale your sales organization. Automated sales cadences ease the onboarding process for sellers as you grow, building in best practices and sequencing their activities.
How to design a sales cadence
When you design your sales cadences, consider these five elements:
Prospects: It all starts with knowing your potential customers. What challenges or obstacles do they have? Why are they looking for a solution? What platforms do they use? What constraints do they contend with? What are their skills? Who is the decision maker?
Communication channel:Reach out to prospects using the right channel, such as email, a phone call, messaging apps, or LinkedIn.
Wait time: Consider a strategic delay between subsequent steps. You don’t want to be too soon or too late in your follow-ups.
Attempts: Understand the optimal number of touchpoints to establish contact and build a relationship.
Messaging:Use the right messaging, content, tone, and personalization to engage with prospects.
It’s important to note that creating an effective plan is not a one-time process. It takes time and iteration to fine-tune your sales cadences.
Example: A sales cadence for inbound inquiries
Here’s an example of a sales cadence for responding to inbound inquiries.
Target: Leads that have reached out through your website or other channels.
Purpose: Focus on and respond to high-priority inquiries to improve your conversion rate.
Description: By responding immediately and through multiple channels, you are more likely to achieve a higher conversion rate. Since responding within the first hour increases your chance to close the deal by seven times, start with an automated email response, then follow up with a phone call. Connect on a social platform like LinkedIn. Finally, send an email that provides relevant information about your product or services.
Create a sales cadence with sequence designer
The sales accelerator capability in Dynamics 365 Sales helps sellers spend less time searching for the best next customer to reach out to. Design and build your sales cadences in the sequence designer. Sales accelerator gathers information from multiple sources to build a strong and prioritized pipeline, offers context, and surfaces recommendations throughout each step in the sequence, speeding the sales process.
To create a sequence, you go to the Sales Insights settings area and open the Sequences page. For more details, check out the documentation: Create and activate a sequence.
You can use the sequence designer to configure sequences of activities for specific prospects, leads, opportunities, contacts, and so on, applying different strategies depending on priority. For example, leads of lower priority might have more automated email steps, whereas leads from your targeted accounts might have more personalized touchpoints.
As in the example sales cadence shown earlier, sequences can include multiple activities, with wait times between activities as needed. You can branch activities based on the response, such as if an email is opened or a reply is received. Using sales accelerator’s tight integration with LinkedIn, you can even send LinkedIn InMail or create a connect request as part of your sales cadence.
Next steps
A good sales cadence is a necessary to improve seller productivity, increase conversion rates, and close more deals. As we adjust to virtual ways of working, digitizing sales becomes a priority for most organizations. To get started, use sales accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales to set up a sales cadence for the most common scenarios faced by the sales team.
Access to sales accelerator has now been made easier: new and existing customers using Dynamics 365 Sales (excluding Dynamics 365 Sales Professional) will now see sales accelerator and sequences available for quick setup. Read the documentation to learn more about setting up digital selling capabilities.
During 
Recent Comments