Close deals by leveraging relationship analytics in Dynamics 365 Sales

Understanding what worked in the past to close deals can help you replicate those successful actions with other prospects in the pipeline. Relationship analytics capabilities in Dynamics 365 Sales, available for preview since April 2020, helps you compare data from won opportunities with open prospects and then suggests actions to take to deliver similarly successful outcomes.

How relationship analytics works

Relationship analytics monitors the key performance indicators (KPIs) and activities for any contact, opportunity, lead, or account. It also calculates overall health and trends for each of your business relationships and then presents these insights in easy-to-read charts. Relationship analytics shares insights with salespeople in three different ways:

  1. See the big picture with relationship analytics in list views.
  2. Track critical opportunities with the relationship pipeline view.
  3. Monitor the health and activity history of a customer or opportunity in a form view.

Here is how the data is presented to you today.

a screenshot of activity analysis

Understanding similar opportunities

Enhanced relationship analytics collects the KPI data from similar won opportunities and compares them with every open opportunity. You can use this data to see whether the opportunity is proceeding well or if corrective actions are needed.

For example, if a team’s KPI response time is 3 hours and the analysis shows that similar won opportunities have an average response time of 1.5 hours, it implies that improving the response time could help. You can learn more about capturing similarities in Discover winning practices of top sellers with Dynamics 365 Sales.

In the image below you will see the same KPI values shown in the previous version of relationship analytics but alongside comparison values with similar won opportunities.

Screenshot of the health activity section

The similar won deals section shows the top five similar successful opportunities to the respective open opportunity. Also shown are the most impactful fields in calculating the similarity between the opportunities. You can view this by selecting the Info button on any chart.

a screenshot KPI values shown in the previous version of relationship analytics

 

Relationship health is now an opt-in capability

Some organizations told us they prefer to focus on metrics without seeing an explicit health score, so the capability is now an opt-in function. Disabling the health capability will remove health widgets and information from all forms.

Next steps

Sign up for a free trial of Dynamics 365 Marketing Sales.