Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn is a social networking site developed to facilitate networking and exchanges between working professionals. In 2018, the network had over 106 million active monthly users and approximately 506 million registered users overall.

In June 2016, Microsoft announced that the multinational technology company had acquired LinkedIn for 26.2 billion US dollars. Microsoft noticed the potential for improving its Dynamics 365 application by developing a product that seamlessly integrates LinkedIn into the CRM system, which is how Sales Navigator was born.

You would be forgiven for thinking that LinkedIn was designed for headhunters and people actively looking for employment, as this is what most people think, but you’d also be wrong. LinkedIn is actually a great way of boosting sales for companies in B2B (business-to-business) commerce. This aspect is exactly what Microsoft decided to take advantage of with its new product.

The Advantages of Using LinkedIn With Dynamics 365

There’s no doubt about it, LinkedIn is an incredibly useful platform. When it comes to building a professional network you can use to find a job, sell products, recruit employees, and analyze potential markets for B2B commerce, LinkedIn is simply second to none. But how can integrating LinkedIn help improve your company’s performance?

Save Time

By integrating LinkedIn to your Dynamics CRM, you will no longer need to manage actions in two distinct locations. Once LinkedIn has been integrated, you can carry out the tasks you usually execute on the LinkedIn platform, directly in Sales Navigator. So, you can send messages, add connections, peruse the profile of a potential customer, add content, and comment on posts directly in Dynamics 365. This means you can prevent overlaps and time wasted updating your CRM’s database. Connection data from LinkedIn can be directly imported into Dynamics 365. There’s nothing better than a centralized information source to save time!

Available at all times and accessible from anywhere, you can also make the most of it on all digital devices, whether you’re working from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. You’ll be able to stop taking notes on the back of an envelope, as you’ll have everything you need within arm’s reach.

Increase Sales Revenue

Isn’t that what every company aims for? There are tons of ways to increase your sales revenue, starting with improving the performance and efficiency of your teams. Sales Navigator helps you to increase your efficiency and performance by enabling members of your team to improve their prospecting process.

Instead of randomly searching through hundreds of profiles, you can now find the right person in just a few clicks using Sales Navigator’s powerful search function and your team members’ connections. Is your colleague already connected to the person you’re interested in? Ask them to introduce you. But don’t worry if you’ve not got any shared connections, simply search for the person’s company to get to know how it works and its hierarchy. You’ll be able to target the person you want to contact using information provided by the company itself.

Informational quality is difficult to attain when you have to keep databases updated yourself. Sales Navigator lightens the load by doing it for you.

Once you’ve targeted the right person, you can easily pinpoint their needs and see how they interact with other professionals by looking at their profile. You can obtain an overview of the lead in the blink of an eye, enabling you to adjust your approach and sales strategy.

Bonus: Promote and Refine your Corporate Identity and your Brand as an Employer

I’m sure you already know full well that polishing your corporate identity and your brand as an employer comes with a multitude of advantages.

Clients love being able to capture the spirit and ambiance of a company where they are going to spend money. With Sales Navigator, you receive article recommendations based on your LinkedIn activity that are worth posting on your professional profile and business page. Making publishing content even quicker, and thereby helping to improve your company’s visibility and helping you gain credibility.

And it works the same way for your employer brand. Your employees will appreciate seeing that their employer is active and sharing their values online. Nothing increases performance and attracts the best new talent like a dedicated, driven team.

Pricing

The basic cost of Sales Navigator is $779.88 per year. This price provides access with the following functions for one sales representative:

• 20 InMail messages per month;
• 1,500 saved leads;
• Who’s viewed your profile;
• Extended LinkedIn network access;
• Advanced lead and company search;
• Custom lead recommendations;
• Alerts when your connections change positions;
• Email integration (Gmail and Outlook);
• Mobile application.

The more expensive plans (Teams and Enterprise) enable you to add more users and give you access to other functions such as more InMails (direct messages on LinkedIn) per month, 5,000 saved leads, and a Dynamics 365 integration.

Sales Navigator Seamlessly Integrates

Once you’ve installed the Sales Navigator widget on your computer or other digital platform, you’ll have access to the LinkedIn learning platform: LinkedIn Learning. The clear lessons and videos will show you how to quickly integrate the widget into your established CRM.

Dynamics 365 for Talent and LinkedIn

Finding the right candidates to join your team is a mammoth task. As previously mentioned, knowing how to target and attract the right people to join your company significantly helps improve your efficiency; it’s at the very core of a company’s success.

The Dynamics 365 for Talent module enables recruiters to create entirely customized experiences for people who you want to work with. When recruiting new employees, you need to clearly define the skills required for the job and target candidates who are a good fit for your company’s culture, which is being displayed through your employer brand.

In concrete terms, the application enables you to:

• Manage your talent database from within Dynamics 365 by tying in the LinkedIn profiles of people who have applied for a job with your company and those who already work for you;
• Quickly view an applicant’s LinkedIn profile in Dynamics 365, ensuring you have up-to-date information about the candidate on hand;
• Customize your interactions with candidates using chat history and your notes;
• Make the most of informational quality.

In sum, Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn back in 2016 has directly led to many improvements to the Dynamics 365 application. Understanding how to benefit from the AI-powered functions of Sales Navigator and data centralization is a major asset that will help your team propel your business development to a higher level.

Interested in learning more about how integrating LinkedIn can improve your company’s efficiency? Contact us today, our experts are looking forward to speaking with you!