{"id":4805,"date":"2019-09-16T15:35:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T22:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=4805"},"modified":"2023-06-25T12:13:08","modified_gmt":"2023-06-25T19:13:08","slug":"retooling-how-microsoft-sellers-sell-the-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/retooling-how-microsoft-sellers-sell-the-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Retooling how Microsoft sellers sell the company"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MicrosoftSelling Microsoft hasn\u2019t been easy.<\/p>\n

Just ask the 25,000 people who pitch the complex array of products and services that the company sells to customers across the globe.<\/p>\n

Those sellers used to wade through more than 30 homegrown applications to get their jobs done, often spending more time filling out forms and cross referencing tools than talking to customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed to modernize our toolset,\u201d says Kim Kunes, who leads the Microsoft Digital team that provides the tools and experiences that the sales and marketing organizations use to sell the company\u2019s wares. \u201cWe needed to turn what had been our sellers\u2019 biggest headache into an asset that would help them flourish in a connected, cloud world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A complete overhaul of the company\u2019s tools and processes is fully underway, says Kunes, but it\u2019s not complete.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve winnowed a disconnected, heavily seamed group of tools down to a core group of critical experiences connected in ways that make sense for our sellers and marketers, but there is still work to do,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re in year two of a multiyear journey to revamp our sellers\u2019 toolset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunes says her team, like all of Microsoft Digital, is shifting its focus from working for internal partners in a traditional IT manner to building experiences in partnership with the business that make sense for users. In this case, those users are the heart and soul of the company\u2019s revenue-generating selling community.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, just like any other product team at Microsoft, we operate with a baseline budget that funds a group of FTE (full-time employee) engineers and a continuous prioritization and planning process to deliver functionality most critical to our users and businesses,\u201d she says. \u201cNow we\u2019re thinking, \u2018What should the seller experience be from start to finish? Are we doing everything we can to make their experience as seamless as possible?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This transformation has Microsoft Digital\u2019s Commercial Sales and Marketing Engineering Team working in new ways. It\u2019s centralizing and standardizing the many channels of feedback and data to derive a picture of users\u2019 unmet, unarticulated needs. The shift is built around a new focus on how Microsoft Digital approaches customer research. It\u2019s adopting a fluent, modern look and feel that\u2019s consistent with how the rest of the Microsoft is approaching design. It\u2019s using DevOps and other agile engineering principles that truly keep the team focused on the user\u2019s end-to-end experience as it moves, fast and flexibly.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our sellers\u2019 regular tasks need to be in one place and arranged so that it\u2019s efficient and virtually seamless to flow through them,\u201d Kunes says. \u201cEverything has to be intuitive. There should be no big learning curves. They shouldn\u2019t have to figure out how to use a new application every time they want to get something done.\u201d<\/p>\n

This laser focus on the customer experience has required the team to think and work differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen our team\u2019s culture shift,\u201d Kunes says. \u201cIn the past we were focused on incremental improvements to make the process and tools better. Now we\u2019re thinking bigger. For example, we\u2019re beginning to use AI and machine learning to curate the gold mine of valuable data we have to surface critical next best action insights to our sellers and marketers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This transformation is driving results that are paying dividends, says Siew Hoon Goh, the Microsoft director of sales excellence in charge of making sure the tools and experience that Microsoft Digital is building meet the needs of the company\u2019s digital sales force.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur sellers do recognize that there has been lots of progress,\u201d Goh says. \u201cTechnology is one of the best enablers for us to scale to bigger and better things and increased revenue for the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s umbrella tool for sales is Microsoft Sales Experience. Known as MSX, it\u2019s an integrated solution built on Dynamics 365, Microsoft Azure products, Office 365 productivity and collaboration services, and Power BI. In July, MSX was upgraded to the new modern Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales user experience. It includes a simplified user experience and integration into LinkedIn, Microsoft Teams, and several internal tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur MSX instance is one of the largest implementations of Dynamics 365 in the company,\u201d says Ismail Mohammed, a principal program manager on the Microsoft Digital team working to make life better for the company\u2019s sales field. \u201cUltimately, we want to make our tools more intuitive and help our sellers get their time back so they can focus more of their time on selling.\u201d<\/p>\n

MSX is the gateway to several important seller experiences that you\u2019ll read about here:<\/p>\n