A marketing strategy is only as good as the information on which it is based. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the industry, market, and business environment is essential. In times of increasing competitive pressure, monitoring competitors is becoming increasingly important. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM , important information about competitors can be collected and made available to the sales and marketing teams. Using “Sales Literature,” documents containing information about competitors—such as brochures or price lists—can be uploaded and published. Users can also document and manage competitor profiles. The “Competitor” form contains the most important information about competitors—namely, contact information, address details, as well as strengths and weaknesses—providing you with a meaningful Dynamics CRM competitor analysis.
Microsoft Dynamics for Sales also offers the option to assign competitors to a sales opportunity. This can be done either via the “competitor” form or the “opportunity” form. The “opportunity” form contains a section called “competitors.” Here, competitors already stored in the system can be linked, or new competitors can be added. This allows sales and marketing staff to see within the “opportunity” form which competitors are also vying for this customer’s business. The strengths and weaknesses of these competitors are also visible. This information helps employees develop stronger sales pitches.
Next Steps for Dynamics CRM Competitive Analysis
After a customer has thoroughly researched products, prices, and services, they will usually also look at the competition. If a customer chooses the competition, you lose that sales opportunity. For future analysis, it is important in this case to know why the prospect chose the competition and how much revenue was lost. In this case, the “opportunity” entity is marked as “lost.” This action field allows you to enter a reason. Competitors can be added in this field. Since the customer’s budget and the potential revenue are already included in the “opportunity” form, it is also clear how much revenue has been lost.
This information is very useful for future analyses when it comes to adapting your marketing strategy to the ever-changing market and competitive landscape. Using the analysis features, you can easily perform a Dynamics CRM competitive analysis to, for example, identify your biggest competitors.
For data visualization—and thus for simplified analysis of datasets—Microsoft also offers powerful tools such as Power BI. For more information on the applications and features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, please visit our website.
