When it comes to product and pricing strategy, questions such as “Which products do I want to sell?”, “Who is the target audience for my products?”, “At what price do I want to sell my products to which target audience?”, “Which packages do I want to offer?”, “What promotions do I want to offer my customers?”, “In what currency should my prices be listed?”, and many others need to be addressed. Once a product and pricing strategy has been defined based on these questions and a product range with corresponding prices has been agreed upon, this information can be archived in the form of documents using Microsoft Dynamics Pricing Management. With “sales literature,” product and price lists, brochures, marketing campaigns, and many other documents can be uploaded and published, providing the sales and marketing teams with useful materials they can use, for example, to inform customers about new products or prices. Go to Sales > Sales Literature and click “New” to start Microsoft Dynamics CRM . The “Sales Literature” form includes fields for document type, title, and author. The “Sales Literature” entity can contain multiple “Sales Attachments”; for example, a single item can include brochures, product information, and product presentations. Competitors and products can also be added. This allows the user to see, for example, within the “Sales Literature” form which competitors offer similar products or which products are included in a catalog along with their prices.
Create with Microsoft Dynamics CRM product catalogs that contain product, price, and quote lists, as well as “unit groups.” The latter defines the units of measure in which products can be purchased. Additionally, different currencies can be managed within the product catalog. This is particularly important for internationally oriented companies. Follow these six steps to create a product catalog:
- Create a discount list (optional).
- Specify the units of measurement or quantities in which your products are available.
- Create products and assign them to packages and product families.
- Use price lists and price elements to define how your products are priced.
- Assign a price list and a price list item to each product.
- Define standard price lists for your products.
Product and price lists can be used to create quotes, take orders, and issue invoices. This is an extremely useful feature, as the information needed to create these documents is pulled directly from the price and product lists, saving employees the tedious task of typing in this data. This works in Microsoft Dynamics as follows: When an opportunity to sell products arises, you can create a so-called “opportunity.” Price and product lists can be attached to the “opportunity” form, and details regarding requirements (quantity of products) can be added. Simply scroll to the “Product Line Items” section to define products, prices, and product quantities. When creating a quote, an order form, or an invoice based on the “opportunity,” all information contained in the “opportunity” form, including product and price information, is automatically transferred. A prerequisite for this is that the “opportunity” entity has gone through the validation process and that the process has concluded with the potential customer agreeing to receive a quote or place an order. In this case, the “Opportunity” would be marked as “won.” You then have the option to convert the “Opportunity” entity into a quote, an order form, or an invoice. To do this, templates must be created for the respective documents. The “Opportunity” form also contains information on the revenue that could be generated if the customer purchases products or services. When the “system calculated” function is enabled, revenue is automatically calculated based on the attached product and price lists, as well as quantity specifications. You can enable this function within the Opportunity form under “Product Line Items.”
If you want to add products that haven’t yet been included in the product catalog or other costs, such as travel expenses, you can do so using “write-in products.” This feature allows users to manually add products or costs. “Write-in products” can be added to the “Opportunity” (sales opportunity). Click “+” in the “Product Line Items” section. A dropdown menu will appear where you can select the “write-in products” option.In summary, Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables you to publish and manage important documents regarding prices and products in a central location, ensuring that sales and marketing staff always have access to up-to-date product and pricing information and can use this when creating quotes and invoices, as well as when estimating potential revenue. However, product and pricing management represents just one of the many application areas of the CRM system. If you would like to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics, click here or browse our blog.
