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The sales process contains a lot of moving parts, including the sales team themselves. Each team member has their own schedule and lead capacity. Keeping track of these pieces is difficult and time consuming for a person to do, and team members may overestimate their availability to take on new leads as they come in. With Sales Accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales Insights, save time and effort by automatically assigning new leads to sales team members as they come in. Sales Insights is available by default for Sales Premium licenses or as an add-on for Sales Enterprise. The Sales Accelerator can be activated by navigating to the Sale Insights Settings area. Use the Change Area menu at the bottom of the navigation pane to switch over. Users will also need to have the sequence manager, sales manager, or administrator role.
Setting up assignment segments
After configuring Sales Accelerator, segments can be created for use in assignment rules. These segments are not the same the same as the segments used in Dynamics 365 Marketing. Users will need to have the sequence manager, sales manager, or administrator role to set up segments. The segment builder works pretty similar to an advanced find window. Currently, these segments can only target leads and opportunities. In the builder, rows can be added for different conditions and appended to previous rows using AND/OR connectors. For example, all leads created by a specific user could be pulled into the segment. There is also a Simulate results feature to take a look at what the segment will approximately look like. New leads that fit within the criteria will also be added to the segment.
Creating assignment rules
Assignment rules can be set to target all incoming leads or be specified for a created segment. These rules are what tell the system how to break up leads within the segment and assign them out to the sales team members. When choosing the leads eligible for the rule, additional rules and conditions can be applied outside of what’s within the chosen segment. After assigning the proper set of leads or opportunities, the sales team members eligible for the rule can be set. The Any seller option does just what its name says. It opens the rule to all sales team members. Use the Seller with matching attributes option to specify conditions that the salesperson must have. This works just like the segment creator for the leads and opportunities themselves. As an example, large sales teams that span across multiple regions may want to focus lead assignments to local areas. Say a lead from Florida is submitted. The rule can grab that Florida lead and assign it to one of the sales team members that is also in Florida.
There are also Specific sellers and Specific teams options for assigning leads. Use the Specific sellers option if there is a set list of salespeople that should be receiving the leads. They may not have matching attributes or be on the same sales team in D365, so it could be easier to list them out this way. Similarly, if there are defined sales teams in the system, leads can be assigned out at the team level before being divided up among those members.
Now the group of salespeople has been set, but how does the system know how to hand out the leads among them? That is done with the Distribute leads by setting. There are two primary options available here: Round robin and Load balancing. Round robin uses an even cycle to distribute the leads. It starts with one member and will move on to the next person with each incoming lead. Load balancing takes the current assignments of the salespeople into account before assigning leads. It aims to keep each person approximately equally loaded.
Additional seller assignment options
In addition to those two main distribution options, there are another two option checkboxes to adjust how the leads are assigned: Consider seller availability and Consider seller capacity. To consider seller availability, the sellers will need to turn on the seller availability settings switch in the Sequence settings of Sales Accelerator. After turning it on, sellers can set their availability in the work list settings. Normal working hours can be set and modified based on specific days of the week or set as general hours for all days. Non-working hours can also be added for any planned breaks or days off. With availability properly set, Sales Accelerator will avoid loading new leads onto sellers that are not going to be available to properly follow up.
Seller capacities are limits that can be placed on the number of leads and opportunities that an individual salesperson can be assigned at a time. These can be done at an individual level, or set as a standard level for all members of the sales team. The capacity settings can be found in the Team Settings of Sales Accelerator. On this page select one or multiple salespeople and use the Set Capacity button at the top. On this page, there is a switch on each salesperson to completely turn off lead assignment for that person. This can be useful if that person is on vacation and has not set their availability.
