It may seem a bit hyped up and over-sensationalized, but technology is at the point of a giant leap forward. AI-driven processes are driving this remarkable growth at an unprecedented pace.
Software is continually becoming more intelligent, and harnessing the power of AI and machine learning is no longer an option; it’s a necessity to stay competitive.
There are many companies developing AI models, but Microsoft stands out as one of the pioneers. They are implementing AI technology within their software to create innovative solutions that are usable by businesses today.
The latest AI innovation is called Microsoft Sales Copilot.
Microsoft Sales Copilot represents a giant leap forward in leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance sales processes and customer engagement.
Let me interject to clarify the product name. This is Microsoft Sales Copilot.
Microsoft is implementing GPT-4 based AI tools throughout all of their software and services, from Windows OS to their M365 Productivity Suite. It’s in their Edge browser and their Bing search engine.
Their name for this AI implementation: Microsoft Copilot. Just copilot…with no other distinction.
Their reasoning is that this AI becomes your copilot (as a companion) in your life and business, helping you be more productive.
The implementation of Copilot in their CRM product “Dynamics 365 Sales” and its included service “Viva Sales” is being branded as Microsoft Sales Copilot. While this initially sounds a bit confusing and a bit wordy, it is a better name and toned down from how they used to refer to it back in March.
At its core, Microsoft Sales Copilot builds upon the foundation of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft’s platform for unifying customer data and delivering actionable insights. Now, that tool is amplified with AI-driven features making it easier for small and mid-sized businesses to use the tools for customer engagement and relationship management.
What can Microsoft Sales Copilot do?
When you look at the features Microsoft lists in their overview, they mention these AI capabilities.
Generating email content: Sales Copilot can generate new and response emails based on predefined categories.
Refine generated content: You can further refine the AI content with additional prompts for a fine-tuned suggestion.
Understand data sources behind content: Generated content will link to the data sources that provided the backbone that the AI used.
Summarize email conversations: Not only can Sales Copilot write your emails for you, but it can summarize the entire conversation
Summarize latest meetings: Sales Copilot can summarize your meetings, relevant action items and next steps for all participants.
Opportunity Summary: Every opportunity will get all the notes summarized and documented.
How does Sales Copilot benefit your business?
Those are some great tools in Sales Copilot, but you might be thinking that this sounds a little dry. What does using Sales Copilot in a real-world scenario look like and what does that mean for your business?
Here are some examples of the impacts these features can have on your operations.
Accessible Data
What I think is one of the major key factors of Microsoft Sales Copilot is that it makes your data more accessible. I think this is the biggest takeaway.
Nobody likes working in their CRM (and if you hear otherwise, it’s a lie). Instead, Sales Copilot brings your CRM data to where you and your team are working every day – inside Outlook and Teams. You can easily update CRM data and make action plans from your normal productivity apps.
Sidebar Access
Microsoft Sales Copilot adds a sidebar panel to your apps to allow this easy access. It’s from this sidebar you access all its features, and how you interact with your CRM outside of your CRM. It of course works with Dynamics 365 if you’re using that, but it can also link to Salesforce.
For instance, in Outlook you can have an email thread open, and the sidebar will list the name of the contact. You can easily click on it to update anything you need to – phone number, address, what-have-you. It’s easy and done in a second. No switching apps.
I know this isn’t “AI” driven, but just imagine the amount of time saved not having to switch back and forth between apps, or having two windows open, etc… even if it saves 5 minutes a day, that’s nearly an hour a week – for each person of your team. No hassles, more productivity.
Email Summaries
What about those email summaries? The highlights tab in the sidebar will read the entire email thread and summarize it concisely. Not just the last email, but the entire conversation, with all the back-and-forth communication.
No need to refresh your memory by scrolling through the email chain, you get a brief synopsis instantly. The best part is that you can click to save it to your CRM timeline, so it’s all tracked. This is a major reduction in manual data entry and will save a huge amount of time.
Email Drafts
From the same highlights tab, you can select to draft an email. As Sales Copilot is designed with sales in mind, it will prompt you with a few preselected options; Reply to an inquiry, Make a proposal, or Address a concern. Of course, there’s a customizable prompt to describe the email you want if any of these aren’t quite the right match.
Again, since the AI is designed in the context of sales, it will draft a sales-minded email using the existing conversation, contact information, and notes it has at its disposal. It gets even smarter too. If you’re trying to schedule a meeting, Sales Copilot will check your calendar for conflicts and not book anything within a 30-minute window of an existing meeting.
Understand Data Sources
Plus, it’s designed to help you edit and check what it generates. This is “copilot” not “autopilot.” You should be checking the work it does to ensure it is a perfect fit for your business.
This is not an external tool, it is encapsulated within your business applications and data. It is not pulling hypothetical information or creating its own false data to fit your needs. We’ve seen some scary examples of ChatGPT going wrong when people don’t fact-check it. Like the lawyer who used fake legal cases in court. SMH 🤦♂️
When Sales Copilot generates content for you, it will link reference points to the source of the data and why it is writing what it is. If it states that you’ll send product information, just hover over that text and you’ll see in the conversation chain where the customer asked for information.
Then of course, there is no automatic send. You might think auto sending would be a good thing to streamline the process, but that’s not quite true. This ensures that the generated data gets reviewed and approved by a human. Only after that person is happy with the result the data can be copied and pasted (with a shortcut button) into an email to send. No accidental sending of bad emails. AI is a powerful tool to help your business, but people are still running your business! You have full control here.
Data Safety
With all of that data linking in mind, can we also take a moment to appreciate the privacy of Sales Copilot? There is no way I would put private company data like customer information and business sales data into an external AI tool. With Sales Copilot you don’t have to. It’s your tool working for your company.
Collaborate in Teams
One more thing you can easily do is create a Team with just a click of a button. In any conversation or opportunity, you can click a button and select the team members you want involved. A new team is then created (or an existing team selected) in MS Teams and appropriate data is imported into the team, such as those conversation summaries, pending tasks, and generated analytics.
Meeting Summary
While we are on the topic of MS Teams, one of the nicest features of Sales Copilot is the ability to summarize meetings. It will go through the entire meeting, notating who said what, determine what the next steps and action items are automatically. You can then review it and send it out to the appropriate people.
We all seem to hate meetings and seem to have too many of them. I take good notes, but this sounds like a life saver as far as simplifying and reviewing the entire process. No more scrubbing through video recordings looking for that moment somebody said something, only to realize you remembered it wrong.
AI Inception
I’ll add this one as a fun way to round off the list. As I said, Microsoft is implementing their Copilot AI tools in everything they do. So besides Sales Copilot, there is a M365 Copilot. With M365 Copilot it makes certain tasks very easy, like creating a PowerPoint presentation.
You can prompt M365 Copilot to create a sales presentation based on certain criteria; products/services, customer, industry, etc…and it will do just that.
If you remember, Sales Copilot is completely integrated with your CRM and specific data. What happens if you put AI inside of AI?
You can now ask M365 Copilot to create that sales presentation based on the Sales Copilot data, and get a result that is finely tuned to a specific customer based on their specific needs discussed.
Mind blown, right? 🤯
This is just the beginning. Microsoft has even more features planned on their roadmap.
I know, it’s a lot. Learning about Microsoft Sales Copilot and what it can do is a bit overwhelming. However, you don’t have to navigate the AI frenzy alone.
As AI and machine learning reshape business tools, we’re here to assist you. Give us a call today to schedule a chat and explore how Microsoft Sales Copilot and other technology can transform your business.