{"id":11723,"date":"2023-07-10T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=11723"},"modified":"2025-11-05T17:29:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T01:29:43","slug":"see-how-were-simplifying-our-sales-with-ai-powered-microsoft-viva-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/insidetrack\/blog\/see-how-were-simplifying-our-sales-with-ai-powered-microsoft-viva-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"See how we\u2019re simplifying our sales with AI-powered Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
\"Microsoft<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If you\u2019re on a sales team, you know that there are all kinds of distracting tasks that eat away at your time and get in the way of what you do best\u2014building relationships with and solving problems for customers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There\u2019s no doubt that modern salespeople need to rely on too many tools and services to get their jobs done. We in Microsoft Digital, the company\u2019s IT organization, see firsthand the stress this puts on our sales teams.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“We wanted to alleviate as much of that pain as we could,\u201d says Nathalie D\u2019Hers, corporate vice president of Employee Experience. \u201cWe realized that the AI and automation that comes baked into Copilot for Sales could make the lives of our sellers much better.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Microsoft is Customer Zero for our own products, which means we typically try them first, put them through their paces, and send our feedback to the product group. Usage has steadily increased since we adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales internally.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve had a great Customer Zero experience with Copilot for Sales,\u201d D\u2019Hers says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very pleased with how much it has simplified the lives of our sellers and enabled them to focus more on selling.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Unlocking human potential with AI and automation<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It\u2019s hard to overstate how complicated selling is\u2014there seems to be no end to the countless small tasks that sellers need to accomplish to keep their day-to-day moving. From managing communications to pulling in relevant stakeholders to inputting information into customer relationship management (CRM) software, sales professionals are constantly allocating and reallocating their attention across different apps and work modes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"D\u2019Hers\r\n
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales has significantly improved the lives of our salespeople since we deployed it internally at Microsoft, says Nathalie D\u2019Hers, corporate vice president of Employee Experience.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

During internal simplification research at Microsoft, we discovered that our sellers were using as many as 40 tools per day. Flipping back and forth between those different workspaces results in a lot of wasted time.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cSixty-eight percent of sellers\u2019 time gets spent on critical but tedious sales tasks,\u201d says Cory Newton-Smith, head of product management for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. \u201cIf we can identify what they’re doing in this non-selling space and recover time from that, they can spend more of their day where humans excel.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We wanted to design a way for salespeople to keep essential tasks within the flow of work, then introduce powerful features to speed up their efforts. It\u2019s especially important to minimize the time they spend in CRM programs like Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce. Although those solutions are essential to modern sales and contain many powerful features, they add steps into a seller\u2019s workflow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cYou have the CRM space and then you have the productivity space,\u201d says Smita Shrivastava, product strategy and growth lead for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales. \u201cSellers mostly work in Microsoft Outlook and Teams, so juggling apps to work within the CRM is a constant drain on productivity.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales<\/a> maximizes sales teams\u2019 productivity with AI-assisted content creation and meeting summaries across Microsoft 365 apps. It seamlessly connects data to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce CRMs from the apps where salespeople get their work done\u2014within Microsoft Outlook and Teams.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales saves sellers time through three main functionalities:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n