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Introducing Viva Sales, a modern way of selling that brings together any CRM, Microsoft 365 and Teams

Today we’re introducing Viva Sales, a new seller experience application that brings together any customer relationship management technology (CRM), Microsoft 365 and Teams to provide a more streamlined and AI-powered selling experience. The past two years have changed the way we work. Employees are demanding more from their employers in today’s hybrid world – from the tools they use to the hours and the places that they work. For sellers, the hybrid work environment means spending more time in video conferences, chats, email and documents to connect with customers and close deals.

Salespeople also need to access their CRM system – as well as multiple applications and databases – several times a day to stay on top of their accounts. This adds up to dozens of interruptions as they navigate among these disparate applications and the collaboration and productivity tools they’re using to accomplish administrative tasks, collaborate internally and work on deals. Yet, all sellers really want is to spend more time with their customers.

But what if everything a salesperson needed to do their job was brought together in one place – where they already spend most of their day – in calls, meetings and chats? What if their customer records, data and tasks were intelligently organized and accessible in the tools they use every day? What if the collaboration environment sellers use to talk to customers automatically provides the next best action and sentiment analysis?

How much more impact could sellers have, and how much more time could they spend with customers? How would it improve their selling experience? And how much more revenue could they drive for their company?

This is what led us to develop Viva Sales, a new seller experience application.

Viva Sales enriches your CRM and brings intelligence back to the seller

Viva Sales is a new modern way of selling. As a smart CRM companion, Viva Sales makes sellers’ lives easier while enriching their CRM. Think about all the customer and deal insights that are already in Outlook, Teams and Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but never make it into the CRM system. These insights are hard to capture because the seller is tasked with entering data manually.

By enhancing the CRM system with customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and Teams along with the power of artificial intelligence (AI), Viva Sales empowers sellers to be more connected with their customers, resulting in more personalized customer engagements and closed deals faster. This happens through a simple customer tagging feature, which automates the data capture, saves the seller time, and provides their organization with a more complete picture of deal and customer status. With AI embedded throughout, Viva Sales is like a sales coach to move deals along with recommendations and reminders. This intelligence layer provides sellers the information they need to help them be more productive.

The future of selling isn’t a new system to learn. It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, with the right context, into the tools they are familiar with so their work experience can be streamlined. Viva Sales builds on Microsoft Viva, launched last year, which provides an integrated employee experience platform that supports everyone throughout their employee journey. Viva brings together communications, knowledge, learning, goals and insights to empower every person and team to achieve more from anywhere. Now with Viva Sales, we’re delivering the first role-based Viva application specifically designed to meet sellers’ needs.

Reimagining the sales experience

With Viva Sales, we are reimagining sales, empowering salespeople with AI-driven insights and data automation right in the flow of work – in the productivity and collaboration tools millions are already using every day – Microsoft 365 and Teams.

As Microsoft’s Chief Commercial Officer, I’m especially excited for today’s announcement. Viva Sales delivers on what customers and individual sellers have been asking for, and I’m looking forward to rolling out Viva Sales across my entire organization.

Learn more about Viva Sales on the Viva Sales product website.

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Microsoft announces Viva Sales, redefining the seller experience and enhancing productivity

Viva Sales works with any seller’s CRM to automate data entry and brings AI-powered intelligence to sellers in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams

REDMOND, Wash. — June 16, 2022 — On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. announced Microsoft Viva Sales, a new seller experience application. Viva Sales enriches any CRM system with customer engagement data from Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, and leverages AI to provide personalized recommendations and insights for sellers to be more connected with their customers. This helps sellers more seamlessly personalize their customer engagements toward faster deal closure.

Employees are demanding more from their employers in today’s hybrid world — from the tools they use, to the hours and locations they work. This is especially true for salespeople. Viva Sales enables sellers to capture insights from across Microsoft 365 and Teams, eliminate manual data entry, and receive AI-driven recommendations and reminders — all the while staying in the flow of work. Viva Sales streamlines the seller experience by surfacing the insights with the right context within tools salespeople already use, saving sellers time and providing the organization with a more complete view of the customer.

“The future of selling isn’t a new system. It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, with the right context, into the tools they know, so their work experience can be streamlined,” said Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft. “Empowering sellers to spend more time with their customers has been our goal — and we’ve done that by reimagining the selling experience with Viva Sales.”

“Sellers rely on digital collaboration and productivity tools to connect with customers and close deals, but a lot of the insights they uncover with these tools don’t make it into the CRM,” said Paul Greenberg, founder and managing principal, The 56 Group. “Microsoft is taking on this challenge by offering a solution that complements the CRM. Viva Sales automates the busy work, captures critical information about the customer and helps sellers get the job done.”

Reimagining the seller experience

Viva Sales builds on Microsoft Viva, which was launched last year. Viva provides an integrated employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, goals and insights to empower every person and team to be their best from anywhere. Viva Sales delivers the first role-based Viva application designed specifically for sellers:

  • Viva Sales provides tools for sellers to do their jobs, while providing the insights that sales leadership needs. As sellers are working, they can tag customers in Outlook, Teams or Office applications like Excel, and Viva Sales will automatically capture it as a customer record, layered with all relevant data about the customer. Being able to automatically capture this level of customer engagement data was not available previously. This data can easily be shared with team members while collaborating in Office and Teams without retyping or looking it up in a CRM.
  • Powered by data and AI, Viva Sales recommends next steps to progress a customer through the sales funnel, prioritizes work and next steps, and enables sellers to access full history and customer interaction materials. Real-time customer insights provide a deeper understanding of where each customer is in their purchase journey, and how to guide the relationship.
  • Viva Sales also provides AI-driven recommendations to enable sellers to enhance their customer engagement — optimizing follow-through with next best steps, actionable reminders, and recommendations to accelerate and close more sales.  Viva Sales is using Context IQ, announced last fall, to ensure relevant content is connected across Microsoft apps and services — like Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 — so sellers save time and stay in the flow of work.

With Viva Sales, we are creating a new category of application addressing the selling experience. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to offer this type of application within the productivity and collaboration apps employees are already using.

To learn more, visit the Official Microsoft Blog.

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

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Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]

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