Chapter 7. Sales Force Automation (SFA)

In this chapter

B2B Versus B2C

Leads

Sales Territory Manager

Quotas

Opportunities

Products

Competitors

Activities and Sales Process

Marketing Functionality

Use Case Corner—Tracking Marketing Campaigns

Summary

Now that the basics are covered, let's get into some specifics. As we've mentioned before, Sales users of Microsoft CRM have two interface options for accessing Microsoft CRM; the Web client and the Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook client. The Web client can be accessed through a Web browser (IE 5.5 SP2 or IE 6.0) when the user is connected to the company network. The Outlook client, named Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook, can be used in two modes with the user being connected to the main corporate CRM database while on the company network, or using a remote database while disconnected from the network.

The goal of this chapter is to cover all the Sales Force Automation concepts and functionality. Because not all Sales users will use the Outlook client (for example, Inside Sales people), we'll stick to the functionality provided in the Web client and cover the specifics of the Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook client in the next chapter.