Upgrading solution to the newest version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV will give your customers advantage of improved functionality, enhanced capabilities, and new features. It can also boost your customers’ productivity, improve customer service, and reduce their costs. Despite all these benefits of the new version, customers decides to postpone an upgrade. How to sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade to your customer? In this article you can find steps to enhance your sales proposal and to sell more upgrades.

Preparing a sales offer of Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade

Preparation step: a lot of sales managers can do it better

• Don’t start preparing a sales proposal of upgrade just after the initial meeting with a potential customer.
• As a professional sales manager, you must maintain a frequent contact with a prospect during sales process. This will help you to notice who you are competing with or whether a new opportunity is arising. If you found out about a new competitor, prepare to defend your statements and continue to execute your own plan.
• Don’t consider you know everything about your potential customer’s services and products, discuss with them every aspect of Dynamics NAV upgrade, their expectations and preferred milestones of upgrade process. Discuss customer’s issue and needs deeper. A sales proposal is more about a customer and less about your company. Customers’ issues are different and they expect you to not offering a generic solution for their specific needs. Talk to them in order to avoid selling a solution you BELIEVE they would love and offer well discussed solutions that you KNOW they need.
• Your value proposition shouldn’t be based only on a commitment to quality as your customers already know about it or expect you to deliver it.
• Don’t put separate pieces from different documents into a sales proposal it you want to offer an integral solution for customer’s situation.

How are you different from the competition? What value will you provide?

New offering combined of several services

A combination of experienced project management team, technical consultancy and support may become an attractive proposal to the customer. For example, if you sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade services, you can add new functions to upsell the last order. To keep your customer excited and interested in your services, you can use cross-selling: a buyer of Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade might be interested in development services. In that case, you would be able to find out customer’s future needs and increase your income.

Sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade with added value to your customers

What value can you offer and deliver to your customers? It’s not about the Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade service itself but about new opportunities, abilities that customers receive when they buy services from you. You may give valuable guidance on any new features that are available and recommendations on how to integrate the selected new features. As part of your Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade service, you can offer training to use the new NAV functional areas. Your customer can benefit from your Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade services in the following ways.

#1 Sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade as a proven process in your company

Customers often hold back on upgrading their existing solution. A common fear is a costly, time consuming upgrading process with only a few measurable benefits. Customers want to know that a Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade project will be managed properly. The steps of how you manage upgrade process should be described clearly and you will provide a fast, efficient upgrade service.

You can start with an analysis of customers’ system requirements and a review of any existing modifications that have been made in current version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Later, you can introduce a short description of upgrade process, then document each of the steps, compose a detailed project plan, identify decision points and specify your deliverables from each step. Would it be easy for your customers to register issues after the project would have been finished? Thus convenient technical support system is worth to be mentioned in a sales proposal as well.
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#2 Sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade as a successful investment

Customers often have fear that the existing solution won’t justify an upgrade effort. They want to be sure that Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade won’t bring a lot of hassle, won’t last longer than they expect and will be profitable for their company.

• Profitable Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade. Upgrading customers’ Dynamics NAV system ensures that they remain on a Microsoft supported version. So they can exploit all the new features and functionality available. With a new version they will gain a more powerful system to organise and run their business with, and  (ROI) from the software. Introducing the ROI tool for your customer’s managers helps them understand benefits of upgrading and prioritise the budget.
• Successful stories from your current customers. Get a case study from your satisfied customers who have already received services from you. Feedback of your current customers is the best guarantee that you are capable to provide a successful upgrade. Provide a story that your potential customer could relate with and find themselves in a similar situation
• Clear receivables. Show receivables of upgrade in numbers, percents, and describe similar situations and what results have been got.
• You may also discuss your strategic initiatives on simpler and quicker upgrades. Have your company developed automated tools to complete upgrade process faster? Does your team have specific skills and experience to carry it out more successfully than any other company in the market?
• Your customers want to be sure they are getting a great deal. Give them something at extra value. Would it be free support hours, customer’s company visit, etc.?
• Be familiar with the latest Microsoft’s offerings. How your customers can benefit from them?

#3 Sell Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrade as an inevitable decision

• Every new version of Dynamics NAV is released yearly. Applying hotfixes with the cmdlets that are released every month your customer will have a minor impact on money and time spending. Periodical new Dynamics NAV updates lead to necessity of upgrade to new versions. The roadmap of the latest Microsoft Dynamics NAV versions is shown below.

• A lot to learn in one go. Customers who delay Dynamics NAV upgrade for too long, will have to receive training on a large number of software changes all in one go. This can disrupt customers’ employees work and lead to negatively affected business performance.
• Your customer’s current version of Dynamics Nav/Navision may be not supported anymore. The additional functionality they require is provided in the latest version. The cost of an upgrade may look less overwhelming, once customers realise they could end up running unsupported version. There is an overview of Dynamics NAV 2016 and introduction of new functionalities:

Writing a winning sales proposal of Dynamics NAV upgrade

Customers have various needs and expectations. Your sales proposal must be aligned with these needs, goals and budget. Listening to your customer enables will help you to get the answers needed to win the sale. Upgrading in the near future prevents customer company from longer disruption and makes it easier to manage business performance of their company. Your proven process of Dynamics NAV upgrading will help to overcome customers’ concerns and fears related to an upgrade. While receiving ability to make use of all the new features and functionality available, your customer gets a better return on investment. If you are aware of the aims of the business, you are able to sell more Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrades to your customers.

A great sales proposal consists of a well developed content, an attractive executive summary, the right sequence of the sections in your proposal. We are going to share insights on this topic in a new article.

 By Vilija Buteniene, Simplanova Marketing Manager

Want to boost your performance of upgrades? Need more capabilities to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016? Simplanova can help you. We are a software development company specialising in Microsoft Dynamics NAV upgrades and working only with Microsoft Partners.