Since taking up the Sales Director position of a large international sales team, Ahmad was looking for a way to improve the workflow and connect with the field sales representatives in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.
Ahmad’s day now starts with reviewing Microsoft Team’s notifications. The option to filter notifications enables him to address the urgent ones first, for example the messages where he is @mentioned or the requests from his direct reports. This feature helps him prioritize his activities.
As a sales manager, Ahmad often collaborates with his team on various spreadsheets, for example sales targets, sales proposals, PPTs and so on. Instead of using back-and-forth emails and having numerous versions of the same document, Ahmad and his team co-author the documents and the changes are saved in real time. This morning, Ahmad uploaded a key accounts spreadsheet to Microsoft Teams and asked his direct reports to make amendments. To ensure they will complete his request, he mentioned the @Channel, which will trigger a notification for them. When his team finalizes working on the document, he puts a “like” reaction to acknowledge seeing the changes.
Talk about ‘making work visible.’ Ahmad and his direct reports - many of whom were field based - and the whole sales team, now benefited from the complete transparency and efficiency of the Microsoft Teams. They are able to quickly access and view all tools - from documents, chats, meetings, calls and tasks.
The Planner dashboard informs Ahmad of pending tasks and he can assign tasks, monitor the progress and provide further inputs through this task management tool. Ahmad sees that some of his direct reports struggle with the specific tasks and decides to propose an afternoon meeting.
To follow up with his team members, Ahmad initiates a call from the “Sales Meeting Channel”, and activates the “Meeting Notes Tab”, which will enable attendees to take notes. Later on, those who missed the meeting will be able to check on what they’ve missed.
While on his way to the meeting, he is sending voice notes via the Teams app on his mobile device.
A major new deal has been signed.
Ahmad wants to inform his team members, so he forwards the email to the channel. The discussion about the deal continues there.
Ahmad checks the Teams calendar for the upcoming week and assigns himself a few ‘”To Do” notes. “This has been a great week for our team” he remarks to himself.
He activates “quiet hours” in Teams on his phone, closes his office door and heads home for a peaceful weekend with his family.
