Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 4 For Dummies®

Chapter 7. Using the Product Catalog

Product catalogs, whether they're paper or virtual, are a great invention. And product catalogs aren't just for consumers! They also make excellent reference tools for your sales and customer service staff.

With Microsoft CRM, your company can create a brawny, capable, all-inclusive computer-based product catalog. That way, you can quickly and easily find all the items and services you sell (nix thumbing through pages). This chapter shows you how to set up this valuable resource.

Overview of the Product Catalog

Within a product catalog, you can create pricing schedules and assign them to your customers as default schedules. This way, Bob's Big Discount Warehouse gets the wholesale pricing schedule, and the National Organization for Toasters gets nonprofit pricing. Using these assigned pricing schedules and the quote generation feature of Microsoft CRM (refer to Chapter 16), your salespeople can generate accurate quotes quickly. Quotes beget orders and orders beget invoices and invoices beget bucks (most of the time).

You can create a number of pricing schedules, for any reason. These schedules can be as simple as retail, wholesale, and nonprofit pricing or as complex as seasonal pricing or tiered membership pricing. Chapter 16 details how to create and use the pricing schedule to your company's advantage.

The product catalog can link to opportunities, competitors, and product literature. In fact, the product catalog has its tentacles into virtually ...