Amazon impersonators: what you need to know

Amazon impersonators: what you need to know

by | Oct 20, 2021 | Security

This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.

Has Amazon contacted you to confirm a recent purchase you didn’t make or to tell you that your account has been hacked? According to the FTC’s new Data Spotlight, since July 2020, about one in three people who have reported a business impersonator scam say the scammer pretended to be Amazon.

These scams can look a few different ways. In one version, scammers offer to “refund” you for an unauthorized purchase but “accidentally transfer” more than promised. They then ask you to send back the difference. What really happens? The scammer moves your own money from one of your bank accounts to the other (like your Savings to Checkings, or vice versa) to make it look like you were refunded. Any money you send back to “Amazon” is your money (not an overpayment) — and as soon as you send it out of your account, it becomes theirs. In another version of the scam, you’re told that hackers have gotten access to your account — and the only way to supposedly protect it is to buy gift cards and share the gift card number and PIN on the back. Once that information is theirs, the money is, too.

Here are some ways to avoid an Amazon impersonator scam:

  • Never call back an unknown number. Use the information on Amazon’s website and not a number listed in an unexpected email or text.
  • Don’t pay for anything with a gift card. Gift cards are for gifts. If anyone asks you to pay with a gift card – or buy gift cards for anything other than a gift, it’s a scam.
  • Don’t give remote access to someone who contacts you unexpectedly. This gives scammers easy access to your personal and financial information—like access to your bank accounts.

Have you spotted this scam? Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

If you think someone has gotten access to your accounts or personal information, visit IdentityTheft.gov. There, you’ll find steps to take to see if your identity has been misused, and how to report and recover from identity theft.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Oracle Releases October 2021 Critical Patch Update

by | Oct 19, 2021 | Security, Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Oracle has released its Critical Patch Update for October 2021 to address 419 vulnerabilities across multiple products. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to take control of an affected system. 

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Oracle October 2021 Critical Patch Update and apply the necessary updates. 

3 secrets to optimize your sales strategy

3 secrets to optimize your sales strategy

by | Oct 19, 2021 | Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

2021 has been an interesting year as we embrace the new hybrid world while bringing back the best practices from our old life and work style. With all these changes, the need for products and services to adapt to our new norm has become more important than ever. Sales organizations need solutions that are fluid, dynamic, and cloud-based. During our recent LinkedIn Live session (The Evolution of the Modern CRM), we had the honor to hear from industry sales leader, Santina Franci, Microsoft’s VP of Business Applications, and Amanda Homes, CEO of The Ultimate Sales Machine, as they provided us with gems to help up-level digital sellers.

1. Dream 100 strategy

Amanda mentioned the Dream 100 strategy referencing from her father’s book, The Ultimate Sales Machine, and how this strategy focuses heavily on a small group of clients who purchase your product the most. Implementing sales efforts to narrow down your best clients and focusing your resources on a select group will help yield higher sales. This strategy is much more effective than cold calling 2,000 clients with the slight hope of future leads. It is “the fastest and least expensive way to double sales.” To implement this strategy, you need data from your customer, which can be very complex with the amount of data we receive on a day-to-day basis.

For many sales teams, implementing the technology and human skills to keep up with the evolving demands of digitally savvy customers may seem like a stretch, even by 2025. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales accelerator helps sellers work faster and smarter with a prioritized work list of the next best lead or opportunity, allowing them to engage through their customers’ preferred channel with integrated email, phone dialer, and a Microsoft Teams channel. Sellers are equipped with timely, AI-driven insights and recommendations based on customer events and needs, so sales teams know when to offer customer guidance.

Sellers now have the information and insights to have more meaningful conversations. It is ultimately still your decision on how to proceed with your sale strategy, but these tools can give you a better view of your decision.

2. Educating not selling

As a seller, you are constantly reaching out via email to potential clients, but out of your pool, how many are ready to buy? Amanda mentioned that about 3 percent of clients are in the buying now category, 7 percent are open to your product, and 90 percent are not interested in you, your product, or service. As sellers, we send out emails to that 90 percent of potential customers, explaining our product, while the consumers have no interest in the product or service in the first place. It can be advantageous to educate the consumer on why this product can be of interest instead of explaining the features of the product itself. Being able to educate your customer about the current landscape of their business and the challenges they might face will put you in a better position to market your product to them.

In the era of digital selling, even now more than before, email is one of the most used avenues of contacting new customers. To run an educational marketing strategy, your CRM must be able to integrate with your communication platform, so that all aspects can work together. Not having to rely heavily on manual labor to ingest, respond, and avoid mistakes when communicating with your customers will in return free up time for sellers to further their personal and intimate relations with their customers. Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows you to integrate your communication platform and add applications that can ingest, send, and alert sellers of high-value customers. Collaborative apps from Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft 365bring together the right people, both inside and outside the companywith new ways to see who is available to chat, call, and collaborateall right from within Dynamics 365 or Teams. Sellers can also bring in resources from across the organization and across the globe in real-time to ensure they have the most up-to-date context.

3. Relationship selling reduces rejection

“On average three out of four salespeople are ineffective at their job.0.08 percent of universities offer sales as a major or minor” as mentioned by Amanda. Without a proper educational background, it is understandable why leads are being missed, follow-up is lacking, and referrals have missteps; it usually all boils down to the human reaction to rejection. After hours, days, and weeks of customer interaction, the last thing you want to hear is, “I am not interested.” With social platforms being such a powerful player in this arena, we must look towards social selling and bring back the element of human empathy. Having the strength to let go of the fear of rejection and instead use tools to help enable social engagement.

With the pandemic, social selling has been an important pillar for sellers around the world and with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365, the ability to socially interact with customers has been made easier. Being able to comment on a post with something engaging or clever brings back the empathy sellers have been struggling with. Actual human interaction, and showing you care, will go a long way when creating relationships with new customers. With conversation intelligence in Dynamics 365 Sales, sales leadersand the sellers themselvesreceive real-time insights about the customer’s priorities, sentiments, and emotions during the actual conversation. Also, customer mentions of competitors are flagged for instant follow-up. This helps the seller take action during the call, and it allows the sales leader to help through guided selling. Having the proper tools helps get rid of the fear of rejection.

Watch the recap of our LinkedIn live session: The Evolution of the Modern CRM

As the market evolves, we as sellers must level up as well. In this day and age, having the correct strategy is only half the battle. It is imperative to have the tools and the platform that can help integrate all avenues into one. Santina and Amanda deep dive into this subject. Be sure to check out the recap of the LinkedIn session to gain further insights and learn more about Dynamics 365 Sales.

The post 3 secrets to optimize your sales strategy appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Microsoft HLS Viva Four Part Webinar Series

Microsoft HLS Viva Four Part Webinar Series

by | Oct 19, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Vivawebinar.png  Recently Microsoft HLS put on a webinar “Enhance Your Employee Experience with MS Viva.” This all up, high level webinar, led by Microsoft’s Michael Gannotti, covered all four of the current Microsoft Viva modules. Covered were Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Topics, and Viva Learning. To provide deeper insight into each of the Viva modules, and to help customers test and investigate these modules, Microsoft HLS is putting on a 4-part webinar series “Microsoft HLS Viva Webinar Series.” You can read about each of the deep dive webinars below as well as download the individual calendar invites for each. Each session will be delivered by Michael Gannotti, Principal Technical Specialist, Microsoft HLS. 



 


Microsoft Viva Connections – The Personalized Next Gen Intranet for Engaging Employees


October 27: Microsoft HLS Viva Webinar Series – 1


Microsoft Viva Connections delivers a role based “curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and resources in the apps and devices you use every day.” – Viva Connections. Microsoft Viva Connection is designed not only to inform employees but to also engage them in a meaningful fashion that help reduce feelings of disconnectedness that can arise in a hybrid workplace.


Agenda:



  • Overview of Microsoft Viva Connections

  • Instructions around its setup (Step by step walkthrough of standing up Viva Connections. Yes, it’s that straightforward and we will show you how.) including configuring the Connections Dashboard and Feed.

  • Opportunities for extension of the Microsoft Viva Connections experience to add additional value and employee engagement.

  • Open Q&A – Bring your questions, comments, concerns. Wondering what to do if you are still on premise or in SharePoint classic, maybe even another Intranet technology altogether? This will be a great opportunity to ask.

  • Resources to get started on your journey to better employee engagement.

  • Wrap up/Next steps


 


Microsoft Viva Insights – Improving Employee Productivity and Well Being


November 10: Microsoft HLS Viva Webinar Series – 2


Microsoft Viva Insights provides powerful, actionable, insights to “improve productivity and wellbeing with data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations.” – Viva Insights


Microsoft Viva Insights enables employees to get personal insights in the flow of work as well as assists employees in managing their day, priorities, breaks, and more. Microsoft Viva Insights also helps managers address team stressors, productivity, and avoid employee burnout. Finally, Microsoft Viva Insights generates valuable insights and reports for business leaders that address challenges within the workplace. In all of these scenarios Microsoft Viva Insights is designed to keep employee data safe, private, while helping to enable organizations to maintain compliance with industry and regional requirements.


Agenda:



  • Deep dive into Microsoft Viva Insights capabilities

  • Learn how Microsoft Viva Insights can provide deep actionable insights while delivering privacy and ensuring organizational compliance.

  • Address areas for expansion, customization, potentially leveraging data from additional non-Microsoft resources.

  • Open Q&A

  • Resources for Microsoft Viva Insights

  • Wrap up/Next Steps


 


Microsoft Viva Topics – Automatically Organize Content/Expertise Across Your Organization Improving Ease of Information Discovery/Use


November 23: Microsoft HLS Viva Webinar Series – 3


Microsoft Viva Topics “automatically organizes content and expertise across your organization, making it easy for people to find information and put knowledge to work.” – Viva Topics


With Microsoft Viva Topics you can turn content into knowledge using AI to reason over your organization’s data and automatically identify, process, and organize content. You can organize knowledge, improving topics by combining AI and human expertise. Finally, make knowledge easy to discover by automatically displaying topic cards across Microsoft 365 apps to enable knowledge discovery in the context of your work.


Agenda:


During the Microsoft Viva Insights webinar attendees will:



  • Deep dive into Microsoft Viva Topics capabilities

  • Learn how Microsoft Viva Topics can improve information and expertise discovery within the context of work.

  • Address areas for expansion, customization, of Microsoft Viva Topics pages.

  • Open Q&A

  • Resources for Microsoft Viva Topics

  • Wrap up/Next Steps


 


Microsoft Viva Learning – Bringing Together the Continuum of Learning from AdHoc Projects to LMS hosted Compliance Training


December 23: Microsoft HLS Viva Webinar Series – 4


“Empower employees to discover, share, recommend, and learn from content libraries across your organization with this center for learning in Microsoft 365” – Viva Learning 


With Microsoft Viva Learning employees can easily discover, recommend, and share all learning within and organization including Sharepoint content, 3rd party learning/training packages, Microsoft public resources, formalized Learning Management Systems (LMS), and more.


Agenda:


During the Microsoft Viva Insights webinar attendees will:



  • Deep dive into Microsoft Viva Learning capabilities

  • Learn how Microsoft Viva Learning can improve organizational readiness and skilling.

  • Address areas for expansion, customization, of Microsoft Viva Learning content.

  • Open Q&A

  • Resources for Microsoft Viva Learning

  • Wrap up/Next Steps


Thanks for visiting – Michael Gannotti   LinkedIn | Twitter


Michael GannottiMichael Gannotti


 


 


 

3 ways to support frontline workers in a hybrid world

3 ways to support frontline workers in a hybrid world

by | Oct 19, 2021 | Business, Microsoft 365, Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

When the working world split between those who could work from home and those who could not, the frontline transformed beyond anyone’s expectations. Frontline workers—the associates at the forefront of your customer interactions, the clinicians delivering patient care, and those running your operations on the ground—have long been underserved by technology and are only now…

The post 3 ways to support frontline workers in a hybrid world appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.