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Microsoft has instructed its sales force to focus on customers that currently uses Salesforce’s CRM suite. The tech giant is trying to gain market share with its own Dynamics software.

Analysts at RBC Capital Markets told CNBC about the rumour, originating from an unnamed Microsoft Partner. “I think what’s happened is it’s a new priority,” RBC’s Alex Zukin told CNBC in an interview.

Market share gain

By focusing on Salesforce customers, Microsoft is trying to gain market share for its Dynamics Customer Relationship Management-suite. The CRM software directly competes with Salesforce but controls a much smaller share of the market.

Also read: Salesforce progressed in 2019, in 2020 everything will come together

Earlier this month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tweeted a chart showing the market shares of various CRM systems. The chart showed that in 2019, Salesforce controlled about five times the market share that Microsoft did. The extent to which that changed over the course of 2020 is unclear.

PowerApps

In addition to Dynamics, Zukin also speculates that Microsoft is putting extra emphasis on PowerApps. The software, that the company released in 2015, allows users without programming knowledge to develop apps for Android, iOS, Windows 10 and browsers.

Related: Developers can build apps for free on the Salesforce platform

Competition with Salesforce

The two companies share a long history of competition. In 2015, Microsoft tried to acquire Salesforce, but couldn’t strike an agreement on the price. Both companies tried to buy LinkedIn in 2016, with Microsoft winning the bid at 27 billion dollars.

Salesforce’s software does have extensive integration of Office 365 and uses Azure to run their Marketing Cloud.