7 ways to automate your sales workflows

Sales thrives on human interaction and timely communication, but each lead conversion involves a set of repetitive tasks. From updating records to scheduling follow-ups, these manual efforts can take up a lot of time—and a missed reminder or data entry slip-up can cost you a valuable lead.

Automating tasks like these can not only save you a lot of time, which you can focus on more productive work, but it can also eliminate the scope of errors involved in your sales process. Here are a few sales automation workflows you can build using Zoho Flow to make your day at work easier and more productive.

1. Automatically move lead information to CRM

Adding lead information to your CRM is a fundamental part of any salesperson's role. However, manually updating data from various sources, like forms, social media, or events, to your CRM can be time-consuming and error-prone.

Building automated workflows with CRMs like Zoho CRM, form-builder apps like Zoho Forms or 123FormBuilder, or social media platforms like LinkedIn or X can help you streamline lead management. This will ensure that every lead enquiry will be added as an entry in your CRM app, eliminating the manual work involved.

2. Send automated emails to new leads

When you want to nurture an existing lead, email marketing is one of the best ways to do it. When a new lead is created in your CRM, the next step should be to add them to the relevant mailing list based on the information provided.

By integrating your CRM apps like Zoho CRM or HubSpot with email marketing applications like Mailchimp or Zoho Campaigns, you'll be able to add the new lead to the right mailing list and send them the necessary emails whenever needed.

3. Keep your sales team updated about new leads

A similar Zoho CRM integration that can enhance your sales process is by integrating it with communication applications like Zoho Cliq or Slack. You can create a channel in Zoho Cliq or Slack and have all the relevant team members added to it.

This way, any time a new lead is added in your Zoho CRM or any other CRM app, your sales team will get notified through the messaging application, enabling you to start working on the lead as soon as possible. You can also have all the lead-related updates sent as notifications in the channel, ensuring your team stays updated on the lead status.

4. Schedule appointments instantly based on CRM entries

Your CRM is one of the most important applications for streamlining your sales process, as information often flows from your CRM to other apps. Another instance where a sales-related CRM workflow can be efficient is when you schedule appointments for your leads.

By integrating your appointment scheduling applications, like Zoho Bookings or Calendly, with your CRM app, whenever the status of the lead is changed to appointment booked, an appointment will be scheduled automatically through the scheduling app, saving you time and eliminating errors.

5. Add important events to your calendar

Sales meetings can be scheduled in many ways—they can be sent as a message in your messaging app, scheduled as an appointment in your booking app, or marked in CRM, just to name a few. However, it's crucial not to miss any of those meetings or events.

You can ensure that this doesn't happen by integrating your calendar apps like Zoho Calendar with messaging apps like Cliq or appointment scheduling apps like Mailchimp. This way, all your appointments will be added as events in your calendar, helping you stay notified.

6. Automatically initiate contracts for leads during lead closure 

When a client is ready to sign a contract and close a deal, creating a contract, sending it over to them through email, and following up on that can not only delay the process but also reduce the chance of conversion. 

Integrating contract management applications like Zoho Contracts with Zoho CRM can initiate the immediate and automatic sending of contracts or documents to the customer. This increases the chances of closing a potential lead while they're ready.

7. Follow up with surveys instantly

Surveys are an effective way to understand your leads, fix any issues, and encourage them to return to you. Customer feedback can be shared with the development team by the sales team to avoid any minor issues or improve the quality of the product.

By integrating ecommerce apps like BigCommerce with survey apps like Zoho Survey, you can send surveys to your customers every time a sale is completed. The response to the survey can also be sent as a text notification to the product/development team to fix the issue, while the salesperson can connect with the customer to discuss the problem.

While these are just a few ideas to streamline your sales workflows using Zoho Flow, with more than 1,000 applications available, you'll be able to build a variety of integrations to enhance your sales process.

Check out Zoho Flow and start integrating today!