Automating Your Sales Processes

Now that we’ve covered how to automate marketing processes with Zapier, the next important business function to explore is the sales cycle and how to automate its processes. Sales, of course, is one of the most important business functions. Once your marketing processes are working on autopilot to push new leads your way, you will need an efficient way of converting them into sales. No sales means no revenue, and a business without revenue will not survive long at all. Therefore, having a streamlined and automated sales process will most definitely help ensure business success.

In this chapter, we will discuss the different types of sales processes that can be automated with Zapier, and we will provide examples of workflows used with some common sales applications. First, we will give an overview of the types of sales processes that can be automated with Zapier, such as data collection, appointment scheduling, lead capture and management, getting...

Technical requirements

To make the most of the content in this chapter, you will need access to a Zapier account. The Zapier Free plan will be required for you to create single-step workflows and use Zapier’s pre-built templates. The Zapier Starter plan will be required for you to use Premium apps and to create multi-step workflows.

You can get access to the Zap template used in this chapter at https://bit.ly/zapier-book. Using the template will help you to visualize how the process works.

An introduction to automating your sales processes with Zapier

In days gone by, many businesses owned cash registers that made a “cha-ching” chime every time they received money from a sale. These days, it’s not likely that many businesses have these antique cash registers, but many business owners might imagine that “cha-ching” sound when they make a sale and secretly do a little jig. Sales are what keep the business going and pay the employees, suppliers, and business owners.

Before the internet came along, companies often needed to have premises to trade from and made sales of their products or services when customers walked through the door. Some customers knew what they wanted, and others needed more information or a bit of convincing. The sales personnel worked the room and attended to potential buyers while having to answer the telephone, deal with inquiries, and book appointments. Customer details might have been recorded on a paper registration...

Where to start with automating your sales processes with Zapier

It is always good to do some pre-work before you start automating your processes. In Chapter 2, Preparing to Automate Your Processes, and Chapter 3, Building Your First Automated Workflow (Zap), we covered a few important points that will help you when you are strategizing your sales workflows, and these are as follows:

• Map out your sales processes: If you don’t have a clear idea of how your sales processes work with all your tools, follow the steps in the Simplifying your processes and assessing what can be automated section in Chapter 2, Preparing to Automate Your Processes, to visually map out your processes so that you have a high-level overview of how your tasks work with your existing software.
• List your sales tools: Make a list of all the sales tools and services that you use in your business to achieve your goals. Then, assess how these tools fit within your mapped-out processes. You will then...

Automating lead management processes with CRM integrations, illustrated with the Pipedrive integration

As we’ve seen so far in this chapter, there are so many different sales tools that connect with Zapier and allow you to automate your sales processes. We specifically covered automating lead management processes and noted that there is a range of CRMs that integrate with Zapier. To further illustrate what the possibilities are, we’re now going to focus on one of Zapier’s most popular sales app integrations, which is Pipedrive.

This section will mostly help Pipedrive users who are considering automating their processes with Zapier to understand the options available to them. However, if you’re not a Pipedrive user, this section will still be helpful for you as many similarities exist in the Zapier integrations with other well-known CRM tools such as Salesforce and HubSpot, where the integrations are just as comprehensive and, in some cases, more extensive...

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the different types of sales processes that can be automated with Zapier, and we explored some examples of workflows used with some common sales applications. First, we got an overview of the types of sales processes that can be automated with Zapier. Then, we covered where to start with automating sales processes with Zapier. Finally, we discussed how to automate contact management with the Pipedrive CRM integration.

You now know how to automate your sales processes with Zapier and specifically, with the Pipedrive CRM integration.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to automate your operations workflows. We will discuss some of the different types of operations processes and give working examples of how these processes can be automated using Zapier. We will also provide practical tips on how to solve problems related to operations workflows.

Questions

1. What type of sales processes can be automated using Zapier?
2. Where can you find information about what types of scheduling applications integrate with Zapier?