When it comes to improving your sales process, automation can be a game-changer. In Pipedrive, activity-based automation is one of the most powerful ways you can make sure no Deal slips through the cracks. This article will guide you through how to set up a solid cold-outreach flow using Pipedrive's built-in workflow automations. By the end, you'll know how to automatically have activities created for the right task at the right time to be completed by the right person - all of which will keep the sales flowing in!
There are a couple of different ways to automate tasks in Pipedrive, but for this example, we'll focus on using Pipedrive's native Workflow Automation tools. While third-party tools like Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat) are great for more advanced functions, Pipedrive’s built-in automations can handle a lot of essentials. As a Zapier Expert, I do use Zapier quite a bit when building on behalf of my clients and I have several Zapier tutorials on my YouTube Channel. However, if you’re new to automations or don’t want to incorporate a third-party tool, this article is going to be the perfect starting point for you.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
This article is a step-by-step description of the demos contained in the video below. So, if you’re a reader, read-on. If you’re a watcher, press play and follow along!
Including a delay in our example could look like: When a new deal is created with a Deal Value greater than $10,000, delay 1 day skipping weekends, and create an activity.
Now, let’s build one from scratch!
First, navigate to Automations in Pipedrive. You will find this in your left-hand sidebar, most likely by clicking on the three dots at the bottom for “More.”
Once there, you’ll find that Pipedrive has included quite a few templates for common scenarios. It doesn’t hurt to play around with these to get familiar with how automations work. For now though, click on “+ Automation.”
Choose your Event Trigger as “Deal” and then select “Added.” This is our “when a new deal is added…” trigger.
Then, click “Apply Trigger”
Once you apply the trigger, it’s going to default your next step to be a condition step! But, in many cases you may not need a condition. So, click “back” and then “Action”
Now, we want our action to be to create an Activity. So, choose “Activity,” then “Create activity,” then “Next.”
Here we can get really detailed and include a lot of useful information when this activity is created. You’ll be presented with a list of fields to include. The following fields are required and will be selected by default:
Then, in addition I recommend selecting:
Once you select all of those fields, click “Next” in the bottom right corner.
Now, you can fill in all of the fields you selected.
When choosing the Activity Subject, I like to use a standard numbering and naming system. This keeps everything organized and helps team members know what to prioritize at a glance.
You can also use a custom Activity Type. In this example, I am using a Cold Outreach activity type. If you want to track the volume of activities being completed by users, using a custom Activity Type will enable you to do that in Insights.
Typically "Assigned to" is the Deal Owner so that activities are assigned to whoever owns the deal. This scales really well because if you add or remove users from Pipedrive, you don’t have to update your automations. Sometimes there is a specific person who handles specific types of activities (for example, creating Proposals). In that case you might choose to assign the activity to a specific person.
The Notes section of Activities is a very powerful tool. Within it you can provide detailed, step-by-step instructions for the sales rep. This ensures consistency and makes it really easy to train new hires because each Activity walks them through the call to make with the call-to-action, the template email to send depending on the call outcome, etc.
For example, you activity notes may look something like:
Then I also like to include a note about how automation will take hold of the Deal from here. For example: 3-days after marking this activity as done, if the deal is still open and in this stage, an additional activity will be created for you.
Including a note regarding the next step is helpful in freeing up brain space and letting the sales rep know they don’t have to think about this again because a new activity will be made for them.
Once all of your fields are complete, in the bottom right corner, click the green “Apply Action” button.
Now, to activate your automation:
Now let’s move on to something a little more advanced. In the automation we just created we told the user 3-days after marking this activity as done, if the deal is still open and in this stage, an additional activity will be created for you.
Now, let’s create the automation for that activity. I’m only going to include screenshots for new steps we didn’t do in our initial automation.
This automation will trigger when the #1 Cold Outreach activity has been marked as done. But, we told the sales rep that another activity would only be created if the Deal is still Open and in this same Stage in 3 days. So now, we need to add a Delay step.
To add the next step, click on the green +sign after step 2 and select “Delay.” You can select from specific options from the dropdown menu (e.g. 1 day, 3 days, 5 days), or click the blue text to set a custom duration (e.g. 4 days, 2 weeks). For this automation, we will select 3 days in the dropdown and check the box to “Skip weekends” which means that if day 3 is Saturday or Sunday, the delay will last until Monday. The “skip weekends” check box is useful if your team is not working on the weekends because it’ll ensure activities aren’t created over the weekend and overdue by the time your team comes in on Monday.
Finally, click “Apply Delay” in the bottom right corner.
Now we need to add one more condition that tells the automation to continue only if the Deal is still Open and in the same Stage.
The very last step of this automation, will be your Action step to create the 2nd activity.
Finally, as before, now you’re ready to activate your automation.
You now have two automations that will ensure all Deals receive at least two touchpoints. Extra credit if you duplicate the second automation and update it to create a 3rd and 4th touchpoint 😁
It's always a good idea to test automations to make sure they’re working as you intended before you walk away. Because of the delay step in our second automation, this can be a bit tricky, but what I recommend doing is just changing the timeframe of that delay step (e.g. to 1-minute) for your test and then updating it back to the actual time frame you want once you’ve completed testing.
Now sure what I mean? Watch this clip where I show you how to test these automations:
Activity based automation in Pipedrive’s Workflow Automation creates a strong foundation for a consistent, efficient, and effective sales process. These automations save your team loads of time and help to keep your team focused on the most important tasks giving you a strategic advantage over the other guys.
As you get more comfortable with Pipedrive’s automation tools, you can customize and expand your workflows and develop ever-more complex scenarios. And of course, I'm here to help. Happy automating!
