Automating Opportunity Management

This article covers opportunities in Business App. To learn more about opportunities in Partner Center, click here. 

Opportunity automation helps streamline your sales process by creating opportunities, moving them through stages, and triggering actions based on stage changes. With these automations, you can save time and maintain consistent follow-ups as leads progress toward closing.

Automate Opportunity Creation

Setting up an automation for opportunity creation allows you to capture leads and instantly turn them into opportunities. For instance, leads from sources like webchat or forms can automatically trigger opportunity creation.

Using AI to qualify leads, you can analyze a webchat summary to identify the requested service, creating an opportunity if the lead meets the criteria. This workflow requires the Inbox Pro product.

Here is a sample setup:

• Trigger: Lead is captured from webchat.
• AI Analysis: AI reviews the webchat summary to identify the service requested or returns "NA" if no service is specified.
• Opportunity Creation: If a service is identified, an opportunity is created and a follow-up task is generated.
• Follow-Up: An SMS is sent to inform the customer of next steps.

To set up:

1. Go to Automations. 
2. Click Create automation.
3. Find the template titled Create an opportunity and follow up when a lead is captured by Webchat.
4. Customize the pipeline and steps to fit your process.

Automate Actions Based on Opportunity Stages

You can trigger nurturing campaigns and follow-ups as opportunities advance through stages. For example, you might want to start a targeted campaign for leads that aren’t ready to buy yet, keeping them engaged until they are.

This automation requires the Campaigns Pro product with SMS credits.

Here is a sample automation to trigger a nurturing sequence when the opportunity is moved to a nurturing stage:

• Trigger: When an opportunity reaches the nurturing stage.
• Action: Starts a tailored email and SMS campaign for the contact, maintaining engagement.

To set up:

1. Go to Automations.
2. Click Create automation.
3. Choose the Start a campaign when an opportunity moves to a specific stage template.
4. In the setup, specify the desired pipeline and stage, and select the campaign to begin.

Automatically Move Opportunities to Specific Stages

You can set triggers to automatically move an opportunity to a particular stage based on activities, such as when an appointment is booked. This can be useful to reflect immediate updates in your sales pipeline, enhancing visibility.

Here is a sample setup that moves an opportunity to an Appointment Set stage once a meeting is scheduled:

• Trigger: A meeting activity with "Scheduled" status is created or modified.
• Action: The automation updates the opportunity to the "Appointment Set" stage.

To set up:

1. Go to Automations.
2. Click Create automation.
3. Select the Move the opportunity to a specific stage when a meeting is booked template.
4. Define the pipeline and stage, then review the steps to ensure it matches your process.

These automated workflows allow you to focus on high-value tasks while keeping your sales pipeline updated and responsive.