Four automations worth building — and three to leave alone

Most automation built into sales systems goes unused within a month. The reason is that teams automate what is possible, not what gets forgotten.

The criterion

A rule is worth building if leaving it out means something is lost, not if it saves three clicks. Good automation replaces memory, not hands.

The four worth building

1) The silent deal. A deal with seven days of no activity and no upcoming task ⇒ a follow-up task for its owner plus a notification. This one alone recovers more deals than anything else.

2) Inbound response within the hour. Every new enquiry ⇒ automatic assignment plus a call task within an hour. Response speed is the single strongest predictor of winning the customer.

3) A stage gate. A deal cannot move to "Proposal" before decision-maker and budget are filled. Not a reminder, a block. Data that is never required is never entered.

4) Renewal at 120 days. Opens automatically from the contract end date. Nobody remembers a contract signed nine months ago.

The three to leave alone

• Pricing and discounts. A decision with a cash cost stays with a human, or you will find a quarter later that your margin was eroded by a rule someone wrote in a hurry.
• Messages that look personal but are not. "I noticed your interest…" sent automatically to a thousand people is spotted immediately, and costs more than it saves.
• Auto-closing lost deals. A loss should be decided by a person who writes the reason, otherwise you lose your most valuable data: why you lose.

Start with one

Do not build four in a day. Start with the silent deal, run it for a month, and read the effect: how many deals moved because of it. If nothing moved, the problem is not the automation, the deals were already dead, and that is worth knowing.