If you’re drowning in spreadsheets, Slack pings, and “just checking in” emails, you know the pain of keeping deals moving—and your team in the loop. This guide is for sales, ops, and customer-facing folks who want less busywork and fewer dropped balls. We’ll walk through how to use Journey to automate deal tracking and updates, so you can stop chasing status updates and actually move deals forward.
No fluff. Just what works, what doesn’t, and how to get set up without turning your process into a Rube Goldberg machine.
Why Bother Automating Deal Tracking at All?
Let’s be honest. Manual deal tracking is a mess:
- Updates get lost in Slack or email.
- CRM data gets stale—if it’s updated at all.
- You spend more time managing the process than closing deals.
Automation isn’t about being fancy. It’s about making sure nobody drops the ball, and everyone knows what’s going on—without you babysitting the pipeline.
But automation can get out of hand fast. The trick is to automate the boring, repetitive stuff (routine updates, nudges, and syncing info), not the things that actually require human judgment.
Step 1: Map Your Deal Tracking Workflow (Seriously, Don’t Skip This)
Before you start connecting tools or turning on integrations, sketch out your actual deal process. Otherwise, you’ll automate chaos.
Ask yourself:
- Where do new deals come from? (Website forms, inbound emails, referrals, etc.)
- Who needs to be updated, and when? (Sales, ops, finance, leadership, customer success?)
- What are the moments that actually matter? (Deal created, stage changed, deal closed, blocker flagged)
- Where does info live today? (CRM, spreadsheets, Slack, email threads)
Pro tip:
Just write this out in a doc or on a napkin. You don’t need a fancy flowchart to spot the handoffs and bottlenecks.
Step 2: Get Your Tools Talking—What Journey Can (and Can’t) Do
Journey is built to integrate with the tools you already use—think CRMs (like Salesforce or HubSpot), Slack, Google Sheets, and more. But before you promise your boss a magic button, let’s be real about what’s possible.
What works well:
- Automatic updates: Move a deal in your CRM and Journey can push an update to Slack, email, or a shared workspace.
- Status sync: Keep a single source of truth by syncing deal properties between systems.
- Reminders and nudges: Automatically ping reps or stakeholders when a deal is stuck or needs input.
- Sharing status with customers: Create deal “rooms” or external workspaces to keep buyers in the loop (without giving them full CRM access).
What to skip (for now):
- Super complex branching logic: If you need “if this, then that, unless this, except on Tuesdays” logic, keep it simple at first. You’ll get lost in setup hell.
- Automating deep analysis: Journey can surface status, but don’t expect it to magically forecast or analyze pipeline health.
Bottom line:
Automate the handoffs, status updates, and nudges. Save the relationship stuff and judgment calls for humans.
Step 3: Connect Your CRM to Journey
For most teams, the CRM is still the system of record. Let’s get it connected.
- Log in to Journey.
- Go to Integrations.
Find your CRM—Salesforce and HubSpot are the big ones, but others are supported too. - Connect and authorize.
You’ll need admin access. Don’t have it? Nudge your ops or IT person. - Pick your objects.
Usually, you’re syncing “deals” or “opportunities,” but you might have custom objects. - Map the fields.
This part matters. Line up the fields you actually care about—deal stage, owner, amount, close date, blockers, etc.
Heads up:
Don’t sync every field under the sun. Start with the basics. You can always add more later.
Step 4: Set Up Automated Updates and Alerts
Here’s where you cut down on “any update on this?” emails.
Common automations:
- Deal stage changes:
When a deal moves stages, send a Slack message to the team or update a shared Journey workspace. - Deal assigned:
Automatically notify the new owner with deal context (no more “who owns this now?”). - Deal stuck:
If a deal hasn’t moved in X days, ping the owner and (optionally) their manager. - Closed-won/lost:
Trigger a celebration, post-mortem, or handoff—whatever fits your team’s vibe.
How to set these up in Journey:
- Go to Automation or Workflow settings.
- Choose your trigger.
(E.g., “When deal stage changes to ‘Negotiation’”) - Pick your action.
(Send Slack message, update workspace, email stakeholders, create a task) - Set filters or conditions (optional).
Keep it simple—e.g., only for deals over $10k, or only for certain teams. - Test it!
Move a deal in your CRM and see if the automation fires. Fix any field mapping issues now.
Pro tip:
Start with just one or two automations. You’ll get more value from a simple “deal stage changed → send update” than a dozen half-baked triggers.
Step 5: Bring in Stakeholders Without Spamming Them
Too many notifications and people start ignoring them. Not enough, and you get blindsided.
Best practices:
- Segment updates:
Execs might want a weekly summary, while reps want real-time alerts. - Use shared workspaces:
Journey lets you create deal-specific “rooms” for internal or external folks. Use these for ongoing threads, not just fire-and-forget updates. - Opt-in for sensitive deals:
Some deals need tighter controls. Make sure only the right people see updates.
What NOT to do:
- Don’t blast every deal update to the whole company. It’s noise.
- Don’t cc the customer on internal notes by accident. Check your audience!
Step 6: Keep the Data Clean (or Your Automation Will Make a Mess)
Bad data in, bad automation out. If your CRM is full of junk, all you’re doing is spreading bad info faster.
How to keep things tidy:
- Set required fields:
Make it impossible to move a deal forward without the basics (owner, stage, next step). - Schedule a monthly cleanup:
Just 15 minutes to close out dead deals and fix weird entries pays off. - Audit your automations:
Every quarter, check what’s firing and if it’s still useful. Don’t be afraid to kill what’s not working.
Step 7: Share Updates With Customers (Without Losing Control)
Sometimes, the buyer wants updates too. Journey can help you create a shared workspace or “deal room” that keeps everyone on the same page—without sharing your whole pipeline.
How to do it:
- Create a customer-facing Journey workspace.
- Choose what to share:
Stage, next steps, key docs, and deadlines—leave out the sausage-making. - Automate updates:
When you move a deal forward, Journey can automatically update the shared workspace or send a summary.
Caution:
Don’t overshare. Keep internal notes and customer-facing updates separate.
What’s Worth Automating (and What’s Not)
Automate: - Status updates (deal stage, assignment, close) - Routine nudges (stalled deals, missing info) - Syncing key fields between tools
Don’t automate: - Relationship-building stuff (personal check-ins, negotiation) - Complex approvals (unless you really have your process nailed down) - Anything you wouldn’t trust a robot to say to your boss or your customer
Wrapping Up: Keep It Simple, Iterate Often
Don’t overthink it. Start by automating the one or two updates that waste most of your time. Get feedback. Tweak. Add more only when you’re sure you need them.
Automation should make your life easier, not more complicated. The best setups are brutally simple, obvious, and easy to fix when things break. If you’re spending more time fiddling with automations than closing deals, you’ve missed the point.
Keep it simple, and let the robots do the boring stuff. You focus on the work that actually moves the needle.