If you’ve ever left a sales meeting only to realize, a week later, you forgot to send the follow-up proposal or book that demo—this article’s for you. Manual follow-ups are easy to mess up and even easier to put off. The good news: you can automate a ton of this grunt work so things don’t slip through the cracks. This guide walks through how to do it using Mylighthouse, a tool that’s actually built for sales teams (not just another generic task manager).
Let’s get into it.
Why Automate Sales Follow-Ups? (And When Not To)
Before you start gluing together workflows, it’s worth asking: what SHOULD you automate? Automating every single follow-up can make your outreach feel robotic, but automating nothing is a fast track to dropped balls and lost deals.
Automate when: - The action is repeatable (e.g., sending recap emails, scheduling next steps, assigning tasks). - There’s no need for a personal touch (e.g., internal reminders, updating CRM fields). - You want to save your brain for the stuff that actually moves deals forward.
Don’t automate when: - The follow-up needs genuine thought or a custom response. - You’re dealing with VIP clients or complex deals.
Bottom line: use automation to handle the boring stuff, not to replace being a decent human.
Step 1: Prep Mylighthouse for Your Sales Process
Automating follow-ups works best when your tools match your sales process. If you haven’t already, take 15 minutes to map out what typically happens after a sales meeting.
Questions to ask yourself: - What’s my usual follow-up? (Email, proposal, scheduling another call, etc.) - Who needs to be looped in? (Just you, your manager, a solution engineer…) - What systems do I use alongside Mylighthouse? (Email, CRM, calendar)
Set up your Mylighthouse workspace: - Make sure your sales pipeline stages are clear. - Set up custom fields for things you want to track (like “Next Step” or “Follow-Up Date”). - Double-check integrations—email, calendar, CRM. Mylighthouse plays nice with most tools, but don’t assume out of the box means “magically works.”
Pro tip: Don’t overcomplicate this. It’s tempting to add a field for everything. Start with 2–3 fields you actually use.
Step 2: Capture Meeting Notes (and Turn Them Into Tasks)
Right after your sales meeting, you need a single place to dump your notes and action items. Mylighthouse lets you attach notes to deals and auto-create tasks from those notes.
How to do it: 1. Open the relevant deal in Mylighthouse. 2. Use the “Notes” section to jot down: - Key decisions - Next steps (e.g., “Send demo video by Friday”) - Any client concerns 3. Highlight or tag action items as tasks. Mylighthouse will prompt you to make these into follow-up tasks.
What works:
This is way faster than scribbling in a notebook and trying to remember to update your CRM later.
What doesn’t:
Voice-to-text is still hit or miss. If you’re in a loud office or on a call, just type.
Ignore:
Don’t bother with fancy formatting. Bullet points are your friend.
Step 3: Build Automated Follow-Up Workflows
Here’s where Mylighthouse shines. You can set up workflows that trigger after a sales meeting ends. Think of these as recipes: “When X happens, do Y.”
Example: Auto-Creating Tasks After a Meeting
Let’s say you want to make sure that every time a meeting is logged, you (or your team) get tasks for the most common follow-ups:
- Send a recap email
- Schedule the next meeting
- Update the CRM
How to set this up: 1. Go to “Workflows” in Mylighthouse. 2. Click “Create New Workflow.” 3. Set the trigger: “Meeting marked as complete.” 4. Add actions: - Create a task: “Send recap email to [Client Name].” - Create a task: “Schedule next meeting with [Client Name].” - Create a task: “Update CRM with meeting notes.”
You can assign these to yourself or different team members.
What works:
Tasks show up right where you need them, and nothing falls through the cracks.
What doesn’t:
Automated emails sent directly from Mylighthouse can sound stiff. Write your own templates, or better yet, use the automation to remind you to send a personal email.
Ignore:
Don’t try to automate every possible follow-up. Focus on the 2–3 things you always do.
Step 4: Automate Follow-Up Emails (But Don’t Sound Like a Robot)
Mylighthouse can send templated emails or remind you to send one yourself. There’s a big difference:
- Direct automation: Fire off a standard follow-up (“Thanks for your time, here’s the proposal”) without lifting a finger.
- Personal reminders: Get a nudge to write a custom email, so you don’t forget.
How to automate emails: - In your workflow, add an action: “Send email” or “Create email draft.” - Use merge fields (like [Client Name], [Meeting Date]) to personalize. - For higher-stakes deals, set the action as “Remind me to send a follow-up” instead.
What works:
Automated reminders are your safety net. You’ll actually send the email, not just mean to.
What doesn’t:
Don’t rely on generic templates for important clients. If it sounds like a mail-merge, it’ll get ignored.
Pro tip:
Write a handful of flexible templates you can tweak, not a one-size-fits-all monster.
Step 5: Loop in Your Team Automatically
If you’re in a sales team, you probably need to keep others in the loop—think managers, solution engineers, or customer success.
In Mylighthouse: - Add workflow steps to assign tasks to teammates when certain triggers fire (“After demo meeting, assign follow-up to Solutions Engineer”). - Use @mentions in notes or tasks to alert the right people.
What works:
Automated team hand-offs mean you’re not stuck chasing people or forwarding emails.
What doesn’t:
If you assign everything to everyone, people start ignoring notifications. Be selective.
Step 6: Track Progress and Tweak Your Automation
Set it and forget it? Not quite. Check in after a couple of weeks to see what’s working and what’s just making noise.
Do this every Friday: - Review completed and overdue tasks in Mylighthouse. - Ask: Are follow-ups actually getting done? Or are people just checking boxes? - Tweak your workflows—if you find yourself always skipping certain tasks, cut them out.
What works:
Small tweaks keep your automation useful, not annoying.
What doesn’t:
Trying to automate away actual thinking. Automation is a tool, not a replacement for judgment.
What to Watch Out For
Let’s be honest: automation isn’t magic, and Mylighthouse won’t fix a broken sales process by itself.
Watch out for: - Over-automation: If you’re drowning in automated reminders, you’ll start ignoring all of them. - Poor templates: If your automated emails sound robotic, you’ll turn off clients. - Integration hiccups: Sync issues between Mylighthouse and your CRM/email do happen. Test your setup before going all-in.
If something feels clunky, it probably is. Don’t be afraid to turn off a workflow or go back to basics.
Keep It Simple, Iterate, and Actually Follow Up
Automating your sales follow-up tasks with Mylighthouse can save hours and make you look way more on top of things—but only if you keep it simple and stay honest about what actually helps. Start small. Set up one or two workflows, see how they fit, and adjust as you go. The goal isn’t to automate yourself out of a job. It’s to make sure the easy stuff just gets done, so you can focus on the deals that matter.
If you’re spending more time building workflows than closing sales, it’s time to dial it back. Keep it real, and let the automation work for you—not the other way around.