If you’re managing a sales team (or you are the sales team), you know the real pain: follow-up tasks fall through the cracks, leads go cold, and you end up buried in reminders that never seem to stick. You want to automate the boring stuff—without turning your pipeline into a mess of robotic emails and half-baked triggers.
This guide is for sales managers, reps, and anyone tired of chasing their own tail when it comes to follow-ups. We’ll walk through setting up practical, actually-useful follow-up automation using Leadsotters workflows. No hype, just steps that work.
Why Automate Follow-Ups? (And What to Watch Out For)
Let’s be honest: most sales tools promise the moon, but you end up with more busywork than before. Automation should reduce clicks, not add more.
The good:
- Never forget to follow up again (no more sticky notes).
- Save mental energy for real conversations.
- Keep your pipeline moving—even when you’re juggling 20 deals.
The bad:
- Over-automate and your prospects can smell it a mile away.
- Complicated workflows break. Keep it simple.
- Garbage in, garbage out: if your data’s messy, automation won’t save you.
What to ignore:
- Fancy “AI-powered” suggestions that don’t fit your sales process.
- Templates that sound like a robot wrote them.
- Overly complex branches. You don’t need a NASA control panel.
Step 1: Map Out Your Actual Follow-Up Process
Before touching any software, sketch out what real follow-up looks like in your world. This is where most people go wrong—they automate a process they don’t understand.
Ask yourself: - After a new lead comes in, what’s the next real step? - If you don’t get a reply, when do you nudge them again? By email? Call? LinkedIn? - When do you stop following up? - Who needs to know if someone replies (or ghosts you)?
Pro tip:
Don’t try to automate every single step. Focus on the repetitive stuff—like reminders, standard emails, or status changes.
Step 2: Get Your Data Clean (or as Close as You Can)
Automation is only as useful as the data it runs on. If your CRM is a mess, fix that first. Leadsotters can’t magically clean up bad contact info or missing statuses.
Quick wins: - Make sure every lead has a real email, phone, and owner assigned. - Set clear deal stages (e.g., “Contacted,” “Follow-up #1,” “Demo Scheduled”). - Archive or delete obvious junk.
Don’t stress about perfection.
Just get things tidy enough that you trust your lists and fields. You can always fix more as you go.
Step 3: Build a Simple Follow-Up Workflow in Leadsotters
Now for the meat and potatoes: setting up a workflow in Leadsotters. Here’s how to do it without overthinking things.
3.1. Define Your Trigger
Everything starts with a trigger—what event should kick off your follow-up?
Common triggers: - New lead assigned to a rep - Lead moves to a specific stage (e.g., “Contacted”) - No activity on a lead for X days
Pick one to start. You can always add more later.
3.2. Choose Your Actions
Once triggered, what do you want to happen automatically? Leadsotters lets you chain actions. For most sales teams, keep it to 2-3 steps:
- Assign a follow-up task to the rep (with a due date)
- Send a templated email (personalize it a bit—don’t sound like a robot)
- Set a reminder to call if no reply in 3 days
Example workflow: 1. Lead is marked as “Contacted” 2. Automatically create a follow-up task for the owner, due in 3 days 3. If no response after 3 days, send a gentle email nudge
3.3. Set Conditions (But Keep it Simple)
You can add conditions—like only triggering for certain deal sizes, or skipping leads marked as “Do Not Contact.” Good idea, but don’t get lost in the weeds.
Honest advice:
Start with broad rules, then refine as you see what works (and what clogs up your pipeline).
Step 4: Personalize Your Templates (Just Enough)
Templating is great for speed, but nothing kills a deal faster than a mail merge gone wrong.
What works: - Use first names, company names, and one custom sentence in your template. - Write like a human: “Just checking in—did you have a chance to review our proposal?”
What doesn’t: - Over-stuffed variables that break (“Hi {first_name_first_letter}…”) - Long-winded intros or fake urgency - Flattery (“You’re a visionary leader!”—please, don’t)
Pro tip:
Test your templates by sending them to yourself first. If you cringe, rewrite them.
Step 5: Test, Watch, and Adjust
Don’t trust any automation until you’ve seen it in action. Leadsotters makes it easy to preview and test workflows—use that.
Checklist: - Run through a test lead and watch each step fire. - Check for missing info or weird formatting in emails. - Make sure tasks and reminders show up for the right rep.
What to ignore:
Don’t obsess over edge cases. If 95% of your leads move smoothly, you’re winning.
Step 6: Roll It Out (and Don’t Overcomplicate)
Once you’re happy, roll out your workflow to the team. Explain what’s automated—and what still needs a human touch.
Tips for adoption: - Start with just one or two workflows. Let people get used to them. - Get feedback from reps: is it actually saving time? Or is it just moving the same work around? - Tweak based on real usage, not what you think will happen.
What to avoid:
- Launching 10 new automations at once. You’ll create chaos.
- Forcing reps to use workflows that don’t fit their sales style.
Step 7: Iterate (But Don’t Chase Shiny Objects)
Automation is never “set it and forget it.” Check your results every few weeks:
- Are leads getting followed up on faster?
- Are reps actually using the tasks?
- Is anything slipping through the cracks?
If it’s working, great—leave it alone. If not, tweak one thing at a time. Resist the urge to add more bells and whistles unless you need them.
Quick Troubleshooting: What to Do When Things Get Weird
Even good tools sometimes do dumb things. Here’s what usually goes wrong (and how to fix it):
- Duplicate tasks or emails: Check if multiple workflows are triggering on the same event. Turn off or combine them.
- Blank fields in templates: Make sure all leads have the info your template needs, or add fallback text.
- Nothing is triggering: Double-check your trigger logic and test with a real lead.
When in doubt, simplify. The more complicated your setup, the more likely it’ll break when you’re not looking.
Bottom Line: Keep It Simple, Iterate Often
You don’t need a million-dollar stack to get real results from follow-up automation. The basics—clean data, a logical process, and simple workflows—are what actually move the needle.
Start small. Automate the obvious stuff. Watch what happens. Adjust only when you see real pain or bottlenecks. Most of the magic comes from consistency, not complexity.
And if you’re ever tempted to “just add one more trigger,” ask yourself: will this make life better, or am I adding work for the sake of it? Nine times out of ten, simpler is better.
Go set up your first workflow—and get back to selling.