If your sales day starts with a messy to-do list and ends with you wondering where the time went, you’re not alone. Sales outreach is repetitive, and most of it can be automated—if you know how. This guide is for salespeople, founders, or anyone who wants to stop drowning in manual follow-ups and start closing more deals, with less busywork.
We’re going to walk through how to use Usemotion to wrangle your daily outreach into a system that runs itself (mostly). No silver bullets, just real steps, honest takes, and ways to keep your workflow from getting out of hand.
Step 1: Get Clear on What Actually Needs Automating
Before you start clicking buttons and connecting apps, stop and figure out what actually eats up your time. Not everything should be automated—some things, like genuine relationship-building, just can’t be faked.
Common outreach tasks that are automation-friendly: - Sending initial cold emails or LinkedIn messages - Scheduling follow-up reminders - Logging activities in your CRM - Updating pipeline stages when someone replies - Blocking time for outreach on your calendar
Stuff you probably shouldn’t automate: - Personalized responses to prospects - Deep research on key accounts - Building real rapport
Pro tip: Take a day and just jot down every repetitive outreach task you do. If it feels like you’re copying, pasting, or calendar-hopping, it’s a good automation candidate.
Step 2: Set Up Your Usemotion Account
Usemotion (or just “Motion”) is a productivity tool that auto-schedules your tasks and helps you defend focused work time. Some folks use it only as a calendar, but it’s much more useful when you let it handle repetitive task scheduling.
- Sign up for an account. Don’t overthink the onboarding—most of it’s straightforward.
- Connect your main work calendar (Google or Outlook). If you’re not ready to give it access, you’re not going to get much out of Motion, so just go for it.
- Tweak your working hours and meeting limits to match your actual sales day. (Nobody is hustling at 7am, let’s be honest.)
Step 3: Build Your Outreach Task List (The Right Way)
If you dump every single sales task into Motion, you’ll end up overwhelmed and nothing will actually get done. The trick is to get specific and break outreach into repeatable steps.
Example daily outreach workflow: 1. Review today’s lead list (from CRM/export) 2. Send 10 cold emails 3. Follow up with yesterday’s “no replies” 4. Check for responses and update CRM 5. Schedule tomorrow’s outreach block
How to set this up: - In Motion, create a template for your daily outreach workflow. (Templates = reusable task lists, a huge time-saver.) - Set recurring tasks for each step. Motion will slot these into your calendar automatically. - Add specifics—e.g., “Send 10 cold emails from Apollo list” instead of just “Send emails.”
Pro tip: Don’t try to automate “thinking time.” Block 15-30 minutes for strategy or improvising each day—Motion will protect that slot for you.
Step 4: Use Automations to Link Your Tools
Motion plays best with others. The more you connect it to your sales stack, the less manual work you’ll have.
What you can connect: - Email: Use Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat) to trigger Motion tasks when you get a reply, or when you send a sequence in your sales tool (like Outreach, Reply.io, or Apollo). - CRM: When you move a deal to a new stage, have Motion create a follow-up task or block time for a call. - LinkedIn: Use tools like PhantomBuster or Zapier to trigger Motion tasks when someone accepts your connection request.
How to actually do it: - Go to Motion’s integrations or use Zapier/Make. - Set up simple “When X happens, create Y task in Motion” automations. - Start small. For example: “When a new lead is added in HubSpot, create a Motion task to send a connection request.”
What not to bother with: - Overly complex automations that try to replace your judgment. If you find yourself debugging a ten-step Zap every week, you’re doing too much. - Automating every single Slack message or notification. You’ll end up with a calendar full of noise.
Step 5: Protect Your Outreach Time Like It’s an Important Meeting
Here’s the real value: Motion automatically blocks time for your outreach, so you don’t end up spending all day in meetings, then scrambling at 4pm.
- Set your outreach tasks as “high priority” in Motion. The app will fight to keep that time protected.
- Batch similar tasks together. For example, group all your follow-ups into one 45-minute block, instead of scattering them across the day.
- Use Motion’s “focus mode” and turn off notifications during outreach. (Your Slack can wait.)
Honest take: If you let people schedule over your outreach blocks, automation won’t save you. Guard that time.
Step 6: Review and Adjust Your Workflow Weekly
No automation setup is ever “done.” Real life is messy, sales cycles shift, and your calendar changes. Make a habit of checking what’s working.
- Once a week, look at which tasks Motion rescheduled or which ones you kept skipping.
- If you’re consistently ignoring a task, ask why. Too much volume? Too vague? Not actually useful?
- Tweak your task templates and recurring schedule. Don’t be afraid to delete tasks that aren’t moving the needle.
Things to ignore: Fancy dashboards or “AI suggestions” that you never actually use. Stick to the basics—does your system help you do more outreach, with less stress?
Step 7: Keep the Human Element Front and Center
Automation is great, but don’t let it turn you into a robot. The best salespeople stand out because they’re real, not because they fire off a hundred generic emails a day.
- Use the time you save to personalize your top 10% of outreach.
- Block “relationship-building” time in Motion, just like any other task.
- If you find yourself dreading your daily tasks, revisit your workflow. Automation should make your day better, not worse.
Pro tip: Pick one part of your outreach to keep 100% manual and hands-on. It’s a good gut check that you haven’t automated away all the important stuff.
Wrapping Up: Start Simple, Iterate Often
Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to automate everything at once. Start with your highest-friction task, automate it, and see how much time you get back. Usemotion can handle the grunt work, but it’s up to you to keep your workflow human and focused.
Remember, the goal isn’t to do more—it's to do what matters, with less hassle. Set up your basic automations, protect your time, and tweak as you go. That’s the real sales productivity hack—no hype, just less busywork.