Workflows in Deal Stages

When your Deals move from one stage to the next, you can have the system automatically trigger an Action Set. An Action Set is a group of several client activities. Here’s how it works. We have a Deal set up here that tracks your software sales. There are five stages in this Deal Type. When I first add a contact to this Deal, I will put them in the first stage called Expressed Interest. When I have someone who has expressed interest, I want several things to happen. I want to change the Category of the contact to Prospect. I want to start the contact on an Autoresponder. I want to Add a Note to the contact. Then I want to start a To-Do Plan that has my demo coordinator and team member following up to get a demo scheduled. Finally, I want to notify my assistant that we have a new Deal in the works.

Fortunately, I have already set up an Action Set to group all of these activities together. It’s called Interested Prospect Start and here it is. So now I want to tell the system that whenever a Deal is moved into this stage to run this Action Set. So I go to Deal Settings, select the right Deal Type, and in the Deal Stages area, I click Configure. I’ll edit this stage and attach the Action Set to it, like this. Here I could decide if I want to run this Action Set for just the primary Contact or for all of the Related Contacts. By the way, Action Sets are run at the time you move the Deal into that stage. If at that time you don’t have any contacts associated with that Deal, some of your actions might not be able to run.

For instance, if one of your actions is to start a contact on an Autoresponder and you don’t have a contact on that Deal, nothing will happen. Then if you add a contact to the Deal after you have moved the Deal into that stage, still nothing will happen. Remember, Action Sets are run one time, when you move the Deal into that stage.

Back to the Deal Stages, when I click Save, the Action Set is now attached to this Deal Stage. Here is a little magic wand indicator reminding you that there’s an Action Set attached. And you know this really is magic and a huge productivity tool for your business. In my Deal Stages, not only do I have the Action Set I just set up, you see here I also have a different Action Set attached to the Demo Stage. So now when I move this Deal to the Demo Stage, this box will pop up and I have a couple of choices on how I want to proceed. It’s time to get some structure and consistency into your work flows.