Automate Marketing and Sales Processes with SugarCRM Workflows

 

It’s not too late! Register for tomorrow’s webinar on Maximizing Sales Lead Management with SugarCRM Workflows.

When sales activity falls through the cracks, it damages the effectiveness of the company’s entire sales process. Managing a sales pipeline can be a very tedious process, often requiring the coordination of numerous moving parts to complete a deal.  This is why CRM systems are the norm today.

Every B2B company likely has some form of a CRM in place.  Most of the time we are engaged when the CRM is simply being used as a contact management system (i.e. Store Contact Names, Title, Company, Phone, Email, etc.).  CRM systems can do so much more to aid your sales and marketing efforts than working within the Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities module.

In the case of SugarCRM, Workflow Management comes standard, starting with the Professional Edition ($30/yr/user compared to $125/mo/user for Salesforce.com to get this type of functionality, we’ll dive into this in a future post).  So, let’s talk about using SugarCRM as effective tool to automate components of your sales and marketing processes.

What is a SugarCRM Workflow?

In it’s most basic form…

When X (i.e. new lead is created) happens, then Y (i.e. lead notification is sent to sales team) has to follow. 

Why would you want to use SugarCRM Workflows?

  • Notify your sales or marketing team or a specific user of new leads from the website.
  • Create alerts of status changes to leads, cases, opportunities, or contacts’ assignments.
  • Assign leads to a user or team.
  • Automatically generate tasks or calls for your sales team to follow up promptly.
  • Automatically generate emails to contacts that complete web to lead forms.

An Example of How to Automate Marketing and Sales Processes with SugarCRM Workflows

SugarCRM Workflows: Create a Lead Notification in SugarCRM

*Note: To Access the Workflow Management module in SugarCRM, you must be an admin. On the Admin page, scroll down to the Developer Tools section and select Workflow Management.

  1. Create new Workflow Definition. Click ‘Create Workflow Definition’

  Name the Workflow, select how the execution occurs (record-saved or time-based), and select your target module.

  1. Create your custom email template and set data variables to send. From the SugarCRM Workflows Definitions tab, select “Alert Email Templates”.

  Write your email copy and insert variables entered from the lead to include in the email.

  1. Set your conditions. Under Conditions click the Create button.

  In the case of Lead Notification, you will select “When a field in the target module contains a specified value” and set the value to your lead source (most likely is ‘Web Site’).

  1. Create Alert. Under Alerts click the Create button.

Select your recipients (team or individual user), and select the email template you created.

  1. Create Action. Under Action click the Create button.

This is required to update fields within a target module or a related module. In this case, we will assign the lead to a specific user. Select the action “Update fields in target module”. Choose “Assign to User” and click the user you would like to be assigned to the lead.  To auto-create a task related to the lead, select the action “Create a record in a module associated with target module”. Click on the record and select the task module. Just populate the field you want.

Test Your SugarCRM Workflows

You can go to your site and fill out lead forms to test the connection between your website and SugarCRM. This should trigger your workflow if you have it configured correctly. If you are looking to simply test your workflow, you can create a new lead and select your criteria to test the workflow. Check your results and keep fine tuning to fit your needs.

SugarCRM Workflow Management Impact to Your Business

  • Real Time Lead Notification and Lead Assignment
  • Automate Creation of Sales Tasks
  • Manage Leads more efficiently through to the sales funnel.
  • Automate communications with people engaging content on your site.

To learn more running marketing programs that drive lead gen and automate your sales and marketing, contact us here to start a conversation.