Empower Your Business with Sales Automation CRM for Technology Industry

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welcome to zoho crm automation in zoho crm we're going to look at what is automation why you need automation for your business and how you can use zoho crm to automate various sales processes in your organization now automation as you may already know is simply the process of programming a machine or a piece of software to do an action or a set of actions automatically your automatic washing machine or your automated teller machine are some examples of everyday automation that we can easily come across so once you flip a switch and set instruction the washing machine does a bunch of actions it fills the water it washes rinses dries one after the other as per how it has been programmed similarly in a crm you can program something in such a way that an action or a series of actions are performed when you trigger them for example crm can automatically send emails to your customers as soon as they submit a form on your website so we'll look at exactly how to do this in a little while as you can see the biggest advantage of automation is that it simply saves time another important advantage of automation is that there's no room for errors you might forget to send an email to a customer but your crm will not alright so now that we've looked at what automation is and why you might need automation let's go ahead and move on to how you can use zoho crm to automate various sales processes in your organization for this let's go ahead and consider an example scenario let's say zilker widgets incorporated is a sales organization whose business spreads across three countries india usa and the uk they need a crm to automate some of their sales tasks so for this let's take a closer look at their typical sales process and how each process can be automated in zoho crm so here's the sales process zilker has a website with a contact us form say when a person from the uk submits the form he or she is automatically added as a lead in the crm simultaneously a response email is automatically sent to the lead confirming the submission the leads thus collected will then be automatically assigned to different sales reps in the crm based on the leads countries so let's say uk usa or india after the leads have been assigned they have to be nurtured meaning that the sales reps have to follow up with these leads until they make business deals with them so this follow-up process will involve a lot of emails to be sent uh calls to be made personal discussions agreements and documents to be shared and so on at the end of the follow-up process the deal is either won or lost and this is zilker's typical sales process in zoho crm these processes can be automated such that step ones trigger step two which in turn triggers step three and so on so as you can see automation in the crm can pretty much work like the triggers in say a rube goldberg machine depending on how it's set up for this scenario we should set up web forms to automate lead generation via zilker's website then we should create auto response emails to be sent as soon as the customer submits the form and then we should create assignment rules to automatically assign these leads to particular sales reps based on the leads country next we should create workflow rules that will automate follow-up emails to customers at regular intervals so before you move on make sure that you recall what automation is and how it can help manage your sales process efficiently and save you time consider this scenario zilker inc is a sales organization which requires zoho crm to automate its sales process so to refresh your memory when a person submits their information on the contact us form on zilker's site he or she is automatically added as a lead in the crm simultaneously an acknowledgement email is automated and sent to that lead also based on that leads country the lead is automatically assigned to a particular sales rep in either the usa the uk or in india a couple days after the lead has been created in the crm a follow-up email is automatically sent to the lead so as you can see zilcro automates a major part of their sales process in crm so let's go ahead and see how to configure these settings in crm to achieve this result first to automate lead generation from your website you need to create a form in zoho crm and then host it on your site this way when somebody fills your form they get added in zoho crm as a lead or a contact now it's very easy to set up a web form for contact us go to setup automation web forms and choose the module you can create web forms for leads contacts cases and custom modules click create web form this easy drag and drop editor is used to build your form so drag and drop the fields as required to filter leads gathered via web forms include lead source field make it a hidden field and choose a default lead source so i'm going to choose website this way your website visitor will not see this but once the lead is in the crm you'll be able to filter out leads generated via web forms and even create workflow rules for them if you wish to you can change the label of a field so here i've changed the description field to enter requirement and then you can preview your form once you're sure that you've added all the fields click next step and enter the form details for where you need to host it what the landing page is who the owner is etc under the notification section enable acknowledge visitor this means that you will be able to select an email template that will automatically be sent to the user you can either choose an auto response rule or choose a default email template to be sent and once you are done with the details click save you'll see a bunch of options here to embed your form choose a web form code and copy it onto your site say if you need to put it on your website copy the source code and use it on your site next we're going to look at assignment rules as per our scenario leads should automatically be assigned to sales reps based on the leads country go to automation and click assignment rules choose the leads module assignment rules are also available for contacts cases and custom modules so create a new rule and say you wish to assign all leads from the usa to quin rivers and all india leads to raghav rao we can specify criteria ingly and assign the leads to those sales reps now whenever the criteria are met the leads will be assigned to the sales reps mentioned in the rule now after the lead is added in crm and assigned to a sales rep subsequent follow-up processes begin so we need to automate an email in the lead two days after that lead has been created this can be achieved by setting up a workflow rule so to create a workflow rule click setup automation flow rule the rule has to be created for the leads module choose the module and fill in the rule name and description so here's the actual page where you define your rule a workflow rule consists of three main components the rule trigger criteria and action the rule trigger specifies at what point a rule needs to be executed you need to specify whether the rule should be triggered based on a record action or a particular date or time in our case we want the rule to be executed two days after a lead is created so it's based on a date field choose date date time field and enter the execution date as two days after the lead created time the next component is the rule criteria now defining criteria is optional when you define one the rule will be applied only to records matching that set criteria so if there's no criteria the rule will be executed for all records that are created or edited in that module in our example we want to send this email only to leads generated via web forms so enter criteria as lead source is web forms now finally you have the action that is a follow-up email should be sent to the leads that's the action there are five types of instant actions that can be associated to a workflow rule you can send emails assign tasks make a field update call web hooks and also custom functions for us in this example we only want to send an email so add an instant action and choose send email in the send alert pop-up choose email template now go ahead and save the rule now the specified follow-up email will be sent automatically two days after the lead is created in crm via web forms so as you can see depending on how you use it you could automate your entire sales process in zoho crm now using automation will help you save time and focus on other productive tasks before you move on please make sure you familiarize yourself with how to set up web forms assignment rules and workflow rules in zoho crm as always for more information please visit us at zoho.com crm slash help