Automated Tasks and Emails for your Sales Pipeline

BigContacts offers a very robust sales feature that allows you to customize your pipeline, products, and commissions. This is a great tool for tracking opportunities. In addition to being able to track opportunities, we make it very easy for you to ensure that nothing falls the cracks and that you are following up at just the right time and delivering a consistent message for every prospect as they move through your sales process.

In order to ensure that nothing falls to the cracks, we give you the ability to automate both tasks and emails or each and every sales stage.

Automated Tasks

When you are setting up your sales pipeline you can either choose to use the standard sales stages that you will see pre-populated in your account or you can create any custom sales stages that are needed in order to properly match your sales process.

Whether you are creating a new sales stage or editing a pre-populated sales stage you can set up automated tasks that will remind the sales rep to follow up in a timely manner with each sales opportunity in each of their respective sales stages.

Our automated task functionality allows you to create a single task/follow-up or an entire series of tasks.  These tasks can be assigned all to the same person or two various people on your team. This is a very flexible tool that will ensure that for any opportunity that exists in your pipeline… there will be no way for it to get lost in the shuffle.

Below is a screenshot that will show you where you can go in the admin section of your account to set up the sales stages within your pipeline.

• Clicking on the Pipeline link in the left sidebar menu of your BigContacts account
• Under the Manage Modules widget, click on the Customize Pipeline link.
• Click the Add new sales stage button
  

  

In this next screenshot, you will see what it looks like when you click on the Add new sales stage button. It is in here that you will create your sales stage and set up any automated tasks that you would like to have associated with this sales stage.

After you have created the automated tasks for each sales stage and save them in the system you are now ready to take your sales tracking to the next level. Every time you create a new opportunity the system automatically "start the clock" for that opportunity and will generate the task(s) that you have assigned within that stage at the appropriate time. Each of these tasks will be sent to the appropriate person at the right time to ensure that they are notified and reminded of this opportunity so that they can follow up in a timely manner.

Automated Emails

In addition to automating tasks, you can also automate email communication for each of your prospects as they move through your sales process. This can be a very powerful tool as it ensures a consistent message and consistent follow-up during the entire sales process.

Through the optional email marketing module (found under the "Marketing" tab) you can either choose to send a single email or an entire series of emails to any prospect for any stage of your sales pipeline. This module is completely flexible and allows you to set up emails for certain stages and leave other stages alone if desired. And again, certain stages may have only one email you send out while others may contain an entire series of educational and/or marketing emails to be delivered while that prospect is in that sales stage.

The moment you move a prospect from one stage to another, any pending emails that were to be sent for the previous stage. As the "clock" essentially stops for that stage and the prospect is moved to the next stage, any emails that were to be set up for that this stage will begin. All of this happens automatically and works in the background so that your sales reps do not have to worry about any of this communication. All they need to do is stay in touch with their prospects and move them through the sales stages as appropriate as they work through your sales process.

Step 1

After you have your "Marketing module" activated you can now connect the stages of your sales to the marketing module.  In the screenshot below you will see where you will need to go next in order to connect/synchronize the stages of your sales with your new marketing module.

You will want to click on the button labeled "Sync Sales Stages." Pressing this button will communicate with your email marketing module and establish the sales stages inside your marketing module. You are now ready to jump into your marketing module and create your automated emails!

• Look in the right sidebar under the How to get Started section
• Click on the Create New Series button - Please note that you'll only see this button if you are subscribed to ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign is a full-fledged email marketing solution, with seamless integration with BigContacts
• Select to sign up for ActiveCampaign, or sign up for their free trial
• Click on the Marketing link in the left sidebar
• Click on the button labeled Sync Sales Stages. Pressing this button will communicate with your email marketing module and establish the sales stages inside your marketing module.

Step 2

In this setup, you are going directly to your "Marketing" tab in your account. In here you will click on the "Automation" tab of time and can begin creating your campaign. It is in here that you will tell the system what sales stage (this is essentially a contact list that is labeled with the name of your sales stage) you would like to associate with each of the automated email campaigns.

While still in the Marketing section, click on the Automations button - It is in here that you will tell the system what sales stage (this is essentially a contact list that is labeled with the name of your sales stage) you would like to associate with each of the automated email campaigns.

You're now ready to begin a higher level of sales tracking and can look forward to higher conversion rates for your sales team going forward! If you have any questions about the setup for any step in this process please do not hesitate to send this email at support@bigcontacts.com and we can help to ensure you have everything set up the way you would like.