Automated tasks are available on Nutshell Pro and above.
Your relationship with leads doesn’t stop when the deal closes! Whether a lead is won, lost, or cancelled, the automated follow-through configuration automatically clones the lead and moves it to a different pipeline, along with creating any follow-up automations you set. Everything happens based on your setup to keep handoffs and follow-up organized and efficient.
You can set up follow-through automations for each closed status: follow-up leads, tasks, Personal email sequences, Smart sequences, and Slack messages. On Business and above, you can also run them only for certain Lost or Cancelled outcomes, so a lead lost to a competitor gets different follow-up than one lost because of budget.
What can I set follow-through automations for?
Sales automation empowers you to create follow-through pipelines and tasks for your won, lost, and cancelled leads.
Do you like to check in with your lost or cancelled leads a few months later to see if anything has changed on their end, like an increase in budget or a contract expiration?
You can configure follow-up lead automations that, when triggered by a closed lead, will clone the lead and move the clone into a different pipeline. You can also assign these cloned leads to different team members and add tags. This makes it easier to separate your processes across teams, like passing leads from sales to customer facing teams, with cleaner workflows and improved automation.
How do I create follow-through automations?
Follow-through automations and tasks can be created for each of your sales automation pipelines. Depending on the status of the lead (won, lost, or cancelled), the correct set of follow-up tasks will appear on the lead after it is closed.
Follow these steps to create follow-through tasks:
Go to Sales > Pipelines
Find the pipeline you want to edit, either under the Active or Draft tabs. Click the three-dot menu and select Edit. You can configure follow-through automation on both draft and active pipelines; just activate the pipeline to receive new open leads.
Select Closed leads tab
Use the + Follow-up lead automation button to create a pipeline automation for each stage (won, lost, and cancelled). You can choose to assign it to:
a specific team member
team
use the same pipeline rule
same assignee
Use the + Add task button to create a list of follow-through tasks for each stage (won, lost, and cancelled)
Learn more about creating and deleting automated tasks for your pipelines here.
What rules can I apply to automated follow-through tasks?
Assign each follow-through task to the correct team member (or team) to make sure that the correct person is notified of the task and doesn't miss any follow-ups with your leads.
Set due dates to ensure that your team is following up with your leads in a timely manner. Due dates can be set based on the number of hours, days, weeks, months, business hours, and business days that pass after your lead is closed.
Add descriptions to your follow-through tasks to coach your team through each step of your follow-up process. This is a place to coach and encourage right within Nutshell!
Tag people and companies to automatically label the contacts associated with a lead when it closes. You can configure any number of tags for people and/or companies for each closed status (won, lost, or cancelled). When a lead closes with the specified status, all associated people and companies will receive each configured tag — no manual tagging needed.
Send email sequences when a lead closes
Keep the conversation going after the deal closes. You can automatically start a Personal email sequence or a Smart sequence when a lead is won, lost, or cancelled.
For example, send an onboarding sequence to won leads, or a check-in sequence to leads who weren’t ready to buy.
Personal email sequences
On the Closed leads tab, find the Personal email sequences row and click + under Won, Lost, or Cancelled.
Under Send an email, choose the template or sequence you want to send.
Under Start sending…, choose how long after the lead closes the email should go out. The default is 30 minutes.
Under Send email from…, choose Lead assignee or a specific teammate.
On Business and above, for Lost and Cancelled leads, choose the outcomes it should run for. See Run automations only for certain outcomes below.
Click Add.
Once it’s added, the card shows who the email comes from, when it will send, and which outcome it applies to, for example “From lead assignee · 30 minutes after outcome.”
The sender needs their email connected to Nutshell, and the lead needs a person with an email address. Learn more in Sales email: Automate personal email sequences.
Smart sequences
On the Closed leads tab, find the Smart sequences row and click + under Won, Lost, or Cancelled.
Under Which smart sequence?, select the sequence you want to start. Only active Smart sequences can be added, so activate your sequence first. You can build and manage them under Marketing > Smart sequences.
On Business and above, for Lost and Cancelled leads, choose the outcomes it should run for.
Click Add.
Run automations only for certain outcomes
Available on Nutshell Business and above.
By default, an automation runs every time a lead closes with that status. For Lost and Cancelled leads, you can limit an automation to specific outcomes, like only leads lost with the outcome “Went with competitor.”
On the Closed leads tab, click + under Lost or Cancelled to add an automation, or click an existing card to edit it.
Under If the lost outcome is dropdown and select an outcome. Each outcome you select appears as a tag. Click the X to remove it.
Click Add, or Save if you’re editing.
Example: Start a “stay in touch” Smart sequence for leads lost with the outcome “Budget too low,” and send a different Personal email sequence to leads lost with the outcome “Went with competitor.”
Automatically add closed leads to MailChimp campaigns
Automatically add your closed leads to specific MailChimp campaigns based on how the deal ended. Do you have a great welcome campaign for new customers or a powerful drip campaign to keep lost leads warm? Add them to those lists automatically when those leads are won or lost.
Learn more about automatically adding leads to MailChimp campaigns here.
Notify your team in Slack when a lead is closed
Celebrate your wins and analyze your losses in Slack! Nutshell's Slack integration enables you to send automatic notifications to specific Slack channels when a lead is won, lost, or cancelled.
Do you only want to see won leads greater than $50 or lost leads greater than $100? Configure notification settings based on lead value so that you're only reporting on the leads that matter to you.
Learn more about sending automated Slack notifications about leads here.
Still have questions about sales automation? Learn more about all of this powerful tool's capabilities in this article.
Use our Sales pipeline designer for improved lead follow-through
Whether you send newly won leads to Onboarding or send out a Closed Lost drip sequence to freshly lost leads, our Sales pipeline designer AI Agent can help give you more ideas on how to improve your lead follow-through. Learn more here.