One of the coolest things about Salesforce is that you can easily use automation to make both new and existing business processes in your org more efficient – saving your end users a lot of time and clicks. When it comes to declarative automation for your day-to-day processes, Salesforce Flow is now the way to go!
In this post, we will go through five easy to implement automations which are sure to improve the seller’s experience from day one, ensuring a quick win in the user experience department of your Sales Cloud users.
Note: The tutorials we are showcasing are built in developer edition orgs with limited data and only a few custom automations. Ensure that you evaluate your existing processes properly before building new ones, including both declarative automations and custom Apex. For Flow specifically, consider the recommended best practices when it comes to the number of record-triggered flows per object.
1. Lead to Account Matching
The Lead object in Salesforce has quite a few particularities, with one being that, out of the box, a Lead is not related to any already existing company in your database. Chances are that if you’re using both Leads and Contacts, there will be a time where new Leads will come through from companies that you already have in your Salesforce org as Accounts – this is where Lead to Account matching comes in.
The first step is to create a lookup field on the Lead Object pointing to the Account. This will be the field in our automation where we will store the Account Id after we find it.
Following the field creation, it’s time we go with the flow! In this example, I will first use the Company Name/Account Name and Country/Billing Country combination as a matching rule – but keep in mind that the criteria can get as complex as you need. I will also use the email domain in this mix for a more accurate match considering that the Company Name is text, and it may not be an exact match at all times.
While the flow I built is only triggered upon Lead creation, feel free to adapt it to be triggered on Lead update as well if you know one of the criteria might be changed as the Lead is being worked on.
Note: An existing Account_Domain__c field on the Account object is used, which you can calculate as needed and use to further compare against the email domain on the Lead or use in other processes as well.
Of course, make sure you test out your flow before activating it. This applies generally to any flow you will be building, and once the flow is saved you can do so directly through the Debug button.
2. Easily Add Contact Roles to Opportunities
Adding Contact Roles to individual Opportunities can turn into a hassle quite fast, especially as Sales Managers will generally work on multiple deals simultaneously – on occasion even under the same Account.
Flows are also a big player when it comes to User Experience, so reducing the number of clicks for this process is definitely a quick win!
As you could see in the video above, the Screen Flow is displayed on the Account Record Page, and it allows the users to choose one of the Open Opportunities (which I filtered within the Flow), then the Contact(s) which should be added as Contact Roles.
Depending on the desired process, the Flow itself can remain as simple or as complex as needed. For example, you could use a Data Table for both Opportunities and Contacts, you could also ask for a role to be manually chosen instead of predefining one within the automation like I did, and so on…
Additionally, a variation of this approach could also go onto the homepage, making it possible to select all three key players: Account, Opportunity, and Contacts(s), removing the need to navigate to the Account too!
Note: The “Show search bar” option for the Data Table component is available within the Summer ’23 preview org, and is not yet live in production instances.
3. Generate a Contract From Won Opportunity
A contract contains a lot of information that has been previously gathered during the sales process. In Salesforce, you will have probably entered a lot of details in the Account and Opportunity objects that you will then have to copy into the Contract record as well – so why not automate it?
The following process will ensure that your Salesforce users won’t have to type information twice. The process will start after a user updates the Opportunity Stage field to “Closed Won”, with IsClosed being “true”, but of course it can include additional entry criteria your business requires.
In addition to information found on the related Opportunity or the Opportunity’s Account, you can easily input static values as well. For example, a set 12-month term and the status as “Draft” to ensure that the Contract will be manually reviewed before activation.
Note: If you are using Salesforce CPQ, make sure you review the specific Contract creation process from an Opportunity and from an Order.
4. Automatically Change Close Date on Opportunities
While I believe most Salesforce Professionals are aware of the needs for this particular automation, this is something which will always be useful as long as the standard Opportunity Close Date is in use within your org’s sales process.
The below before-save flow is very straightforward, and will help ensure that no matter if the Opportunity is “Won” or “Lost”, the close date will be correctly reflected as being the date the Opportunity was actually closed on.
5. Send Out Notifications
This is as broad of a topic as it can get, as obviously there may be a need for someone to be notified during most of the business processes. For example, maybe you’d like a custom notification for Lead assignment? Or why not let a Contact know that their order has been successfully shipped? And of course, you can notify your internal team as well. Salesforce Flow can certainly support this process, and even more so!
As part of the Summer ’23 release, the Send Email action will become even easier to leverage, with the possibility to directly reference many different attributes, such as the Email Template Id.
Let’s send a simple email to Leads created following a form submission, as we know that it will have “Web” as a Lead Source. Make sure you have the Email Template Id at hand.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce Flow is now the one and only point-and-click automation tool to help you elevate both your cross object automations and user experience right within Salesforce.
If you still have active Workflow Rules and Process Builders in your org, be sure to take a look over our free Migrate to Flow course to see how these can be seamlessly transitioned before these tools are sunsetted for good.
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