I’m going to sound like a middle-school tennis coach here, but follow-through is extremely important. Data is everything, and if you don’t follow through in business you can’t collect enough of it to reach your potential.
We use Yalla to remind us to follow through with new clients. We like to send them a personalized gift shortly after they start working with us – it sets the right tone for our partnership. On the other hand, if we lose a potential lead or client, we always want to learn why. That’s the best way to improve our future proposals.
To that end, today I’m going to show you how to automate part of your follow-through using a service called Zapier to tie Yalla to Google’s calendar app. Zapier, in case you haven’t seen our earlier post, is a web platform that allows apps to share information with one another. In this tutorial, we’re going to use it to harness Yalla’s sales funnel feature to remind ourselves when we need to follow up with leads. Every time we mark a new lead as “won” or “lost,” Zapier will create a Google Calendar entry a few days in the future to remind us to send the lead a gift or ask them for feedback.
If that all sounds good, follow along and we’ll have you set up in no time.
- We need to start by setting up your lead funnel in Yalla. Sign into the app and click “Funnels” on the top navigation bar.
- Hover over the “Funnel” box in the top-right corner and click “New Funnel.” Give your funnel a name and assign any relevant editors (i.e. you).
- You should see three stages of different colors in your new funnel. Now, everyone’s lead generation process is different. You might have five stages – or two. You can add a stage by clicking “+ Stage” in the top-left part of the funnel page, and remove one by hovering over it and clicking the “X” that appears. Click on a funnel to rename it.
- Adding leads to a funnel is as simple as clicking the “+ Deal” button on the top-left side and filling out the lead’s name, description and the amount it’s worth (Don’t include a dollar sign, just the numerical amount). You can optionally assign the lead to an existing client or create a new one, too.
- New deals are automatically added to the first stage of your funnel. Simply click and drag them to the next stage to move them through.
- So now I’ve got five leads in my funnel, and I’m waiting to hear back from two of them about the estimates I sent. Let’s head over to Zapier for the next part of the process.
- Sign up for a free Zapier account. Click the orange “Make a Zap!” button at the top of your dashboard screen to get started. (Zaps are the series of commands that translate an action in one app to a reaction in another.)
- Search for Yalla and select it as your Trigger App. If this is your first time using Zapier, it’ll ask you for your Yalla API key. Switch back to Yalla, hover over “Me” on the top navigation bar and click “Settings,” then click “Keys” on the left side of the popup to find it.
- Now we need to choose what Yalla action will trigger our new Google Calendar entry. Under the three options there’s a link for “show less common options;” click that and choose Deal Status.
- Click through the next couple of pages, choosing the correct funnel for Zapier to watch. It should give you a test deal based on your funnel – make sure the name, stage and other items all look right.
- We’re going to tell Zapier what to do every time we mark a lead in Yalla as “won” or “lost.” Search for Google Calendar and choose that as your action app. You’ll see a pop-up asking for permission to access your Google account if it’s your first time using Zapier. You must grant it permission in order for this to work.
- Choose “Create Detailed Event” and “Save and Continue.” On the next screen, feel free to test your calendar account before moving on.
- Now we’re going to build the template for all of our Google Calendar entries regarding Yalla funnels. Choose the appropriate calendar in the first dropdown menu.
- Use the box on the right side of the next two text fields to access the name of your lead. Here I’ve told Zapier to make calendar entries with a summary of “[lead name] Follow-up” and a longer description of “Follow up with [lead name]. Send a gift if we won the project. Ask for feedback if we didn’t.”
- Skip down to the “Start Date and Time” field. Zapier is good about using human-readable dates. For testing purposes I’m going to set this to “10am today,” but you’ll want to set this to a future date that makes sense for you. For example, if you want reminders about lead follow-up on Tuesdays, you could make the event start “next Tuesday at 10am” and end “next Tuesday at 11am.” (The length of the event doesn’t matter, as you’ll see next.)
- This should create a Google Calendar event, but come on – how often do you check your Google Calendar? You’ll want a notification of some sort. Zapier lets you use your Calendar’s default notification settings or override them for your Zap. I used my default settings, which notify me via email 10 minutes before an event starts. But you can customize yours in Zapier by sending an email, text message or browser popup and setting how many minutes before the event you want to get that notification.
- We’re done with the hard part. Click “Continue” and opt to test your Google Calendar event on the next screen. Click “Create and Continue,” then click the link to “view your detailed event” on the next screen. You should be able to scroll through your event to see that the name, starting time and description all match what you set.
- Click “Finish,” name your Zap and turn it on. Now let’s see if it works!
Our Zap is set to trigger when we mark a deal “won” or “lost.” To do that, head back to your Yalla funnel. Click on a deal and drag it to the bottom of the screen to drop it into the appropriate category. This will remove it from your funnel – whether you won or lost the client, you’re no longer pursuing the sale.
Success! After dragging “Tires R’ Us” to the “won” section, Google Calendar created an event telling me to follow up with the company. (You also see “Pool Goons” twice because I tested my Zap twice before turning it on.)
Sure enough, 10 minutes before my follow-up event started I got an email reminding me. Of course, getting a reminder at 10am the day I mark a lead “won” or “lost” isn’t very helpful. I’ll go back into my Zap and change that to a future date.
Now that we’ve automated our follow-up reminders, I never have to remember to reach out to leads again. I can save my mental energy for more demanding tasks, and simply send my new clients a gift or reach out to lost leads for feedback whenever Google Calendar reminds me to.
Handy, no?