Sales Pipeline Automation
Rebuilt and automated a consulting firm's sales pipeline in Salesforce, reducing manual follow-up work and improving visibility for partners.
Client
Meridian Consulting
Role
Systems Architect
Duration
2 months
Tools
Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, Google Sheets
Overview
Meridian Consulting had Salesforce but wasn't really using it. Deals were tracked in a shared spreadsheet, follow-ups happened (or didn't) based on individual memory, and partners had no real visibility into the pipeline. They didn't need a new CRM—they needed someone to make their existing one actually work.
Constraints
Time
Two months to redesign and implement, with training completed before quarter end
Budget
Existing Salesforce subscription needed to be utilised better before considering upgrades
Team
Eight consultants with varying levels of CRM adoption
Platform
Salesforce core with integrations to Slack for notifications and Google Workspace for documents
Approach
Interviewed each consultant individually to understand their actual workflow versus the 'official' process. The gap between these was where the system had failed them.
Simplified the opportunity stages from twelve to six, removing distinctions that looked good in theory but nobody used in practice.
Built automated workflows for the tasks consultants disliked: follow-up reminders, proposal deadline alerts, and handoff notifications. Made the CRM do the nagging so people didn't have to.
Created a weekly pipeline dashboard that went to partners automatically, replacing the manual report that took two hours to compile.
Outcome
- CRM adoption increased from roughly 40% to over 90%
- Manual reporting time eliminated (2+ hours per week saved)
- Average deal cycle shortened by 15%
- Follow-up tasks completed on time improved from 60% to 95%
The same Salesforce subscription they'd been paying for suddenly became useful. The key was making the CRM serve the consultants rather than expecting consultants to serve the CRM.
Reflection
What worked
- Individual interviews revealed the real problems that group workshops would have missed
- Simplifying rather than adding features made adoption much easier
- Automating the annoying tasks first built goodwill for broader adoption
What didn't
- Initially underestimated how much historical data cleanup would be needed
- Some automation edge cases required manual overrides we hadn't planned for
What I would do differently
Would have done a data cleanup sprint before launching the new workflows. Garbage data in a well-designed system is still garbage.