This isn't a catalog of processes — that's what our business process automation guide is for. This is a self-assessment. Twelve yes-or-no questions, specific to sales teams, to help you find out where you stand and what to fix first.
Answer honestly — it takes five minutes. Every «no» is a leak.
Block 1 · Lead Intake
- 1. Does every lead get an automatic response in under 5 minutes, including nights and weekends?
- 2. Is each lead assigned to one specific rep automatically, without anyone manually distributing them?
- 3. Does it get logged in the CRM without anyone typing it in?
Block 2 · Follow-Up
- 4. Is there an automatic sequence if the lead doesn't respond to the first contact?
- 5. Does the content they receive change based on what they asked for, or does everyone get the same thing?
- 6. Is there automatic re-engagement for contacts that have gone quiet for more than three months?
Block 3 · Scheduling and Meetings
- 7. Can the lead book a meeting on their own, seeing real availability, without back-and-forth emails?
- 8. Do automatic reminders go out before every meeting?
- 9. Are the summary and next steps sent without the rep having to write the email?
Block 4 · Data and Decision-Making
- 10. Do you know right now, without asking anyone, how many leads came in this month and how many reached a meeting?
- 11. Are leads prioritized by likelihood to close, rather than by order of arrival?
- 12. Is the monthly sales report generated automatically?
Your Score
Add one point for every «yes».
| Score | Where you stand | What to do first |
|---|---|---|
| 0 – 3 | Manual operation. Every rep works their own way. | Questions 1, 3, and 4. Immediate response, automatic logging, and a follow-up sequence. Nothing else until those are working. |
| 4 – 7 | Foundation in place with gaps. Typical of teams that already have a CRM. | Questions 7 and 8 — scheduling and reminders, which are cheap and have an immediate effect. Then question 11. |
| 8 – 10 | Mature operation. The leaks are at the edges. | Questions 6 and 11: cold-base re-engagement and prioritization. This is where the hidden money shows up. |
| 11 – 12 | Above average for your market. | Stop automating processes and shift to measuring attribution and optimizing conversion at each stage. |
What we see in audits: most sales teams we start working with score between 3 and 6. Almost nobody fails for lack of tools — they fail because the tools aren't connected.
The Three Questions Most Teams Fail
Question 1 · After-Hours Response
This is the one with the most «no» answers, and the most expensive one. A lead that comes in on Friday at 8 PM and gets a reply on Monday has already talked to two competitors by then. It's solved with basic automation or, if you also want to qualify leads, with an AI agent.
Question 6 · Cold-Base Re-Engagement
Almost nobody has this set up, and it's the cheapest return in the funnel: these are contacts you already paid to acquire. A quarterly sequence with a fresh angle — an industry stat, a published case study — recovers a surprising percentage of them.
Question 11 · Prioritization
Handling leads in the order they arrive means spending your most expensive hour on your cheapest contact. That's exactly what automatic lead qualification solves.
From Checklist to 90-Day Plan
A diagnosis without a plan just sits in a folder. Here's what we do with the results:
| Timeframe | What gets built | How you know it's working |
|---|---|---|
| Days 0-30 | The three cheapest «no»s to fix, usually immediate response, automatic logging, and reminders | Average first-response time under 5 minutes |
| Days 31-60 | Segmented follow-up sequence and self-service scheduling | Average touches per lead above 3; drop in no-shows |
| Days 61-90 | Lead prioritization and cold-base re-engagement | Lead-to-meeting rate and opportunities recovered from the old base |
Two rules hold this plan together: no new block starts until the previous one is measurably working, and every block has a named owner. Automation projects don't fail because of the technology — they fail because nobody owned them.
How to Measure Your Starting Point
Before you touch anything, spend two weeks tracking four numbers. Without them, you won't be able to prove anything in the leadership meeting:
- Average time between lead intake and first real contact
- Average number of contact attempts per lead
- Percentage of leads that reach a meeting
- Weekly hours the team spends on CRM admin tasks
You can estimate the fourth one in a one-hour session with the team. It doesn't need to be precise — what matters is having a baseline to compare against three months from now, as we explain in our article on automation ROI.
What NOT to Automate Yet
To balance things out, here are three things worth leaving alone at first:
- The sales pitch. As long as your messaging keeps changing every quarter, automating it just freezes something that isn't settled yet.
- Negotiation and closing. This is where human judgment earns its keep.
- Reporting, if your data is messy. Automating reports on badly logged data just produces fast, wrong reports.
Conclusion
The list of processes you should automate isn't the same for everyone — it depends on where your operation currently stands. That's why the checklist comes before the tool catalog.
If you scored below 6, don't try to build everything at once. Three workflows — immediate response, automatic logging, and a follow-up sequence — change more than twenty half-finished automations.
Want us to review your score against real data from your funnel? Request a free diagnostic.
