You've probably heard that automation saves time and money. What's less clear is where to start, or what automation actually looks like in practice.
Here's the thing most people miss. Businesses rarely lose time to one massive problem. They lose it to dozens of tiny manual handoffs between systems, and that can eat up to a third of the week on repetitive work that's prone to failure.
This is a walk through the three automations we get asked for most at MinorCo. They're the low hanging fruit. Not flashy, but they're things you're doing anyway, and setting them up once claims that time back for good. A simple rule of thumb: if you're doing something three times a week, it's probably worth automating. Half an hour to an hour now to save it later.
How to think about any automation
Every automation is the same shape: a trigger, then a potential condition, then the actions that need to happen. Once you see that pattern, the rest is just detail.
Automation 1: getting a lead into your CRM
This is one you're almost certainly doing by hand already. Someone submits a form on your website. Someone internally has to notice it come through, usually in an email. They retrieve the details, open the CRM, create the record, and carefully copy every value across before they can move on to the next step.
Say that takes five minutes and you do it three times a week. It adds up.
The automation has all of those steps predefined. In the example, the trigger is a Squarespace form submission. First it runs a condition check to make sure the submission isn't from an internal email address, so you're not creating records for yourselves while testing. Then it finds the person by email address. Email works well here because it's unique and people don't tend to share one, so you reliably match to a single person in the CRM.
From there it creates a lead using the information that came through on the trigger. Fields that look fixed, like a name, are actually dynamic and get replaced with each new submission. So every time a form comes in, you get an accurate, up to date person record and lead record created automatically.
Run it and it moves through all those steps in seconds. It ticks away in the background while you get on with other things.
The outcome: faster follow up, a cleaner pipeline, and less mental load. Once you've set up your first automation, you start spotting the next ones.
Automation 2: invoice generation
This one is a favourite, because you do all the hard work to win the client and deliver, then the last step, the one that actually gets you paid, is often what slows everything down. Done manually it means opening your invoice tool, building the invoice, checking line items, setting payment terms, and finally sending it.
With automation, the process starts from a trigger. A deal reaches a certain stage, a project is marked complete, or a payment milestone comes due. From there the system can generate the draft invoice, pull through the client data, and set the right split, maybe half upfront and half on completion, teed up exactly how you work.
A basic version
The basic build: when a deal is marked as won, check the value is more than zero so it actually needs an invoice. Get the person's details to pass into your invoicing software, in this case QuickBooks Online. Create the invoice referencing the customer, then send it referencing the invoice you just created. It could be any invoicing software, any CRM, any automation platform.
Adding complexity
Real invoicing is rarely that clean, so you can branch it. After finding or creating the customer, determine whether this is a simple invoice using rules that reference the trigger data. If the deal has a particular field value, a certain label, or a specific product on it, create one invoice with a single line item, pulled from the deal or hard coded, and send it.
For a multi-stage invoice, some upfront and some partway through, create two invoices: create and send the first, then create the second for a manual send later. You can also add a step that schedules an activity in Pipedrive for three months out, as a reminder to review and send that second invoice manually.
For a complex invoice, map values coming through from the deal, create three separate invoices, and add a manual review step to check everything before sending. How complex you make it is up to you.
This is where a tool like Zapier or Make can get confusing for a first timer. It's also where getting it built correctly the first time saves the most pain.
Automation 3: nurturing deals lost to bad timing
The third one is a good reminder that an automation doesn't have to look flashy to be valuable.
The trigger: a deal is updated and marked as lost. A condition checks the lost reason is “bad timing” so you're only working with the right deals. Then get the person's details and add them as a subscriber to a sequence, in this case a “deal lost, bad timing, no response” sequence.
Over in the email marketing platform (Kit in the example), that sequence runs across several emails: one an hour after they're added, then 30 days later, 60 days after that, and 90 days after that. They stay consistently in touch, keeping you top of mind. You'd likely also add them to the broader mailing list so they get the newsletter too.
You can get as granular as you like. Multiple sequences, or very specific ones based on the exact product someone enquired about and the reason they didn't proceed. Just by marking the deal lost, choosing “not ready right now,” and picking the correct reason, they go down the right path, the one most likely to bring them back when the timing is right.
Why these three
These are three of the best low hanging fruit automations a business can set up. They're all things you have to do anyway. They're not flashy, but they save time in the long run and usually mean better interactions with clients.
We often see businesses put huge effort into winning clients, only to fumble one of these small handovers that had to happen anyway. It's a bit like doing all the work to plant the tree and grow the fruit, then forgetting to pick it before it spoils.
If you'd rather have these set up for you without learning the tools, that's what we do. Watch the full walkthrough in the video to see each one running.
FAQ
Which automation should I set up first? Start with whatever you do most often. A good rule of thumb is that anything you do three times a week is worth automating. Lead capture into your CRM is a common first choice because it happens constantly and the manual version is error-prone.
What tools do I need? The examples use Zapier as the automation platform, with Pipedrive as the CRM, Squarespace for forms, QuickBooks Online for invoicing, and Kit for email sequences. The same patterns work with any equivalent tools, any CRM, and any automation platform.
How does an automation actually work? Every automation follows the same shape: a trigger that starts it, an optional condition that decides whether to continue, and the actions that run as a result.
Can invoicing automation handle deposits or staged payments? Yes. You can build multi-stage invoices, for example half upfront and half on completion, and even schedule a reminder to review and send the later invoice manually.
What's the point of automating a lost deal? When a deal is lost to bad timing, the automation adds that person to a nurture sequence so they keep hearing from you over the following months. It keeps you top of mind so they're more likely to come back when the timing is right.