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Streamline your sales process with Close automation. Learn practical tips to save time, improve follow-ups, and help your team close more deals efficiently.
In the world of finance and operations, we live by a simple rule: garbage in, garbage out. If your sales process is chaotic, the data flowing into your financial systems will be, too. Inconsistent deal stages, missed follow-ups, and incomplete contact records can make revenue recognition and compliance a nightmare. A powerful way to enforce consistency at the source is through Close automation. By standardizing how your team engages with leads and manages their pipeline, you create a clean, reliable stream of data. This article explains the key features of Close and how automating your sales front-end leads to more accurate and auditable financial reporting on the back-end.
Close Automation is a set of features within the Close CRM platform designed to handle repetitive sales tasks for you. Think of it as a smart assistant that manages your emails, calls, and even text messages, freeing up your sales team to focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals. It’s built to be intuitive, so your team can get started right away without a steep learning curve. The goal is to streamline the entire sales process, from the first contact with a lead to the final signature, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks. By automating these daily activities, you create a more efficient, consistent, and effective sales engine.
At its core, Close works by merging essential CRM functions with powerful communication tools into one seamless platform. Instead of juggling multiple tabs for your email, phone, and lead management system, your team can handle everything from a single dashboard. This integrated approach allows you to manage leads, make calls, send personalized emails, and track every interaction in one place. The automation kicks in by letting you create workflows that trigger specific actions based on lead behavior or time. For example, you can set up a sequence that automatically sends a follow-up email if a lead doesn’t respond within two days, ensuring timely communication without manual effort.
No tool is an island, and Close is designed to fit right into your existing tech stack. It connects with popular applications like Zapier, Calendly, and HubSpot, allowing you to create a unified workflow between your sales and marketing efforts. This is key for maintaining data integrity and ensuring a smooth handoff between teams. Just as HubiFi offers seamless integrations with your accounting software and ERPs, Close ensures your sales data syncs effortlessly with the other platforms you rely on. This creates a connected ecosystem where information flows freely, giving you a complete picture of your customer journey and business operations.
Close stands out with its communication-first design. The platform’s top features are all geared toward making interactions faster and more effective. You can efficiently manage leads from the moment they enter your pipeline, track opportunities as they develop, and automate follow-up tasks to keep deals moving forward. The interface is clean and user-friendly, which helps sales teams stay organized and focused. With powerful communication tools and a straightforward design, Close gives your team the resources needed to enhance sales efficiency and drive consistent growth. It’s all about turning manual processes into automated workflows that deliver results.
Once you get the hang of Close, you’ll find a handful of features that can truly transform your sales process. Think of these as your core toolkit for getting more done with less manual effort. By focusing on these specific tools, you can build a more efficient, consistent, and effective sales engine. From making more calls to sending smarter emails, these features are designed to handle the repetitive work so your team can focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals. Let’s walk through the key features you’ll want to master.
If your team spends a significant amount of time on the phone, the Power Dialer and Predictive Dialer are game-changers. Instead of manually punching in numbers and waiting through endless ringing, these tools automate the entire process. The Power Dialer calls leads from a list one by one, instantly connecting your rep when someone picks up. The Predictive Dialer takes it a step further by calling multiple numbers at once and only connecting your rep to a live answer. This simple change means your team can spend more time in meaningful conversations and less time listening to dial tones, dramatically increasing their daily call volume and overall productivity.
Taking detailed notes while trying to stay fully engaged in a conversation is a tough balancing act. Close’s AI-Powered Call Assistant solves this by automatically transcribing and summarizing your sales calls. This allows your reps to focus completely on the prospect, listen actively, and build better rapport. After the call, they get a clean summary and a full transcript, creating a perfect record without any manual work. With support for over 20 languages, it’s an incredible tool for global teams. This feature not only saves time but also creates a valuable data asset for coaching, follow-ups, and understanding customer needs.
Consistent follow-up is the key to closing deals, but it’s also one of the first things to fall through the cracks on a busy day. With email sequence automation, you can build multi-step email campaigns that run on their own. You can create and share your most successful email templates with the entire team, ensuring everyone uses proven messaging. Set up a sequence to automatically follow up with a new lead, nurture a prospect after a demo, or re-engage a cold contact. This ensures no lead is forgotten and that your communication remains timely and professional, all without adding to your team’s daily to-do list.
Beyond calls and emails, Close helps you automate the small, administrative tasks that eat up your day. You can create workflows that trigger actions based on specific events. For example, when a deal moves to a new stage in your pipeline, you can automatically create a follow-up task for the rep. When a new lead comes in, you can assign it to the right person and send an automated welcome text message. By automating these routine steps, you create a seamless process that keeps your team organized and focused on high-value activities that actually drive revenue.
A cluttered CRM is an ineffective one. Smart Views are essentially saved, dynamic filters that help you instantly find and focus on the right leads. You can create views for any criteria imaginable—like "hot leads in California who haven't been contacted in 5 days" or "new trial sign-ups assigned to me." This turns a long list of contacts into actionable, prioritized work queues. Paired with custom fields, you can tailor your CRM to track the data that matters most to your business, ensuring your team always knows which opportunities to pursue next for the best results.
Automation is powerful, but you need to know if it’s working. Close provides clear, communication-focused reporting that helps you track key sales activities and outcomes. You can easily see how many calls your team is making, which email templates have the best open rates, and where deals are getting stuck in your pipeline. This visibility is crucial for making informed decisions. By regularly reviewing these analytics and reporting tools, you can identify what’s working, find areas for improvement, and coach your team with data-backed insights to refine your sales strategy over time.
Getting started with automation in Close doesn’t have to be complicated. The key is to approach it methodically, building a solid foundation before you create complex, multi-step workflows. Think of it like building a house: you need to pour the concrete and frame the walls before you can even think about picking out paint colors. A little planning upfront will save you countless hours of troubleshooting later and ensure your automations run smoothly, helping your team focus on what they do best—building relationships and closing deals.
The goal is to create a system that works for you, not against you. By following a few simple steps, you can set up automations that handle repetitive tasks, keep your data organized, and provide your sales team with the information they need right when they need it. This process is all about creating efficiency and consistency, which are the cornerstones of a scalable sales operation. From basic settings to your first workflow, each step builds on the last, creating a powerful engine to drive your sales process forward. Let’s walk through how to get it all set up.
Before you can automate anything, you need to get your basic settings in order. This is the foundational work that ensures everything else runs correctly. Start by inviting your team members and assigning them the appropriate roles and permissions. Next, connect your email and calendar accounts to sync your communications seamlessly. Close provides a communication-focused interface that makes it easy to manage leads and track opportunities, but it works best when it has access to all your interaction data. Take the time to configure your lead statuses, opportunity pipelines, and custom fields to match your specific sales process. This initial setup is crucial for accurate reporting and effective automation down the line.
Once your settings are configured, you can build your first automated workflow. It’s best to start with something simple yet impactful, like an email sequence for new leads. Close combines core CRM functionality with built-in communication tools, allowing you to manage leads, make calls, and send emails from a single platform. Use this to your advantage by creating a sequence that automatically sends a series of follow-up emails to new leads over a few days. This ensures no lead falls through the cracks and that every prospect gets a timely, consistent response. As you get more comfortable, you can explore more complex workflows in the HubiFi Blog for inspiration on how to automate other parts of your sales cycle.
Automation should save you time, not make your outreach feel robotic. This is where custom templates come in. Close’s powerful communication tools make it a top choice for enhancing sales efficiency, and personalized templates are a huge part of that. Create a library of email and SMS templates for common scenarios, like initial outreach, follow-ups, and post-demo messages. Use merge tags to automatically pull in contact and company information, making each message feel personal. A well-crafted template not only saves time but also ensures your team’s messaging is consistent and on-brand. Encourage your team to tweak these templates for each prospect to add that extra human touch.
Never launch an automation without testing it first. A small mistake in your workflow logic could lead to sending the wrong message to hundreds of contacts. Create a test lead with your own contact information and run it through your new workflow. Check that emails are sent at the right time, personalization tags populate correctly, and tasks are created as expected. Remember that sales process automation is transforming how teams engage with buyers, and continuous refinement is key. Once your automation is live, monitor its performance. Are you getting the open and reply rates you expected? Don’t be afraid to tweak your copy, timing, and triggers to improve results over time.
Your automations are only as good as the data they run on. Inaccurate or incomplete data can cause workflows to fail and lead to embarrassing personalization errors. Make data hygiene a priority for your entire team. Establish clear guidelines for data entry and use required fields to ensure you capture critical information. Regularly schedule time to clean up duplicate contacts and update outdated information. As you grow, you’ll find that dynamic process automation and clean data are essential for transforming the sales function. By maintaining a clean database, you ensure your automations are effective and your reporting is accurate, giving you the insights you need to make smart decisions. HubiFi’s seamless integrations can help you connect disparate data sources to maintain a single source of truth.
A great CRM doesn’t live on an island. Its real power comes from how well it works with the other software you use every day. Connecting Close to your other tools creates a central hub for your sales operations, ensuring data flows smoothly and your team has everything they need in one place. This eliminates the need to constantly switch between tabs, reduces manual data entry, and gives you a complete picture of your customer interactions.
When your tech stack is in sync, your team can focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals. Instead of wrestling with disconnected data, they can rely on a single source of truth to make informed decisions. This integrated approach not only saves time but also prevents important details from falling through the cracks, leading to a more professional and effective sales process from start to finish.
One of the best things about Close is that it’s designed to play well with others. You can easily connect it to popular tools that your business already relies on. Think of platforms like Zapier, which acts as a bridge between Close and thousands of other apps, allowing you to automate tasks without writing a single line of code. You can also set up direct integrations with marketing automation software like HubSpot or scheduling tools like Calendly. This creates a seamless workflow where lead data from marketing campaigns flows directly into your CRM, and booked meetings automatically appear on your sales reps’ calendars. Just as HubiFi offers its own set of powerful integrations to connect financial data, connecting your sales tools is key to operational efficiency.
Close is built around communication, combining email, calls, and SMS into one unified interface. When you connect it with your other tools, you can centralize your communication even further. For instance, integrating a scheduling tool like Zeeg or Calendly means that once a prospect books a meeting, all the related communication and follow-up tasks can be managed and automated directly within Close. This ensures that every interaction is tracked and nothing gets missed. By creating a single, comprehensive record for each lead, your sales team can have more context-aware and productive conversations, moving deals forward with confidence.
You have a few different ways to get your tools talking to each other, depending on your needs and technical comfort. The easiest method is using native integrations, which are pre-built connections that you can set up in just a few clicks. For more flexibility, you can use a third-party connector like Zapier to create custom "Zaps" that trigger actions between Close and other apps. This approach is perfect for building unique workflows without needing a developer. For businesses with highly specific requirements, using the Close API offers the most power and control, allowing you to build completely custom solutions.
If you have a unique workflow or need to connect Close with a proprietary in-house system, the API is your best friend. An API (Application Programming Interface) is essentially a set of rules that lets different software applications communicate with each other. Using Close's API, you can build custom integrations that pull data from or push data to any other system. This is ideal for creating highly specialized automations, embedding CRM data into other applications, or ensuring your sales data syncs perfectly with your company’s central database. If you’re tackling complex data challenges that go beyond sales, it might be time to schedule a consultation to explore a broader data strategy.
Rolling out a new automation platform is exciting, but it’s not always a straight path from setup to success. It’s completely normal to hit a few bumps along the way, whether it’s getting your team comfortable with a new tool or making sure it plays nicely with your existing software. The key is to anticipate these hurdles so you can move past them quickly. By planning for common challenges around team adoption, technical needs, and data management, you can create a much smoother implementation process for everyone involved.
One of the biggest hurdles isn't technical—it's human. Sales reps are often hesitant to change their routines, especially if they don’t see the immediate benefit. To get everyone on board, start by clearly communicating how automation will make their jobs easier, not just different. Focus on benefits like less manual data entry and more time for actual selling. Involve your team in the setup process by asking for their input on workflows and templates. Solid training is non-negotiable, so make sure everyone feels confident using the new tools. A little effort upfront to encourage CRM adoption will pay off immensely.
Before you dive in, take a moment to think through the technical side of things. A common reason for implementation failure is a mismatch between the new tool and your existing environment. Do you have the right infrastructure to support the software? Is your customer data in a format that can be easily migrated? Think about how Close will connect with the other essential tools you use every day. Planning your integrations with accounting software, ERPs, and marketing platforms ahead of time will prevent major headaches and ensure a seamless flow of information across your business.
It’s easy to get tripped up by a few common mistakes during setup. One of the biggest is migrating disorganized data. If your current data is a mess, automating it will only create a bigger, faster mess. Take the time to clean up your contacts and records before you import them. Another pitfall is trying to automate everything at once. Start with one or two simple, high-impact workflows, test them thoroughly, and build from there. This approach helps you learn the system and demonstrate value quickly without overwhelming your team. You can find more tips in our insights on maintaining clean data.
You don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Most platforms, including Close, offer extensive help centers, tutorials, and customer support. Use them! For more complex challenges, like designing custom workflows or managing sophisticated data integrations, it can be incredibly valuable to bring in an expert. A specialist can help you transform your sales function by implementing dynamic process automation that aligns perfectly with your business goals. If you’re feeling stuck or just want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your tools, don’t hesitate to schedule a consultation to discuss your specific needs.
Once you’ve mastered the basics of Close automation, you can start exploring more advanced strategies to refine your sales process. Moving beyond simple email sequences and task reminders is where you’ll find significant gains in efficiency and revenue. It’s about creating a smart, responsive sales engine that works for you, not the other way around. By designing custom workflows, expanding across channels, and keeping a close eye on performance, you can build a truly sophisticated automation strategy that scales with your business. These next steps will help you transform your sales operations from functional to exceptional, freeing up your team to focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals.
While Close offers fantastic templates to get you started, the real power lies in creating workflows tailored to your specific sales cycle. Think about the unique journey your customers take. Do you have different processes for inbound vs. outbound leads? For enterprise vs. SMB clients? Close combines core CRM functions with built-in communication tools, allowing you to design a sales process that mirrors exactly how your team operates. You can build custom workflows that trigger specific actions based on lead source, deal size, or even a prospect’s behavior, ensuring every lead gets the right touch at the right time.
Your customers don’t live in their email inboxes, and your outreach shouldn’t either. A modern sales strategy involves connecting with prospects across multiple channels, including calls, emails, and SMS. Close’s platform is built for this kind of multi-channel engagement, letting you automate follow-up tasks from the first contact all the way to the final signature. For example, you can create a sequence that starts with an email, schedules a call task for the next day if there’s no reply, and then sends a follow-up text. This creates a persistent, yet personalized, experience that keeps you top-of-mind.
If you’re selling to a global audience, you need tools that erase borders. Close is equipped with powerful communication features that make international sales feel local. With built-in global calling, you can connect with leads in over 200 countries without leaving the app. The system can also automatically detect time zones, helping your team avoid those awkward 3 a.m. calls. These features are essential for any business looking to expand its global reach, as they help your team build rapport and operate efficiently across different regions.
Automation can streamline your work, but it should never compromise your data security or compliance standards. As you build out your workflows, it’s crucial to ensure they align with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. The good news is that automation can actually strengthen your compliance. By standardizing communication and creating a clear, auditable trail for every interaction, you reduce the risk of human error. This is especially important for businesses that need to maintain meticulous records for financial reporting and audits, as it helps reduce the cost of sales by simplifying administrative and reporting tasks.
An automation strategy is never "set it and forget it." To get the best results, you need to continuously monitor, test, and refine your processes. Use Close’s analytics to track key metrics for your email sequences, like open rates, reply rates, and conversions. Pay attention to your workflow performance to see where deals are stalling or falling through the cracks. By regularly reviewing this data, you can make informed adjustments to optimize your approach. This commitment to continuous process refinement is what separates good sales teams from great ones, unlocking new levels of efficiency and performance.
Choosing a CRM is a big decision, as it becomes the central hub for your customer data and sales activity. The right platform can streamline your entire operation, while the wrong one can create data silos and friction. While Close excels at communication-heavy sales, other CRMs cater to different needs, from all-in-one marketing platforms to highly visual project managers. Let's look at how Close stacks up against some of the most popular options on the market.
Close is built for sales teams that prioritize outreach. Its core strength lies in its deeply integrated communication tools, including a native Power Dialer, SMS, and email automation, all within a single interface. This design eliminates the need to switch between different apps, allowing reps to focus purely on engaging with prospects and closing deals. If your team spends most of its day calling and emailing leads, Close offers a seamless workflow designed to make that process as efficient as possible. It’s less of an all-encompassing business suite and more of a high-performance engine for sales communication.
HubSpot offers a comprehensive, all-in-one platform that extends far beyond sales. Its free CRM is a popular entry point, but its true power comes from its integrated Marketing, Sales, Service, and CMS Hubs. This makes it an excellent choice for businesses that want to align their departments around a single source of customer data. While its sales features are robust, the main appeal is the ability to manage the entire customer lifecycle in one place, from the first marketing touchpoint to ongoing customer support. It’s ideal for companies focused on inbound marketing and a unified customer experience.
Salesforce is one of the most powerful and scalable CRMs available, making it a go-to for enterprise companies and businesses with complex needs. It offers an incredible depth of customization, a massive ecosystem of third-party apps, and advanced reporting capabilities. With products like Sales Cloud, businesses can manage intricate sales processes, territories, and forecasting. This power comes with a steeper learning curve and higher price point, but for large teams that need a solution that can be tailored to their exact specifications, Salesforce is often the industry standard.
Pipedrive is designed around the concept of a visual sales pipeline. Its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface makes it incredibly easy for salespeople to track deals as they move through different stages. The platform is highly focused on the core activities of selling, helping teams plan their tasks and stay on top of every opportunity. While it has expanded to include add-ons for marketing automation and lead generation, its primary strength remains its simplicity and laser focus on pipeline management. It’s a great fit for sales-driven teams who want a straightforward, activity-based tool to help them close more deals.
Zoho CRM is known for its affordability and extensive customization options, making it a strong contender for small and mid-sized businesses. It’s part of the broader Zoho ecosystem, which includes over 50 applications for finance, HR, marketing, and more. This allows businesses to build a highly integrated and customized tech stack on a budget. The CRM itself is feature-rich, offering everything from sales force automation to analytics. For companies looking for a flexible and cost-effective CRM that can scale with them, Zoho provides a compelling and comprehensive solution.
While many know Monday.com as a project management tool, it also offers a flexible work operating system that can be configured as a CRM. Its strength lies in its highly visual and customizable boards, which allow teams to design their own workflows for managing leads, projects, and customer relationships. This makes it a great option for teams that don't fit the mold of a traditional sales process or those who want to manage sales and projects in one unified workspace. It’s less of a dedicated sales tool and more of a versatile platform for running any kind of team workflow.
Freshsales, part of the Freshworks suite, offers a modern CRM packed with AI-powered insights and built-in communication tools. Like Close, it integrates phone and email directly into the platform, but it also adds AI features like predictive lead scoring and deal insights to help teams prioritize their efforts. It provides a 360-degree view of the customer by capturing website interactions, app usage, and communication history. For businesses looking for an integrated sales solution that uses artificial intelligence to guide sales reps, Freshsales is a powerful and intuitive choice.
Jumping into a new CRM can feel like a big step, but Close is designed to make the transition smooth. The platform helps your team get up and running quickly so you can focus on building relationships and closing deals. Here’s how you can get started and what to expect.
The best way to see if a tool is right for you is to try it. Close offers a 14-day free trial without asking for a credit card, giving you a no-pressure window to explore its features. They even provide free help to move your data over, so you can test the platform with your actual contacts and workflows. This lets you see exactly how the CRM will fit into your daily operations. Before committing, review their plans to find one that aligns with your team’s size and sales goals.
You don’t need to be a tech wizard to get Close set up. The platform is intuitive, even for those new to CRMs. The initial setup involves connecting your email and calendar, importing contacts, and customizing your sales pipeline. The interface is clean and communication-focused, which reduces the learning curve. For more complex setups that involve syncing data across multiple systems, exploring custom integrations can ensure all your tools work together seamlessly, giving you a complete view of customer interactions.
Close provides a wealth of resources to help you master the platform. Their extensive knowledge base is packed with articles and guides covering everything from basic setup to advanced automation. The platform’s communication-focused interface helps sales teams efficiently manage leads, track opportunities, and automate follow-ups. By exploring these materials, you can learn how to customize the CRM to perfectly match your sales process. This self-guided learning empowers your team to become proficient users and get the most value from your investment.
Even with user-friendly software, questions come up. It’s reassuring to know that help is available when you need it. Close offers support through multiple channels, including email, chat, a knowledge base, phone support, and FAQs. This means you can choose the method that works best for you. For strategic questions about optimizing your data and revenue workflows, you can always schedule a consultation to get expert guidance.
My sales team is small. Is a tool like Close still worth it? Absolutely. In fact, automation can be even more impactful for smaller teams where everyone wears multiple hats. Close helps you punch above your weight by handling the repetitive follow-ups and administrative tasks that can easily consume a small team's day. This frees you up to focus on high-value activities like building relationships and having meaningful conversations with your best prospects, which is exactly what you need to do to grow.
I'm worried automation will make our sales emails sound impersonal. How can I avoid that? That's a common and valid concern. The key is to use automation as a tool to ensure consistency, not to replace genuine connection. You can build templates using custom fields that pull in specific details about each lead, making your outreach feel personal. The best practice is to use automation for the initial follow-ups and then encourage your team to add a personal touch or take over the conversation once a prospect engages.
How much technical know-how is really needed to set up these automations? You don't need to be a developer to get started. Close is designed with a user-friendly interface that makes building basic workflows, like an email follow-up sequence, very straightforward. If you can map out your sales process on a whiteboard, you can build it in Close. For more complex needs, like connecting to custom in-house software, you might use the API, but for most day-to-day sales automation, the built-in tools are all you need.
What's the most common mistake to avoid when first setting up sales automation? The biggest pitfall is trying to automate a messy process. If your current data is disorganized or your sales stages are unclear, adding automation will only amplify the chaos. Before you build a single workflow, take the time to clean up your contact data and clearly define your sales pipeline. Starting with a clean, solid foundation ensures your automations will run smoothly and produce the results you're looking for.
Close seems very focused on communication. What if I need more than just a sales tool? That's the core strength of Close—it's a high-performance engine for sales outreach. If your primary goal is to help your sales team make more calls and send more emails efficiently, it's an excellent choice. For businesses that need an all-in-one solution to manage marketing, sales, and customer service in a single platform, a broader CRM might be a better fit. However, Close integrates well with other tools, so you can easily connect it to your marketing or project management software to create a powerful, specialized tech stack.
Former Root, EVP of Finance/Data at multiple FinTech startups
Jason Kyle Berwanger: An accomplished two-time entrepreneur, polyglot in finance, data & tech with 15 years of expertise. Builder, practitioner, leader—pioneering multiple ERP implementations and data solutions. Catalyst behind a 6% gross margin improvement with a sub-90-day IPO at Root insurance, powered by his vision & platform. Having held virtually every role from accountant to finance systems to finance exec, he brings a rare and noteworthy perspective in rethinking the finance tooling landscape.
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