How to Move Deals Through Your Pipeline Automatically as a Date Approaches
A daily scheduled workflow can walk a renewal deal from 90 days out to 30 days out with nobody touching it. Here is the pipeline, the date property and the branches.
Why is this hack helpful?
A renewal date sitting in a property does nothing on its own. Take a $48,400 AUD contract, GST inclusive, so $44,000 before GST. Somebody needs to be talking to that customer at 90 days out, not at 20, and the only reason that happens is because something moved the deal in front of them.
Automating the movement means the date does the reminding. With this setup you can open the pipeline on a Monday and see exactly which contracts crossed 90 days over the weekend.
Do you know which renewals are due next month?
Most renewal dates sit in a property nothing is watching.
Steps to Set It Up
1. Create a Pipeline for Date-Based Deals
Before creating the workflow, you’ll need to set up your pipeline and properties:
- Design a pipeline specifically for deals that rely on upcoming dates, such as renewals.
- Define the stages based on timeframes, such as:
- 3 months to renewal.
- 2 months to renewal.
- 1 month to renewal.
2. Create a Date Picker Deal Property
- Go to Settings > Properties > Create Property.
- Set the object type to Deal and create a property called something like "Time to Renewal".
- Use the Date Picker field type to allow users to select the renewal date for each deal.
3. Create a Deal-Based Workflow
Now that your pipeline and properties are ready, it’s time to automate the process:
- Go to Automation > Workflows and create a Deal-based workflow.
- Set the enrolment trigger to be Based on a Schedule > Frequency: Daily > Time of Day: Morning. Also, add a filter for Time to Renewal is Known.
Doing this will allow all of the deals to re-enrol every day, so if a renewal date is updated, the deal will change its deal stage.
- Add an AND/OR Branch to check how many days remain until the renewal date. For example:
- Renewal Date is less than 90 days from now AND more than 60 days (for the 3-month stage).
- Renewal Date is less than 60 days from now AND more than 30 days (for the 2-month stage).
- Renewal Date is less than 30 days from now (for the 1-month stage).
Create a branch for each timeframe that corresponds to your pipeline stages. For anything that doesn't fit inside your criteria, it will fall into its own branch.
4. Update the Deal Stage in Each Branch
- For each branch, use the Edit Record action to update the deal’s pipeline stage. For example:
- Deals with a renewal date less than 90 days but more than 60 days are moved to the 3 months to renewal stage.
- Deals with a renewal date less than 30 days are moved to the 1 month to renewal stage.
If the workflow also emails the customer
Moving a deal stage is internal, so there is nothing to think about. The moment the same workflow sends the customer a renewal reminder with an upsell attached, it is a commercial electronic message and the Spam Act 2003 rules the ACMA enforces apply: consent, the sender clearly identified, and a working unsubscribe. An existing contract will usually support inferred consent for a message about that contract. The extra module you are pitching underneath it is a different matter, and the burden of proving consent sits with you.
Wrapping up
This hack provides your team with clear visibility into upcoming deals, helping them prioritise and act on time-sensitive opportunities. Automating the movement through the pipeline means no renewal date passes without somebody having seen it coming.
Your forecasting gets better as a side effect, because the stages now mean something specific in time, and your team talks to customers while there is still room to change the outcome. That is most of what retention is.
Once this is running, simplifying contract end date calculations stops anyone typing the renewal date by hand, building rolling date filters with scheduled workflows gives you a report that stays current, and building a contracts object for renewals and upsells is the version to build if you have more than one contract per customer. Wiring the whole renewal motion together is our RevOps and HubSpot work.
How much warning does your team actually need?
How much warning does your team actually need?
Thirty days is plenty for some contracts and far too late for others.
Thirty days is plenty for some contracts and far too late for others.