In sales, speed is key.

The folks behind behavioral science have long been pushing data that supports this notion: every minute you wait to contact a potential buyer is a minute you waste. And word on the (sales) street corroborates it further: roughly 35-50 percent of deals go to the seller who responds first.

In principle, responding first is straightforward enough. But when you consider the sheer volume of leads pouring into your business, you're going to need a way to manage and respond to these at scale.

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Zendesk Sell can help you deal with the constant surge of leads by providing you with specific context around a customer account. It's a platform built specifically for sales teams, designed to enhance productivity and provide deep, data-driven insights into prospects with pipeline visibility. You can make calls, send emails, schedule meetings, and view each deal's history from one handy platform.

Want to harness Zendesk Sell's full potential? Below we break down the top ways to automate your sales workflows and cut out manual data entry. To get started with a Zap template—our pre-made workflows—just click on it, and we'll guide you through the set-up process. It only takes a few minutes. You can also read more about setting up Zaps here.

Capture and create leads accurately from the get-go

Many businesses—small and large—collect leads by casting a wide net with web forms, ads, and eCommerce transactions.

While these are all smart ways to find prospective customers, the real headache begins when trying to accurately transfer this information to your CRM.

Let's face it: you've got enough on your plate already without spending grueling hours copying and pasting with the eventual goal of contacting leads within the recommended window of time. (It's a slog and a half.)

By creating a Zap that connects Zendesk Sell to your lead capture sources, you can automatically create new leads in Zendesk Sell the minute someone fills out their details with a request. That'll make following up with leads a breeze.

The same premise applies to storing contact details. Managing multiple contact lists across different platforms isn't just a huge time sink—it's also how mistakes happen. Instead, you can create a Zap that will send details from Zendesk Sell directly to Google Contacts. That way you'll never have to search for a lead's contact details before making that all-important sales call.

Keep the whole sales team in the loop

When a deal moves swiftly through to a sale, or a virtual handshake has already taken place, letting the right people know in your sales team—and even your marketing team—is paramount to success.

If relevant team members aren't notified right away, this can throw a monkey wrench in the works, giving ground to misunderstandings. Your marketing team might not add them to their mailing list, for example, or other sales reps might make duplicate calls or email a lead who's already a customer.

That's why you can create specific Zaps to automatically notify relevant teams whenever a new lead is added to your CRM or progresses to a new stage—giving everyone the context they need to do their best work.

Get ahead of your tasks

If you want to get started on a task while your lead is still hot (or a deal has just been won), you can easily connect Zendesk Sell to your favorite task management app.

That means tasks and projects will be created automatically the moment something changes in Zendesk so that you can get started on the next stage of your sales process without interruptions. (Read: no more helplessly scanning Zendesk Sell for updates.)

You just set it up and get to work right away. (You can thank us later.)

Move new leads or won deals to marketing

Marketing and Sales run parallel to one another, often without directly intersecting. Yet both teams have the same goal: securing business and driving growth. That's why adding your sales CRM contacts to your mailing list is a pretty smart move.

That way, marketing teams can reach out to leads with nurture emails, marketing-related info, and news about your company down the line. This automatic workflow will help turn leads and new customers into subscribers, ripe for future upselling opportunities.

Take your sales to the next level

This is just the start of all that you can do with Zendesk Sell and Zapier. Zapier supports thousands of apps, so you automate almost any task at work. Start building your Zap now and see what you can create.