Creating sales triggers

What's my plan?

Admins can use sales triggers in Sell to automate specific parts of the workflow of every sales rep. This means that when an event you specified occurs, and the conditions you configured are met, then an action that you defined is carried out. For example, you can automate the workflow of all sales reps so that every time a trigger event (such as a deal being updated) occurs in Sell, and meets its pre-defined conditions (such as, “Deal value is greater than 1000”), then Sell automatically attempts to carry out the actions defined for that trigger, for example “Update Deal Owner to Valerie Golden”.

You must be an admin to create triggers. However, all Sell users can cause a trigger event that prompts the evaluation of conditions and carries out the predefined action if the trigger conditions are met.

This article covers the following topics:

• Building condition statements for sales triggers
  • Using 'and' 'or' operators
  • Using a nullifying condition
• Building action statements for sales triggers

Related articles:

• Editing, deactivating, and deleting sales triggers in Sell
• Popular recipes for sales triggers

Building condition statements for sales triggers

You can define conditions to specify when trigger actions are implemented after a trigger event occurs. Every time it occurs, the sales triggers that use it will evaluate their conditions against the object that caused the trigger event. Trigger actions are carried out every time a trigger event occurs and the trigger conditions are met.

To avoid repetitive triggers, if trigger A, for example, carries out actions on object B, then object B causes a trigger event and the trigger A conditions are met, you want to ensure that the actions will not be carried out again and again.

The following sample recipe avoids this sort of problem. The Sales Trigger conditions assign any deal that is updated to a worth of 1,000 or more in value to be assigned to the sales rep in New York, Valerie Golden.

When

Deal is updated

If

Deal Value is greater than 1000

AND

Deal State is New York

Then

Update Deal Owner to Valerie Golden

Note: Currently, the only trigger condition available is "Deal is updated".

To create a trigger

1. On the Sell sidebar, click Settings > Business rules > Triggers.
2. On the Triggers page, click Add trigger.
3. In the Name field, name your trigger (for example Deal owner updated).
4. Select the Set as active checkbox if you want this trigger to be active.
5. Under When, click the event that will cause the trigger (for example, Deal is updated).
6. Under If, click +Add condition.
7. Enter information about the trigger in the following fields:
   • Object: Deal is the only object currently supported.
   • Field: choose the type of field you want the object to refer to (for example, Value).
   • Operator: choose from the dropdown menu that relates to the field you've chosen (for example, Is greater than).
   • Value: enter the value that relates to your choice from the Field menu (for example Greater than 1000)
8. Click Add.

   

Using 'and' 'or' operators

After you've added the first condition, an AND operator appears beneath it. The operator determines the relationship between conditions for the logic behind the trigger. You can set it to AND or change it to OR.

AND - use this operator if you have two or more conditions that must be met for the trigger evaluation to succeed. You can also use the AND operator to connect conditions across clauses.

OR - use this operator when you have two or more conditions in a clause, but only one of the conditions must be met for the trigger to be successful.

Note: Changing the AND or OR operator between conditions changes it between all of the conditions in the clause.

The following example, uses a set of conditions that evaluate to true in two independent scenarios:

• First scenario: Requires only one condition to be met: if the Deal Value is greater than 1000.
• Second scenario: If three conditions are met: the Deal Country is the USA, the Deal Source is a Tradeshow, and the Deal primary contact is VIP Company.

If

Deal.Value is greater than 1000

OR

(Deal.Country is USA AND Deal.Source is Tradeshow AND Deal primary contact is VIP Company)

Using a nullifying condition

Sometimes the logic for a trigger requires a nullifying condition, for example, to prevent a trigger from looping. As the following scenario shows, a nullifying condition will prevent your trigger from performing further actions if that condition has already been met.

Scenario: a looping trigger

In this scenario, the logic for an ownership trigger assigns Deal.Owner to Distribution > Distribution assigns a user from its pool as a new Deal.Owner > The result is that the deal is updated. This triggers a new trigger event, causing the trigger to run again on the same object, assigning another owner from the Distribution pool, and repeating the cycle again, and again.

To prevent a looping trigger

Add a nullifying condition that allows the trigger to run only once on a given object. For example,

IF

Deal.Owner is not Distribution

Adding this condition means a distribution will act on a deal only when the conditions are met. When the trigger acts again on the deal, it will check if the deal owner belongs to that distribution. If that’s true, then the condition IF Deal.Owner is not Distribution will be met, causing the evaluation logic of the trigger to be false and preventing the trigger from repeating the same action over and over again.

Building action statements for sales triggers

After setting the trigger event and conditions, you can determine the actions that will happen if the trigger evaluation is successful.

Actions perform on objects that are the subject of the trigger event and have met the trigger conditions that you specified for it.

You select which fields of an object you want to add values for, or update. For example selecting the Owner field and “Valerie Golden” as the value will cause the owner of the deal to change to Valerie Golden every time a trigger event happens and the conditions are met to incur that action.

To create the action for the trigger

1. Under Then, click Add action.
2. Under Update, in the Object to update field, choose an object from the dropdown menu (Deal is currently the only supported object).
3. Under Update field values, enter information about the actions that the trigger will set into motion:
   • Field to update: choose from the dropdown menu (for example Owner or Value).
   • Value: available on the Field to update menu, choose from the Value dropdown menu the value that relates to your choice (for example, the name of the person you want the deal to be owned by).
4. Add as many relevant fields and values as is necessary for your trigger (up to 200). When you are finished, click Add.
5. Click Save.