A Step-By-Step Guide to Automating Upsell Opps in Salesforce

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If you answered “yes” to more than 4 of these questions, an automated upsell process is likely to make revenue impact for your business.

First, tell Salesforce what to look for.

Create a flow that searches key data points for specific triggers (see above) and when it finds one, creates an upsell opportunity.

Our flow triggers off of specific field value changes. This can really range depending on your architecture. You may be triggering off of data points on the account, contact or maybe a custom object.

Create filter logic to exclude opportunities that should not be created.

Considering filtering out specific accounts. You’ll know this filtering logic isn’t strong if your team is not working the upsells you create or closing them out too quickly.

Examples to consider filtering out:

  • Upsell opportunity already open.
  • Opportunity closed won within the last 45 days. Include renewals, upsells and new business.
  • Opportunity closed lost within the last 45 days. Consider both lost upsells and recently churned customers.
  • Non-IP customers, such as single user accounts or customers who are costing you money.
  • Red accounts. No one wants to be upsold when they’re upset.

You should also think about whether you’ll need different logic for partners, legacy customers with old plans, etc.

Create the record

This is the fun part – creating an opportunity record.

  • Map key fields like:
    • Type or Record type = expansion
    • Source = auto-upsell
    • Source detail = give insight into the usage shown or logic (e.g. 10 new users)
  • Attach contact roles
    • Query previous opportunities and copy the contact roles
    • Consider looking at the most engaged contacts on the account by usage, and adding those
  • Add products
    • For upsells -> same product with a placeholder amount
    • For cross-sell (based on usage you believe we should sell a different product) -> add that new product

Finally, create your alerts.

  • Create an alert to the opportunity owner
    • Typically account owner or CSM
    • Alert can be via email and/or Slack – but we prefer Slack
    • This adds another layer of visibility for the sales/CS team
  • Create alerts for opportunities that were not created BUT had high usage (your exclusions)
  • Create alerts if there is no activity on the opportunity
    • This is so important so you can follow up for adoption
    • Get buy-in from sales leadership on this. They must make expectations clear with the field that follow up on upsell opportunities is required (even if it’s just to close it with a reason!)

LEARNS AND GOTCHAS

Having implemented this a few times, we’ve learned some lessons.
Lucky for you, you can avoid these pitfalls:

  • You will not regret spending time up front to think about how you pipe in usage data into Salesforce. Usage in SFDC is a slippery slope AND every team will want to use it. Spend time with product, marketing, sales and CS.
  • Your reps will not action expansion opportunities if there are too many getting created or at the wrong time. Filter out any account that already has an expansion opportunity and anyone with an upcoming renewal. For those use cases you can instead send a Slack alert.
  • Copy over contact roles from previous opportunities! This is a nice to have but we all know how much reps hate adding contact roles.
  • Meet with your reps to understand how they want to be alerted about these expansion opportunities. We’ve seen these just “sit” in the system with no action. What a waste.