Relationship

The Automation Playbook

What this build is for

Automation is for the moments that are lost because nobody replied in time. Not the moments nobody cares about: the ones everyone cares about, but nobody owns at five on a Friday.

The classic evidence is about speed. An audit of more than 2,000 US companies, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that firms which replied to an online enquiry within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with the buyer as firms that replied even an hour later (HBR). Speed matters most where a buyer is waiting, and in a committee sale, someone almost always is: procurement waiting for the insurance certificate, the plant manager waiting to know what to have ready, the improvement lead waiting for the data request.

So the job isn't "automate marketing". It's narrower and more useful: notice the moment, send what that person needs, and hand anything that matters to a named human. Automate the noticing, not the talking.

The Relationship category's nods live here: CRM (the record every flow reads from and writes to) and SMS and chat (two more ways a flow can reach someone), each with a short section below.

The footprint, and what it reads from the chain

In Kestrel's map, automation leads 4 cells and 5 moments, all in the gap between "yes" and the first day on the floor, plus the weeks that follow:

It supports nine more cells, where another build leads but a timely reply decides whether the moment holds: procurement's supplier-list and safety checks, the COO's and investor's start dates, the COO's and finance director's progress and savings updates, the COO's programme decision, the finance director's look at the accounts, and procurement's re-engagement.

What it reads, and never rewrites:

Its slice of the Score, and its own audit

Automation's part of the Selectability Score is mostly Bought (did the step run without a stall?) and Answered (did the person get what they needed, when they needed it?).

These are small moments in points: together they earn 1.7 of Kestrel's 18 and lose 1.3. Their weight is in what they protect. A deal that stalls in procurement, or a review that starts a week late, damages the moments after it: the COO's confidence, the finance director's savings date, the reference the client might give.

The audit. List every hand-off in the motion, who does it today, and how long it takes.

The CRM holds contacts, not moments: nothing in it knows that a deal has reached week zero, so nothing fires.

Step 1: the shape, the systems map

For automation, the shape is the systems map: every system that holds a fact about a buyer, every event it can notice, and every way it can reach someone. You can't automate a moment no system can see.

The canon question here is simple: what do buyers in the category already expect to happen automatically? For B2B services, three things: an instant acknowledgement with a real next step, documents on request without a wait, and a calendar link instead of email tennis. Kestrel has none of the three.

The CRM, as a nod. The CRM isn't a build; it's the memory every flow reads from and writes to. Its only rule in this playbook: every moment that matters must be a field or a stage someone can see. If "week zero" isn't a stage, nothing can fire on it.

Step 2: coverage, one trigger per moment lost for lack of a timely reply

The coverage unit is a trigger: an event a system can notice, tied to a moment where someone is waiting. For each of the 14 cells automation leads or supports, write four things: who is waiting, for what, how long they'll wait before it costs you, and what the system can see.

That's 11 triggers. Each one names a person and a moment; none is "nurture".

Step 3: gaps, biases and jobs

Hold the audit against the 11 triggers. Each one nothing fires on today is a gap; each gap becomes a job.

Two rules come out of the jobs. Every flow hands to a named person when the buyer replies with anything but a yes. And nothing is sent that a person wouldn't sign: the documents come from Credentials, the words from the Email build.

Step 4: reconcile, the automation plan

Group the triggers into flows: a chain of steps that starts on one event and ends with a person, a document or a decision. This is the automation build's equivalent of a sitemap.

8 flows, 11 triggers. Every lead moment has a flow; every flow ends with a person or a confirmed fact. The savings confirmation is P1 for a reason the footprint doesn't show: it's where the proof for every other build comes from.

Rejected, with reasons:

• Lead scoring. No moment asks for it. With 31 enquiries a year, the partners can read every one.
• A drip "nurture" sequence. It answers no question a buyer is waiting on. Newsletters belong to Email, sent because there's something worth reading.
• A chatbot answering technical questions. A wrong answer about a plant is worse than a slow one. Chat, as a nod, routes to a person and books calls.
• Automatically sent proposals. The proposal is the pitch's job, written for the people in the room.

The anatomy library

Every flow is built from four parts, and each part has a standard shape.

And three shapes of flow cover almost everything Kestrel needs:

SMS and chat, as a nod. Both are just other ways for a message to reach someone. Use SMS where people don't sit at a desk: Kestrel's Monday tasks reach line leads on the floor by text, with their permission. Use chat on the website only to book a call or route a question to a named person, never to answer about a plant.

Briefs: the flow brief, then a brief for every step

A flow is briefed like a page: one brief for the whole, then one for each step, because each step serves one person at one moment.

The flow brief for Kestrel's savings confirmation:

FLOW Savings confirmation
STARTS WHEN 90 days after a review is marked closed in the delivery
tracker
MOMENTS Finance director · extend: "Are the savings showing in the
accounts?"
               Feeds: every build's proof (Credentials: confirmed cases)
PEOPLE The client's finance director; Kestrel's lead engineer; the
head of delivery
ENDS WITH The finance director's confirmation in writing, or a call
booked to
               understand why the savings aren't showing
OWNER Head of delivery
OFF SWITCH Head of delivery; stops automatically if the client is in
dispute
MEASURE Share of closed reviews with savings confirmed within 120 days

Then each step gets its own brief:

STEP 2: the confirmation request
JOB Believed · finance director · extend · we follow others
TO The client's finance director, from the lead engineer by name
THEIR QUESTION "Are the savings showing in the accounts?"
THE ONE THING Confirm or correct the figure in one reply
MESSAGE From the Email build: "90-day check", filled from the delivery
tracker
HANDOVER Any reply but a yes goes to the lead engineer within a working
day
GUARDRAIL Never sent if the review's final findings weren't accepted

The flow check. Walk the flow as each person it touches, on a real date. Would they know why they got each message, what to do, and who to ask? Then walk it as the person who owns it: on the day it misfires, how would you know?

The finished example: Kestrel's week-zero flow, written in full

Week zero is where Kestrel lost three starts last year. The flow covers three of automation's five lead moments: the plant manager's and improvement lead's "what do you need before you arrive?", and procurement's site-induction questions. Here it is for Hartwell Plastics, whose review starts on 3 November. Hartwell and its people are invented.

The trigger. The deal moves to "start date set" in the CRM, with a date at least 10 working days away. It does not fire if the contract is unsigned, or if the start is in less than five days (the partner calls instead).

Day 0, the same hour. To the plant manager, Dave Okafor, from Kestrel's lead engineer, Priya Raman:

• Subject: Hartwell review, starting 3 November: what we'll need from your team
• Dave, we start on your floor on Monday 3 November. Here's everything we'll need, so nothing waits on us or on you.
• From your team, week one: two hours a day of your time; one hour a shift from each line lead on lines 2 and 4; access to the floor on every shift. Before we arrive: a site induction booked for 8am on 3 November; two hi-vis vests and site passes; a desk near the lines. What we won't need: anyone taken off the line, or any change to your schedule in week one.
• Reply with a yes, or with anything that doesn't work. If it's easier to talk, my number's below. Priya Raman, lead engineer, Kestrel Advisory

Day 0, the same hour. To the improvement lead, Sam Ito: the data request, with a line on each item saying what it's for and who will see it. Scrap logs for lines 2 and 4 since January; the last three months of downtime records; energy readings by line if they exist. "If any of this doesn't exist, that's a finding, not a problem. Tell us and we'll measure it on site."

Day 0. To procurement: the site-induction form, the insurance certificate and safety record (both current, from the document store), and the data-handling note. No one asks for them, because they've already arrived.

Day 3, if no reply from the plant manager. One reminder, shorter. Day 5, still nothing: Priya is told, and calls. The flow never chases twice.

Day 5, if the data hasn't arrived. Priya calls Sam. Not a reminder email: a call, because missing data is the usual reason a start slips.

Day 8. The COO, Lena Marsh, gets one line: "Week zero is on track: your plant manager and improvement lead have everything they need, and the induction is booked." Or, if not: what's missing, and who's on it.

The guardrail. If anyone at Hartwell replies with a question, the flow stops for that person and Priya takes over. If the start date moves, every step re-dates itself; nobody gets the old date.

What to notice. Each message answers the reader's own question in its first line, says what they won't have to do, and comes from a named person. The flow makes two decisions a busy team gets wrong: it chases once, then hands to a human; and it tells the COO before the COO has to ask. It's up to five messages and two phone calls, for one start. Kestrel starts nine reviews a year.

Templates

The trigger inventory (one row per trigger; the build's single list)

The flow brief

FLOW [name]
STARTS WHEN [system · event · conditions]
NEVER FIRES [when it must not run]
MOMENTS [chooser · step, and what each is waiting for]
PEOPLE [everyone it touches, and the owner]
ENDS WITH [a person, a document or a confirmed fact]
OFF SWITCH [who, and the automatic stop conditions]
MEASURE [the stage it protects, and how you'll see it]

The step brief

STEP [number and name] WHEN [day or event]
JOB [stage · chooser · step · bias]
TO / FROM [a named person, to a named person]
THEIR QUESTION [answered in the first line]
THE ONE THING [what they need to do, or need to know]
HANDOVER [what sends it to a human, and to whom]
GUARDRAIL [what this step must never do]

The flow log (one row per flow per month)

In the campaign plan

Campaigns create waiting. A benchmark launch brings in downloads; a board-season push brings in fit calls; a round table brings in owners who want a follow-up the same week. Automation's rule: before a campaign starts, every response it invites has a flow, and every flow has an owner who knows the date.

The last row is deliberate. Some moments are too personal to automate: the flow's job there is to make sure the person remembers.

Running it

Who owns what. At Kestrel, the office manager owns the systems map and the flow log. Each flow has an owner who would notice if it stopped: the managing partner owns enquiry response and re-engagement; the head of delivery owns week zero, the review rhythm and savings confirmation; the finance lead owns the procurement pack. A flow without an owner is switched off.

The failure to plan for. Automation fails quietly. A broken flow sends nothing, and nobody notices for months. So every flow needs a heartbeat: a monthly count that would look wrong if it stopped. Kestrel's week-zero flow should fire about once a month; two months at zero means either no reviews started, or the flow is broken. Someone should know which.

Common mistakes

The bias to watch in the team: automation bias, the habit of trusting what a system did because a system did it. A flow that ran isn't a buyer who was served. Read the handovers.

The business check and the measures

Before any flow is switched on:

• Revenue: the P1 flows protect the deals already won and the proof for the next ones. If the team can build only two, build week zero and savings confirmation.
• One truth: every message's facts come from Credentials, every document from the store. A flow that states a price, a date or a term the proposal doesn't is switched off until it matches.
• Consent: contacts are messaged only for the deal or review they're part of. Newsletters need their own permission, kept by the Email build.
• Capacity: each handover needs a person within a day. If nobody can answer procurement's questions within a day, don't automate the request; fix the capacity first.
• The systems can see it: every trigger in the plan has a system and an event. Where none exists, the first job is a CRM stage or a field, not a flow.

The measures. Each flow is judged by the stage it protects, never by how much it sends.

The Loop for this build

Each quarter the Loop (step 11) reads the flow log beside the Score's deal moments, and asks: did the people who were waiting stop waiting, and did the moments after them hold?

What Kestrel's first year would look for. Reply times down from 26 hours to under one in the first month, because that flow is simple. Starts on the agreed date rising from six in nine to every one. And, by the year's end, savings confirmed for most closed reviews: the change no other build can make, because it turns every finished review into a case the finance directors at the next board will believe.

Shapes by business type

The moments where someone waits change with the business, and so do the flows that matter most:

Feeling a bit overwhelmed?

You should be, a little. One firm: nine systems, 11 triggers, eight flows, each with a brief, a brief for every step, an owner, an off switch and a heartbeat, and a log that has to be read every month, because automation fails quietly. Most firms buy a tool, switch on a newsletter sequence, and wonder why procurement still waits a week for an insurance certificate.

RocMode does part of the heavy lifting:

• From a signed brief to tasks, by channel. When you sign a campaign brief in RocMode, it breaks the work into tasks for each channel: email, social, ads, landing page and pitch deck.
• The moments behind every trigger. Your choosers, their steps and their questions, mapped from what's known about your brand, so every flow you build starts from a moment someone is waiting on.

Join the RocMode beta