Although the pandemic led to an increase in people selling and working remotely in 2020— a third in the US saying they “always” work remotely in a Gallup poll conducted in October—there was already a trend.

As of the beginning of 2020, according to a FlexJobs survey, a full 41% of all global companies were offering some kind of remote work opportunity.

This trend is due to the benefits remote working can have. Besides enabling social distancing, working remotely also provides the following benefits:

• Cost-cutting on things like office space, travel and equipment
• Increased efficiency by eliminating the time to travel to client meetings
• Selling on a global scale with just a reliable internet connection
• Empowering sales representatives by providing them with the flexibility to set their own schedule (based on your parameters).

Although remote selling can be a challenge for salespeople who are new to it, according to FlexJobs, 65% of respondents indicated they feel more productive in their home office than at a traditional workplace. Moreover, a Stanford University study found that employees were 13% more productive when working remotely.

However, it should be noted that managing a remote sales team comes with its own unique set of challenges. According to a Buffer Study, two of the biggest challenges with managing a remote sales team is collaboration and communication. The good news is both can be minimized with the right tools for selling from home.

In this article, we discuss Pipedrive and Zapier, two highly effective tools that can help make remote collaboration and communication easier and more effective. Some topics we’ll explore include:

• How to get the most out of Zapier and Pipedrive
• Zaps to help you work remotely

Here are the use cases we explore

1. Slack
2. Microsoft Teams
3. Dropbox
4. Trello

How to get the most out of Zapier and Pipedrive

Zapier is a user-friendly web service that lets you connect the web apps you use daily to each other, making it easy to automate tedious tasks while you and your team focus on the more important matter of making sales.

Zapier can help you to streamline and speed up your most important sales processes including:

• Capturing deals and leads
• Centralizing contacts
• Updating deal stages
• Keeping track of action items
• Setting up alerts and notifications
• Communicating updates with your team

Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM tool that helps you visualize your business, sales and marketing workflows. When paired with Zapier, you can automatically sync your sales and marketing processes with other apps you use every day so that data can automatically pass between them, making it an invaluable, time-saving tool for your remote sales force.

You can create automated workflows, called “Zaps”, between Pipedrive and over 2,000 complementary apps. A Zap is defined as an automated workflow between your apps.

Every Zap has these two elements:

1. A Trigger: the event that tells the Zap to start
2. An Action: the part of the task that you want automated

Once a Zap is set up, every time the Trigger occurs, the Action will automatically happen.

Zaps to help you work remotely

Here we’ll explore four great Zapier integrations that Pipedrive users can utilize to automate their remote workflows and get even more done in the process.

Slack

Slack is one of the most popular tools for business collaboration and communication. It’s a must-have when working remotely and allows you to bring the team to you no matter where you or your team are. It’s great for large or small teams and is packed with features that allow for asynchronous communication, like the ability to create channels, file sharing, integrations, group chats and threads, and more.

With Zapier, you can connect Pipedrive to Slack so that you can easily alert yourself and your team of new deals in Pipedrive remotely, in any Slack channel you choose.

How it works:

Trigger: Whenever a new Pipedrive deal is created

Action: Automatically share that deal in a Slack channel

Other ways Zapier allows you to connect Pipedrive and Slack include:

• Post messages to a Slack channel when new deals are added to a stage on Pipedrive
• Get Slack direct messages for new Pipedrive deals
• Get Slack direct messages for new Pipedrive stages
• Create Slack channels for new Pipedrive deals
• Send Pipedrive new deals as direct messages in Slack

To learn more about how to create Zaps like these, that connect your Slack channel to your Pipedrive account, check out the Pipedrive Knowledge Base.

Microsoft Teams

Does your team use Microsoft Teams, not Slack? You can use Zapier to connect Pipedrive with Teams as well.

There are quite a number of Zaps you can set up between Pipedrive and Microsoft Teams.

You can have triggers in Microsoft Teams such as a new channel being created, chat message being sent, a team member added—you can have the first two as actions as well.

How it works:

Trigger: Whenever a new Pipedrive deal is created

Action: A message is sent on a Microsoft Teams channel

In Pipedrive, you can have triggers such as an existing person being updated, a new organization being created or a deal stage being updated. Pipedrive actions include a person, note or organization being created.

You can also sync up the two to use Microsoft Teams as a search function so that you can find specific activities, products and more in Pipedrive.

Here are some examples of Zaps that can be created:

• A chat message is sent to a Microsoft Teams user or channel the instant a Pipedrive deal is updated
• A new Pipedrive activity is created when a Microsoft Teams chat message is sent
• A new Microsoft Teams channel is created when a new Pipedrive organization is created

Dropbox

You can integrate Pipedrive and Dropbox to share files easily with remote team members so you all have the most up-to-date information.

For example, say your company creates a lot of custom nurturing content as a lead moves through your sales funnel, or even just documents pertaining to the deal.

With the Pipedrive-Dropbox integration through Zapier, you can automate the creation of a new Dropbox folder whenever a new deal is added to your Pipedrive pipeline.

How it works:

Trigger: Whenever a new Pipedrive deal is created

Action: Automatically create a new folder in Dropbox

Other ways Zapier allows you to connect Pipedrive and Dropbox include:

• Attach a file to a deal, person, organization, activity, product or note every time a new file is added to a Dropbox folder
• Move a file to a new location every time a new Pipedrive deal is created
• Create a shared link for a file when a person matches a Pipedrive filter

Trello

Trello is a project management app that works on multiple devices and platforms, making it a great tool to keep track of your and your team’s work, projects and tasks remotely. With this Zap, you can automatically create new Trello cards when a new Pipedrive deal is added to a specific stage.

How it works:

Trigger: A deal is added to a pipeline stage on Pipedrive

Action: Zapier automatically creates a new card on Trello

Using Zapier to connect Pipedrive and Trello will help you to ensure that you and everyone on your team stay on top of important work, tasks and projects.

Conclusion

No matter what tools you choose to enlist in your remote selling process, it’s important to set clear sales goals, communicate and make sure that your sales team isn’t drowning in activities that are non-sales related.

By creating Zaps through Pipedrive and apps you use every day, you can automate administrative tasks, improve communication and ensure workflow efficiency so that you can stay focused on the all-important task of selling!

For more Zapier integrations, check out ways to get the most out of ad tools with Pipedrive and Zapier in our article.