Slack CRM integration: How to use Slack + Close to win more deals

We built Close to facilitate better communication with customers. Slack was built to improve communication within teams. Close's Slack CRM integration forms a communication powerhouse that will help your sales process run like a well-oiled machine.

By connecting your CRM with Slack, you’re able to shine a spotlight on the things that matter the most to your business. This improves team knowledge, collaboration, energy and morale.

Need your sales team to jump on that red hot lead that just landed on your site? Want the company to know how much money it made that day? Looking to celebrate new deals as a team? Connecting your CRM to Slack enables you to do all that and more.

Why you should connect your CRM to Slack

We use Slack internally at Close for two primary functions:

1. A virtual water cooler where our fully remote team can shoot the shit.
2. A visibility tool to keep our team informed of business events that are relevant to them.

That second use case is what I’ll focus on in this post. Keeping our company on the same page and making the right information accessible to everyone has helped us grow exponentially as a business.

By connecting our CRM with Slack, we’ve personally seen improvements in both individual and team performance. We’ve also seen an uptick in cross-department collaboration.

Below, I’ll cover some of my personal favorite Slack + Close automations and will also share some more advanced recipes that I’ve seen our customers use to help their team crush it.

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Connecting Slack + Close

Zapier is the obvious choice when connecting different apps. Its simple, yet powerful features open up a wide range of automation opportunities beyond the Slack + CRM use case. It also has a free plan and startup-friendly pricing, making it accessible to just about everyone.

We use Zapier to connect Slack + Close. Close has the most robust Zapier integration out of any CRM on the market, so the possibilities here are endless.

To get started, create a Zapier account and select Close + Slack as the apps you’d like to connect.

Zapier automations work by first selecting an app and a trigger. You can think of triggers as the event that first needs to take place in Close before running an automation to Slack. Close currently has 18 different triggers that you can choose from.

The next step is selecting a second application to perform an action in. For this guide, you’ll be using Slack as the second app and choosing an “Action Event” to perform.

There are currently 681 possible ways that you can connect Slack + Close. Keep in mind that you don’t want to overload your team with too many Slack notifications from Close. The more time they spend in Slack the less time they’re selling!

Potential use cases for Slack and your CRM

Alert sales when you get a hot lead or signup

When you get a hot lead, it’s vital to follow up quickly. In fact, studies from the Harvard Business Review show that companies who follow up within one hour of receiving a lead are 60 times more likely to qualify that lead than companies who wait 24 hours.

You can use this Slack + Close combination to instantly notify your reps about hot leads.

In Zapier, create a new Zap and select Close as the app and “New Lead in Search Query / Smart View” as the trigger event.

Connect to your Close account and under the “Customize Lead” tab — either select a certain Smart View that you already have in Close for hot leads or input a new search query to filter leads in Zapier’s “Customer Query” bar. For more information on setting up Smart Views in Close, visit our Help Center.

We recommend that you use a search query or Smart View to filter so that you only get Slack messages about the best leads.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Notify your team of new opportunities

In Zapier, create a new Zap and select Close as the app and “New Opportunity” as the trigger event.

Once you connect to your Close account, you’ll be able to filter out specific opportunities to be shared in Slack. Just find the “Customize Opportunity” tab and fill in the appropriate fields.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Pro Tip: If your company handles a high volume of opportunities, you can use the “Customize Opportunity” field in the first Zapier step to only share opportunities above a certain value to your team.

Celebrate wins together when deals close

In Zapier, create a new Zap and select Close as the app and “New Opportunity in Status” as the trigger event.

Connect to your Close account and under the “Customize Opportunity” tab, select “Won” under “New Status ID” and “New Status Type” dropdown. Select “Yes” in the “Trigger On Opportunity Creation” dropdown.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Alert your team to missed calls or voicemails

In Zapier, create a new Zap and select Close as the app and “New Call” as the trigger event.

Connect to your Close account and under the “Customize Call” tab, select “Inbound” under the “Direction” dropdown and “No” under the “Completed?” dropdown.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Pro Tip: Use the same steps above but replace the trigger with “New SMS” to receive Slack notifications for new inbound text messages.

Assign new leads

To assign leads to users you’ll need to first set up a Lead Owner Custom Field in Close. Instructions can be found in our Help Center.

In Zapier, create a new Zap and select Close as the app and “New Lead in Search Query / Smart View” as the trigger event. Connect your Close account and input “not source:ui” in the “Custom Query” bar. This ensures that leads created manually by users are not reassigned.

In the second step, select Close as the app and “Select Random User” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. In the “Customize User” tab select “User” under the “Role(s) To Select From” dropdown.

For step 3, select Close as the app and “Update Lead” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. In the “Customize Lead” tab, select the “Lead ID” dropdown, click “Custom” and select “ID” from step 1.

Look for the Custom Field called “Lead Owner” that you created earlier and select “ID” from step 2 in the dropdown.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Advanced automations

Ready to take your Slack + CRM combination to the next level? Use these advanced automations to crush your data and empower your sales team.

Alert your team when a customer increases or decreases their billing

For SaaS businesses, it can be helpful to notify your team when an existing customer expands or contracts their account. To get started with this automation, you’ll need to create a Custom Field in Close that gets updated with what your customer pays you in subscription fees. At Close, we’ve labeled this field “Monthly Billable Amount”.

In Zapier, select Close as the app and “New Event” under the “Choose Trigger Event” dropdown. Connect your Close account and in the “Customize Event” tab, select “Lead” under “Object Type”. Under the “Action” dropdown, select “Updated”.

Under the “Changed Fields” dropdown, select the Custom Field that you created previously in Close. In this case, we’re looking for updates to the “Monthly Billable Amount” custom field that we set up.

Next, select “Formatter by Zapier” as your next app and select “Numbers” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown.

Under the “Customize Numbers” tab, select “Perform Math Operation” under the “Transform” dropdown and “Subtract” as the operation.  In the input dropdown, select the Event Data from the custom field that you updated. In this example, we’ll select “Event Data Custom Monthly Billable Amount”.

In the next field, select the Event Previous Data from the custom field that was updated. In this example, that field is labelled “Event Previous Data Custom Monthly Billable Amount”.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Pro Tip: If you only want to update your team about substantial changes in revenue, add a “Filter” step before the Slack step and set it to only continue if the output is greater than a set number or less than a set number.

Send a daily user activity report

This automation is helpful for monitoring your team's daily activity. In Zapier, select “Schedule by Zapier” as your first event and “Every Day” under the “Choose Trigger Event” dropdown.

Choose whether you want the report to run on weekends or not and select a time of day that you’d like the report sent. At Close, we send daily reports to Slack around 9pm EST, but select whatever time makes the most sense for your business.

Select “Code by Zapier” as your next app and “Run Python” under the “Choose Action Event” dropdown.

Next, go to Close and find your Organization ID and API key. You can find your company’s organization ID in your Close account by clicking Settings > General and then copying the section of the URL that starts with “orga_”

Your API key can be found in Close by visiting Settings > Api Keys > + New API Key

Back in Zapier, go to the “Customize Run Python” tab  and input your API Key in the “Input Data” fields and label it as “api_key”.

In the “Code” section, copy and paste the following code.

This Python code creates a loop in your zap and will run it consecutively for every user in your organization. When you test this Zapier automation, it will only work for the first user it finds, but once you turn it on, the Python code will work and run the report for every user in your organization.

In Zapier, select Close as the next app and “Run Activity Overview Report” under the “Choose Trigger Event” dropdown. Connect your Close account and in the “Customize Event” tab, select the metrics that you’d like to include in your report.

Select “Today” in the “Date Range” dropdown menu. Under the “Users” dropdown, select the “Custom” tab, then “2. Run Python” and then “2. ID”.

Next, select Slack and pick “Send Channel Message” in the “Choose Action Event” dropdown. Connect your Slack account, select the channel that you want to send the message to and customize your message. Here’s a sample message you might want to send:

Daily Activity Report - 3. Date End

*2. Name*

Sent email: 3. Sent Emails All Types
Outbound calls: 3. Outbound Calls All Types
Opportunities: 3. Opportunities Created
Received emails: 3. Received emails all types
Inbound calls: 3. Inbound calls all types

Slack CRM integration: Communication redefined

There are so many different ways you can connect Slack and Close. By connecting the two, you can make sure that your team is up to date on important business events and get them working together more closely.

Remember, it’s important not to overdo it when you connect your CRM to Slack. Too many messages in Slack can be a distraction and keeps your team from doing what they do best — selling! When used properly though, these tools form the ultimate communication solution.

Need some killer email templates for your CRM? Get them here: