5 Steps to Automatically Add Inbound Leads to a Salesloft Cadence Using Distro

Hey, I’m Scott Haney, I do RevOps at Chili Piper — and I manage tools and processes to make sure things work smoothly!

In this article, I’m going to talk about how to route high-intent inbound leads to the appropriate rep and add them into a Salesloft cadence.

Here’s the situation:

A lead comes inbound and signals high intent. For us, it means asking to chat from the SalesforceApp Exchange. For you, it could mean booking a demo, signing up for a free trial, or reaching a certain lead score threshold.

You want your reps to follow up with a cadence out of Salesloft.

Where do you start?

I'll explain step by step how to synchronize with Salesloft, once a record is triggered by Distro.

Let’s dig into it — and make it an easy and seamless process!

STEP BY STEP:

Step 1 - Make sure your workflow is set up correctly

Step 2 - What happens after the lead shows intent — syncing in Salesforce

Step 3 - How does the event gets triggered — routing in Distro

Step 4 - How to set up a follow-up rule — with Salesloft 

Step 5 - What do you do once the follow-up email is triggered

STEP 1 - Make sure your workflow is set up correctly.

The primary flow of data comes from your Marketing Automation Platform to Salesforce to Salesloft. 

Before you do anything with Distro, there’s some housekeeping items you should address:

1. Make sure all these platforms are properly synced.

Make sure custom and standard fields are properly mapped so each system is 1:1 with the data flow and duplicates don’t prevent things from working smoothly. 

2. Ensure you have the right data sync

You don’t want your systems accidentally overwriting data on important fields.

3. Choose your source of truth for the field updates 

For us, it’s Salesforce. We have all our other systems listening for updates from Salesforce. This means we’re focused on controlling the value in Salesforce, and making sure it really is that single source of truth that feeds other systems downstream.

STEP 2 - What happens after the lead shows intent — syncing in Salesforce

Based on your inclusion list criteria in your Marketing Automation Platform, let’s assume this record hits the right criteria. 

Here’s what should happen next: 

1. The record is synced into Salesforce
2. Salesloft checks Salesforce for new contacts based on the settings you have setup in the CRM Sync section of the app. Ours is set to look for any changes between contacts every minute. Next, setup an automation rule in Salesloft to check for when a contact is not found in Salesloft. The automation rule will create the person record in Salesloft matching the associated Salesforce record.

This way Hubspot, Salesforce, and Salesloft should match 1 to 1. We have our sync management in Salesloft set at the following settings:

With these settings, Salesloft will listen for changes. After the records exist in Salesloft, Salesloft will listen for changes on the record in Salesforce. When the record changes in Salesforce, it will be automatically assigned to a cadence based on meeting specific criteria you setup in subsequent automation rules in Salesloft.

STEP 3 - How does the event get triggered: Routing in Distro

Now that the contact exists in Salesforce, here’s what happens next: 

1. The contact has performed some type of high intent signal you captured in Hubspot. We have a Hubspot workflow run that tags this record to indicate this is a high intent lead. 

2. This workflow updates a boolean checkbox field in Salesforce. We call ours “Chili Piper Reassign”. When “Chili Piper Reassign” becomes true, it triggers Distro

3. Distro determines who this lead should be assigned to, based on the routing rules and fairness algorithm setup

In our case, we first check to see if the contact is already a customer. If it is, we assign it to their account manager.

Then, we check to see if the account is already an open new business opportunity. If it is, we assign it to the account executive.

If the record isn’t a current customer or an open opportunity, Distro sends the record to the SDR team to vet. If they deem it to be worth their time to engage, they follow up.

4. Reassign records where no action has been taken

In Distro, we also have SLAs setup to help people keep a close eye on their book of business. You can configure this to setup alerts, reassign records, and update fields so you make sure reps take timely action. If no one has attempted outreach within 24 hours, the SLA will trigger and reassign that record to another person and alert them to take action to follow up. 

This adds some FOMO and ensures sales reps don’t twiddle their thumbs and let potentially high-intent leads slip through the cracks.  

STEP 4 - How to set up a follow-up rule: Synchronizing with Salesloft 

Once Distro has routed and assigned the record, there are field updates that occur on that record, such as: 

• The Date/Time the record was last routed
• A Checkbox to indicate “Distro Routed”

When that boolean checkbox field is updated to “true”, it triggers the Salesloft Automation Rule. 

Within Salesloft, you can set up automation rules for “When a Person Changes in Salesloft” AND Criteria “Distro Assigned” is equal to true, then “Add to Cadence”. 

At the cadence level, you can choose whether you want this to be automatically sent out or let reps double-check before it’s sent. 

Here’s an example workflow we use at Chili Piper:

1. Someone requests to chat with us via the Salesforce App Exchange
2. We tag the matching contact to a Salesforce campaign and stamp a date, stating the “Most Recent App Exchange Date” value 
3. This value triggers Distro, and then assigns the record
4. When the “Most Recept App Exchange Date” value updates (from null to having a value, or from a previous value to a new value), it triggers our Salesloft automation rule
5. Salesloft assigns the person record to the cadence we indicated in our automation rules

Here’s what that looks like:

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STEP 5 -  What do you do once the follow-up email is triggered

Now that we’ve got the Salesloft automation rule triggered, it’s ultimately up to the rep to assess whether the contact is a good fit. It’s on them to engage and check out their intended use case. 

Building off our example above… 

If the contact who reached out from the AppExchange was heavily interested in a conversation, we would hopefully connect via email (or phone or LinkedIn, whatever channel works best).

Depending on the channel we connect with them one, we’d shoot over a quick “pre-qualification” email template we have on hand or chat with them on the phone to gauge the use case.

This essentially does what is described above. It gathers data on the use case, what they are looking to accomplish and a quick spot check on what systems they use. That way the rep knows we can properly work with them if they choose to do business with us. And it gives the account executive context ahead of the conversation so they don’t waste time asking generic questions on a demo. 

From there, the account executive would manage the sales cycle and assess if Chili Piper is the right fit for what they are looking to accomplish