What to Send Leads Before a Sales Call: Automated Warm Up

What should you send leads before a sales call?

The method is a short warm up sequence. As soon as a lead books a call, they get an email that confirms the appointment and links to a form. Once they complete the form, they receive a lead magnet. A second email goes out before the call to remind them and share extra resources.

The lead magnet has two aims. It makes the lead more familiar with your offer, and it gives you information from the form that you can share with whoever takes the call. Your closer then speaks to someone they already know something about, rather than a stranger.

The tools are interchangeable. We built the examples in Zapier with Calendly, Gmail and Typeform, but the same structure works in Make.com or GoHighLevel. Focus on the structure.

How do you build the booking automation?

The first automation triggers as soon as a call is booked. We tested it in Zapier on a free trial. Make.com also has a trial, so try both and use whichever suits you.

1. Trigger: a new event in your booking tool, using invite created.
2. Filter: continue only if the event type name contains the name of your sales call, such as sales or demonstration. This stops client calls or team calls getting the warm up.
3. Formatter, format date: convert the scheduled start time from a string of digits into a readable date and time for the email.
4. Gmail, send email: send a booking confirmation to the invitee's email. Thank them for booking, confirm the details and point them to the form, using the lead's name and the formatted date.
5. Delay until: wait until a set time before the call starts, by taking the scheduled start time and subtracting hours, for example four.
6. Gmail, send email: a second email that reminds them to complete the form and shares more resources, such as videos, to warm them up further.

Why use delay until rather than delay for?

Zapier has two delay options. Delay for waits a fixed amount of time after the booking. Delay until waits until a date and time you choose.

Leads book at different distances from the call. One person might book for later the same day, another for a week ahead. If you want the reminder to arrive, say, a few hours before the call, a fixed delay from the moment of booking will not work. Delay until, with hours subtracted from the event start time, will. In our test the time came out different from what we expected at first, so check the delay time in the test result and adjust the number of hours.

What should the form and lead magnet contain?

We used Typeform, but Google Forms and Tally also work. The form asks questions about the lead's business, such as what they are most interested in automating and their main goal. It takes about five minutes.

There are two kinds of question. The first kind creates the lead magnet. The second kind reveals pain points your closer can use on the call.

In our example, the lead magnet was a document of 20 or more pages that explains the offer and shows how it fits the lead's own situation. It includes specific examples based on their answers, such as ways to improve their onboarding or client journey, and a set of automation examples. The AI generates those sections from the form. Because it is long, it suits warmer leads, such as people who have already booked a call, more than cold ones.

How do you build the form completion automation?

The second automation triggers when the form is completed. This version is longer, so here is how it flows.

1. Trigger: a new entry on the lead magnet form.
2. Find the template Google Document. It contains generic text, with the parts to personalise in square brackets, such as the lead's name or agency name.
3. Run several ChatGPT prompts, one for each section: summarise their current onboarding, their client journey and the automation examples. Splitting the prompts gives more detailed answers and makes it easier to place each response into its own section.
4. Add a short delay so the prompts have time to finish, because running many at once caused errors.
5. Create a document from the template, replacing each bracketed placeholder with the matching AI response.
6. Send an email with the link to the document. Write emails as HTML, which you can do by asking ChatGPT to convert your text, then switching the body to HTML. Set the sharing permissions so anyone with the link can open it.
7. Add the lead to your email list, checking first whether their profile already exists.
8. Post a Slack message to the closer, summarising the form answers.
9. Add a longer delay, for example 48 hours, then send a follow up to check they have opened the document.

How do you cancel calls with unqualified leads automatically?

This bonus keeps your calendar free for people who fit. First add a qualifying question to the form, such as monthly revenue, team size or whether they own an agency. Then add paths in Zapier (a paid feature) to split qualified from unqualified leads.

Path A is for qualified leads and carries on with the lead magnet steps. Path B handles unqualified leads. The conditions depend on your own questions. In our example, a team size answer containing just me counted as unqualified.

1. Formatter, split text: take the scheduled event URL and split it on the hyphen, splitting every segment into a separate field. The last part is the event ID.
2. Code by Zapier, run Python: send an API request to your booking tool to cancel that event, using the event ID and your API token, with a reason such as not qualified. If the code needs changes, paste it into ChatGPT with any error.
3. Gmail, send email: explain that they are not a fit for now, that it does not rule out working together later, and share some free resources.

How do you find the event ID another way?

A second method is to store each meeting in a database such as Airtable when it is booked, including the scheduled event URL. When the form is completed, search that database by the lead's email, retrieve the event URL and cancel from there. It takes a few more steps but keeps the logic in one place. The video above walks through the full build.