Closing the Gap Between Sales and Onboarding

BackgroundContext and Problem

For a growing B2B SaaS company, the moment a deal closes should feel like a win for the sales team and especially for the customer.

The onboarding kickoff process was entirely manual. When an opportunity moved to Closed Won, someone had to remember to create an onboarding case in Salesforce, manually assign it to the right implementation user, and then send the customer an introductory email.

Some cases never got created at all. Others were created but sat unassigned, meaning the implementation team had no idea a new customer was waiting for them. And some customers did not receive an email or next steps.

Inconsistent onboarding can be one of the leading contributors to early churn.

The goal was to make sure every customer got the same experience: a fast, professional, personalized introduction to their implementation contact, and a clear picture of what onboarding would actually look like.

My ContributionRole and Responsibilities

I owned the end-to-end design and build of the onboarding automation. This ranged from scoping the problem, running discovery with the relevant stakeholders, designing the logic, building the automation in Salesforce, and coordinating the customer-facing email component through Salesloft.

I was responsible for:

Facilitating discovery sessions with the implementation team to understand what information they needed on day one of a new account
Conducting discovery with the sales team to align on how the customer handoff email should be positioned and who it should appear to come from
Designing the full trigger-to-outcome automation logic before writing a single line of flow
Building and testing the Salesforce Flow that fires on Closed Won and handles case creation and assignment
Configuring the Salesloft integration to route the onboarding email through the sales rep's name and signature
Coordinating QA across the process to validate that every piece worked end-to-end before go-live

I ran the discovery, made the design decisions, built the solution, and owned the outcome.

How It Was BuiltProcess

I started by talking to the implementation team. What did they need to see on day one for a new account? What context was missing when they inherited an account from sales? The answers shaped exactly what information the onboarding case needed to carry.

Then I talked to the sales side. These customers had just signed with their sales rep — they had a relationship there. We aligned on how the email was sent: it needed to look like it came from the rep who closed the deal, even though it would be automated.

With that clarity in hand, I mapped the logic:

T

Trigger

Opportunity Stage transitions to Closed Won

1

Action 1

Auto-create an onboarding Case with relevant fields pre-populated from the Opportunity and Account

2

Action 2

Assign the Case to the implementation user linked to that Account record

3

Action 3

Fire a Salesloft step that sends the onboarding email from the sales rep's name, introducing the implementation contact and setting expectations for the process ahead

What Was DeliveredSolutions and Deliverables

The final solution consisted of three interconnected components:

Record-Triggered Flow

Fires the moment an Opportunity is moved to Closed Won. Creates a new Case record with the Onboarding record type, populates key fields from the parent Opportunity and Account, and sets the case subject to a consistent naming convention that the implementation team can immediately parse.

Assignment Logic with Controlled Fallback

Checks the Account record for a designated implementation owner. If found, the Case is assigned directly to that user. If not, it routes to the implementation team queue as a controlled fallback — visible to the team, nothing disappears.

Automated Salesloft Email Step

Sends the onboarding kickoff email from the sales rep's name and email address. The template introduces the implementation user by name, outlines what the onboarding process looks like, and includes a link to the kickoff intake form. The email fires automatically within minutes of the opportunity closing.

Together, these three components replaced a three-step manual process that depended on human memory with a zero-touch automated workflow that requires no intervention unless something genuinely exceptional happens.

OutcomesImpact and Results

The immediate impact was operational reliability. Every closed-won opportunity now triggers the onboarding sequence without exception.

Implementation Team

Stopped starting mornings by hunting for context on new accounts — the case was already in queue with account information attached
Team lead gained visibility into incoming work before it became urgent
Time spent manually creating and routing cases was eliminated entirely

Customer Experience

Received a professional, personalized email within minutes of signing — not hours or days later
Email came from a name they recognized, preserving trust built during the sales process
Arrived at their first onboarding touchpoint already knowing their implementation contact and what to expect