## Introduction
In high-velocity sales environments, staying on top of deal health — the status and progress of active deals — is critical for maximizing closure rates and forecasting revenue accurately. Sales teams often rely on manual check-ins, spreadsheets, or CRM dashboards to monitor deals, which can be time-consuming, error-prone, and reactive rather than proactive.
This article provides a practical, step-by-step guide on building an automated workflow using **n8n** — a powerful, customizable, open-source workflow automation tool — to monitor deal health automatically. This automation will help sales operations specialists and automation engineers track deal milestones, identify stalled deals, and trigger alerts to sales reps or managers early on.
## Use Case & Benefits
– **Problem:** Deals can stall or lose momentum without timely interventions, risking revenue loss. Manual monitoring is inefficient, inconsistent, and reactive.
– **Who benefits:** Sales teams, sales operations, and revenue leaders who need real-time, automated visibility into deal pipelines with proactive nudges.
– **Solution Overview:** Automate deal health checks on active deals in your CRM (e.g., HubSpot), analyze key health indicators like time in a stage or lack of updates, and trigger Slack or email notifications for follow-ups.
## Tools/Services Integrated
– **n8n:** The automation platform orchestrating the workflow.
– **HubSpot CRM:** As the data source for deals and deal stages.
– **Slack / Email:** Communication channels for alerts.
– **Google Sheets (optional):** For logging or reporting deal statuses over time.
—
## Technical Tutorial: Building the Deal Health Monitoring Workflow in n8n
### Prerequisites
– Access to n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted).
– HubSpot account with API access and deals data.
– Slack workspace with incoming webhook or app bot token, or email credentials.
– (Optional) Google Sheets credentials.
—
### Step 1: Define the Monitoring Criteria for Deal Health
You need to identify what constitutes deal health in your organization. Common signals include:
– Deals stuck in the same stage beyond an expected duration (e.g., >7 days in “Negotiation”).
– Deals with no recent activities or notes.
– Deal amount changes or likelihood regressions.
This example focuses on detecting deals that have been in the same stage without updates for more than 7 days.
—
### Step 2: Trigger Setup — Scheduling the Workflow
1. **Add the “Cron” Node:** Configure it to run once daily (or any desired frequency).
– This node ensures your workflow checks deal health regularly without manual intervention.
### Step 3: Fetch Deals from HubSpot
1. **Add the “HTTP Request” Node:**
– Method: GET
– URL: `https://api.hubapi.com/crm/v3/objects/deals`
– Query Parameters: `limit=100` (max results per call), expand any properties needed (e.g., dealname, dealstage, amount, lastmodifieddate).
– Authentication: Use OAuth2 or API key as setup.
2. **Handle Pagination:**
– If more than 100 deals exist, implement pagination using `after` parameter to fetch all deals.
3. **Output:** An array of deal objects with relevant properties.
### Step 4: Filter Deals to Active Stages
1. **Add the “IF” Node or “Function” Node:**
– Purpose: Filter deals to only those in active sales stages (e.g., exclude closed-won, closed-lost).
– Condition: `dealstage` not in [‘closedwon’, ‘closedlost’].
### Step 5: Calculate Time Since Last Stage Change
1. **Add a “Function” Node:**
– Input: Each deal’s `dealstage` and `lastmodifieddate`.
– Process: Parse `lastmodifieddate` to a timestamp.
– Get current date timestamp.
– Calculate difference in days.
– Output deals where difference > 7 days.
_JS snippet example:_
“`javascript
const SEVEN_DAYS_MS = 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000;
const now = new Date();
const monitoredDeals = [];
for (const item of items) {
const deal = item.json;
const lastModified = new Date(deal.properties.lastmodifieddate);
if ((now – lastModified) > SEVEN_DAYS_MS) {
monitoredDeals.push(item);
}
}
return monitoredDeals;
“`
### Step 6: Enrich Data for Notifications
1. Use a **Set** or another **Function** node to prepare message payloads:
– Select deal name, owner, amount, current stage, last modified date.
– Format dates to readable strings.
### Step 7: Send Notification Alerts
Choose your preferred channel:
**Option A: Slack Notification**
1. **Add the Slack Node:**
– Action: Post Message
– Channel: #sales-alerts (or your team channel)
– Message: Include deal name, owner, days stalled, current stage, and a link to the deal in HubSpot.
**Option B: Email Notification**
1. **Add the Email Node:**
– To: Sales manager or deal owner email.
– Subject: “Deal Health Alert: Deal [Deal Name] stalled in [Stage Name]”
– Body: Include deal details and next recommended steps.
### Step 8: (Optional) Log Results in Google Sheets
1. **Add Google Sheets Node:**
– Append a row containing deal ID, name, stage, days stalled, and timestamp.
– Useful for historical reporting and trend analysis.
### Step 9: Workflow Testing
– Run the workflow manually.
– Verify fetched deals, filtering, timestamp calculations.
– Confirm alerts appear in Slack/email with correct info.
– Inspect Google Sheets data (if enabled).
### Step 10: Error Handling & Robustness
– Add Error Trigger Node to catch and log failures.
– Implement retry logic on API calls in case of rate limits or transient errors.
– Validate deal data presence with checks before date parsing to avoid failures.
– Secure credentials using n8n’s built-in credential management.
– Avoid spamming alerts for the same deal by tagging deals or adding cooldown periods.
### Step 11: Scaling & Adaptation
– For large deal databases, implement incremental fetching and stateful processing.
– Extend criteria to monitor additional deal health indicators like activity within CRM, changes in deal amount, or priority.
– Integrate additional communication channels like MS Teams, SMS, or custom dashboards.
– Combine with other workflows that trigger deal workflows based on health status updates.
—
## Summary & Bonus Tip
By automating deal health monitoring with n8n, sales organizations can proactively identify stagnating deals and prompt timely actions, improving pipeline velocity and sales forecasting accuracy. The flexibility of n8n lets you tailor monitoring criteria, notification methods, and data enrichment to your exact needs.
**Bonus Tip:** Implement a feedback loop by automatically updating a custom HubSpot property (e.g., “Deal Health Status”) from n8n based on analysis results. This allows your CRM to reflect the health status directly, enabling sales reps to see alerts in their daily workflow.
—
If you want to explore more advanced scenarios, consider integrating AI sentiment analysis on communication logs to gauge deal sentiment or incorporating calendar events to cross-check sales rep engagement.
This workflow can become a central piece in your sales operations automation ecosystem, saving time, reducing risk, and improving sales outcomes.