Automatic reminder expiration of contract: how does it work? 

A good sales has insight into his sales opportunities. Especially with his current customers where the opportunities are greatest. For example, an expiring contract is one of the best leads to generate more business. Therefore, set an automatic reminder when a contract expires. Approach your customer proactively and outline a plan for the future. This way, you not only ensure business retention, but also increase the chances of a better deal where you can deliver more value to the customer. 

Get rid of Excel

For many companies that track contract end dates, this is still often done in Excel. This creates several obstacles:

- All contracts should be put into the Excel file
- Interim changes to a contract must be manually updated
- Multiple colleagues must have access to the Excel file
- Colleagues should alertly take over each other's duties in case of vacation/sickness
- At worst you are losing sales

Enter: Sales Cloud

Through Salesforce Sales Cloud, you can centrally track the cycle of contracts and fully automate tasks for sales. The benefits are:

- All contracts are updated in real time
- No duplicate administration
- All colleagues have insights when a contract expires

An important step is that you close all contracts through Salesforce Sales Cloud. If you track this neatly, you can use this data not only for automation, but also for reports and dashboards.

Step 1 - Preparation

Before we start building the automation, it is important to know what things you want reflected in the process. To do this, draw out a diagram. Include in it:

- Whether it is all customers or specific customers
- Whether you want to exclude some products/services
- Which colleague would you like the customer to contact
- A date field on which you build logic. For example, contract end date

Step 2 - Set up automatic reminders

To remind our sales that a contract is expiring, we arrange for a task to be created automatically. We use Salesforce Flow. You will find this in the 'Setup' page of your Salesforce environment. Then follow the steps below:

1. Create a Salesforce Schedule-Triggered Flow for a new Opportunity
2. Select the following criteria:
- The flow should trigger when a record is created or updated
- Conditions:
    - Contract end date is less than 30 days from today
    - Client does not yet have a new Opportunity
3. Assign the newly created tasks to the Account/Opportunity owner.
4. Save and activate the Flow

Step 3 - Contacting customers

Now that contract expiration reminders have been automated, the sales team can rest fully back on their to-do list. The team does not have to manually look up which customers to contact. In addition, they don't have to worry about missing a customer. And they are more efficient, all the information they need to close a new contract is quickly and easily available.

What is the result?

The result is that you never again miss out on unnecessary sales because you missed a "free" sales opportunity. In addition, you have insight into a forecast for future contracts.

What else is possible?

You can also choose to send the customer a reminder that the contract is about to expire. You warm up the customer for the upcoming contact with your Sales team. You can make it even better if you let the customer choose a contact moment. With the same principle you can also organize the after sales. You automate a large part of your customer contact moments. This way you avoid ever overlooking an important opportunity.