Case study  ·  Lead & Sales

A lead capture system that replies in seconds and flags the hot leads

Every form submission is logged, answered with a personal reply written by AI, sorted as hot or cold, and hot leads ping the owner in Slack.

The problem

Small service businesses lose money in a quiet way. A lead fills in the contact form, the message sits in a crowded inbox, and someone replies hours later, if at all. By then the prospect has messaged three competitors.

Every lead also looks the same in an inbox. A buyer with budget ready and someone just browsing arrive as the same unread email, so the owner spends the same energy on both and the hot leads get buried.

How it works

A form submission starts the workflow. The lead is saved to a Google Sheet. An AI step writes a personal reply that uses the lead's name and refers to their request, and classifies the lead as hot or cold from intent, budget signals and urgency.

Hot leads trigger a Slack alert to the owner before the reply goes out. Cold leads are logged and answered without interrupting anyone.

n8n workflow: webhook, append row in sheet, AI model, code step, an If check, Slack message, respond to webhook, after a hot lead run
A hot lead running through. The If check sends it to Slack.
The same workflow after a cold lead, which skips the Slack alert
A cold lead. No alert, just the reply.
n8n If node checking whether status equals hot, with the personal reply shown on both sides and the lead's first name blurred
The hot or cold check, with the drafted reply. The name is blurred.
Slack hot_leads channel with three hot lead alerts quoting each lead's message, with names and emails blurred
Hot lead alerts in Slack. Names and emails are blurred.
Google Sheet of leads with name, email, message and submitted time, with names and emails blurred
Every lead in the sheet, hot or cold.

The original write-up estimates the time saved: at about 10 minutes of manual handling per lead, a business with 20 leads a day gets back more than 3 hours a day.

What a person still handles

  • The sales conversation with hot leads.
  • Cold leads, which are logged for follow up when there is time.
  • Tuning the reply style and the hot or cold rules.

Built with

  • n8n
  • OpenAI
  • Google Sheets
  • Slack

n8n, an OpenAI model for the reply and the classification, Google Sheets for the log and Slack for alerts.

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