Categories / Lead Follow-up & Sales
Client intake to onboarding projects
Financial planning firm · 50% more activities completed
- Task
- run lead capture, sales and client onboarding projects in one place with standard communication
- Result
- team completes over 50% more activities; almost all processes run through Pipedrive
- Tools
- Pipedrive (email templates, automations, Insights billing plans, Projects, Smart Docs); LeadBooster (Chatbot, Web Forms); Microsoft integration
- Setup
- clean up contact fields → map client touchpoints and add automations → standardize emails with templates → Chatbot and Web Forms write prospect answers into custom fields → create a project from a template per service type to deliver onboarding → forecast with billing plans
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A ready-to-send prompt built from this card. Your AI will ask a few questions about your business, then give you a beginner setup plan.
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Help me set this up for my business: "Client intake to onboarding projects".
Example business: Australian financial planning firm (team on the CRM grew from one to six). Task: run lead capture, sales and client onboarding projects in one place with standard communication.
Reported result: team completes over 50% more activities; almost all processes run through Pipedrive
Tools: Pipedrive (email templates, automations, Insights billing plans, Projects, Smart Docs); LeadBooster (Chatbot, Web Forms);…
Setup outline:
1. clean up contact fields → map client touchpoints and add automations → standardize emails with templates →…
Starter prompt from the guide (use it as a base):
Draft a client-onboarding checklist for a financial planning firm: 12 tasks with owners (adviser, paraplanner, admin) and due days from start. Do not include legal wording.
First, ask me up to 5 questions about my business and tools. Then give me a beginner step-by-step setup plan, plus copy-paste prompts/templates I can use. Plain English, and tell me if any step needs a tech helper.
via autopilotbusiness.ai/use-case/financial-planning-firm-pipedrive-chatbotweb-forms-projects-templates/Step-by-step setup guide
> Cost: Paid. Pipedrive starts at $14 per user per month (annual billing); automations need Growth ($39) or higher, and LeadBooster and Smart Docs come with Premium ($59) or as add-ons on lower plans.
Honest note: Rules, not AI. "50% more activities" has no baseline and counts activity, not outcomes. Pipedrive's Microsoft integration is not covered.
Prerequisites
- A Pipedrive account on the plan the steps below need (they say which).
- Admin rights, because pipelines, automations and web forms are admin-only.
Step-by-step setup
Step 1. Add the custom fields you need. Go to Company settings → Data fields, pick the type (deal, person or organization) and add fields for what you want to filter and report on. Choose a field type (single option works best for anything you want to count later).
Step 2. Capture web inquiries with a form. Go to Leads → Web Forms → New Web Form, pick a template, click Create form, style it, and choose whether submissions save as a Lead or a Deal. Then Share and embed → Copy to clipboard and paste the code into your site. Web Forms are part of LeadBooster (Premium and up, or an add-on). Creating one needs deals admin rights.
Step 3. Add a Chatbot to qualify visitors. Go to Leads Inbox → Chatbot → New playbook. Pick a colour palette, set the bot name, picture and language, then choose a template (Get more leads, Book more meetings, Qualify and route leads or Chat with your leads) and click Create playbook. Edit cards with the pencil, add one with the + between cards, Save, and switch the active toggle on. Then open the playbook's Installation section and embed it on your site (manual code, WordPress, Squarespace or Google Tag Manager). Only one playbook per page. The Chatbot follows scripted rules; it is not AI.
Step 4. Save your standard emails as templates. With email sync on (Growth and up), open an email composer (Sales Inbox → + New email, or the email tab on a deal) and click Choose template → Save draft as template, or Choose template → Manage templates → Add new template. Write them yourself in Pipedrive rather than pasting from elsewhere.
Step 5. Standardise delivery with Projects. Create a template at Projects → Templates → + Template, pick the board, add tasks, activities and milestones with due dates relative to the project start, and Save and close. Start projects from the template with Use, or add an automation (for example when a deal is won) that creates the project. Projects come with Premium and up, or as a per-user add-on on Lite and Growth.
Step 6. Build the automation. Open the account menu → Tools and apps → Automations → + Automation, choose an Event trigger (deal, person, activity, lead, organization or project; added, updated or deleted) or a Date trigger (exact, before or after a date field), and click Apply trigger. Add optional conditions, then actions: create or update records, create an activity, send email (from your synced email account), or other actions the menu offers. Actions run top to bottom. Save and switch it Active. Automations need Growth or higher.
Easier: let your AI do it
Pipedrive has an official MCP server, a secure plug that lets an AI chat like Claude look up and update your deals with your permission.
- In Claude, open Customize → Connectors, click +, then Add custom connector. Name it "Pipedrive MCP", paste
https://mcp.pipedrive.ai/mcpand click Add (Claude's free plan allows one custom connector). Pipedrive is also in Claude's connector directory. - Sign in to Pipedrive and click Allow and install.
- Try: "Show me deals that haven't had an activity in 14 days, grouped by owner."
What success looks like
Onboarding looks the same for every client.
Common issues & fixes
- An automation did not fire: importing data does not trigger event-triggered automations (only date triggers and lead updates), so test with a record you create by hand.
- Feature missing from your menu: check your plan; several items here are add-ons on Lite and Growth.
- Project not created: add the automation that creates it when a deal is won.
Optional: Maintenance
- Quarterly: update the onboarding template.
Copy-paste prompt
Use this with any AI chat. It helps you design the onboarding checklist.
Draft a client-onboarding checklist for a financial planning firm: 12 tasks with owners (adviser, paraplanner, admin) and due days from start. Do not include legal wording.Sources
- Case: Pipedrive case study (financial planning firm). Credit: the firm's principal (vendor-published).
- Pipedrive Help: Workflow automation
- Pipedrive Help: Pipedrive MCP with Claude
- Pipedrive pricing
- Pipedrive Help: Projects: templates
- Pipedrive Help: Chatbot
- Pipedrive Help: Web Forms
- Pipedrive Help: Email templates
Results as reported by the source; not independently verified. Community-sourced from public sites and attributed to the source platform. Original author? Ask us to correct or remove it. Read the disclaimer.