Automation doesn’t have to mean a six-month enterprise rollout. Some of the highest-ROI automations are dead simple to implement and pay for themselves within weeks.

Here are three I recommend to almost every business I work with.

1. Automated Lead Follow-Up

The data is clear: responding to a lead within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes dramatically increases conversion rates. Yet most businesses still rely on someone manually checking a form submission and typing out a reply.

The fix: Connect your lead capture form to an automated sequence. When a new lead comes in:

  • Send a personalized acknowledgment email immediately.
  • Notify your sales team in Slack or Teams with the lead details.
  • Schedule a follow-up task if no response within 24 hours.

This takes an afternoon to set up with tools like Zapier, Make, or a lightweight custom integration. The impact on your pipeline is immediate.

2. Client Onboarding Workflow

Every new client means the same series of steps — create a project folder, send a welcome packet, schedule a kickoff call, set up billing, grant access to shared tools. Doing this manually is tedious and error-prone.

The fix: Build a single trigger that kicks off the entire sequence. One form submission or CRM status change should cascade into:

  • Folder creation in your project management tool.
  • A templated welcome email with next steps.
  • Calendar invites for key milestones.
  • Access provisioning for relevant platforms.

Clients notice when your onboarding is smooth. It sets the tone for the entire relationship.

3. Recurring Report Generation

If someone on your team spends time each week pulling data from multiple sources, formatting it into a report, and emailing it out — that’s automation waiting to happen.

The fix: Use scheduled scripts or workflow tools to:

  • Pull data from your analytics, CRM, or financial tools via API.
  • Aggregate and format it into a consistent template.
  • Deliver it to the right inboxes on a set schedule.

This frees up hours per week and eliminates the “forgot to send the report” problem entirely.

The Compounding Effect

Each of these automations saves a modest amount of time on its own. But stacked together, they free up meaningful capacity — capacity you can redirect toward growth, strategy, or building the next layer of automation.

Start with the one that causes the most friction in your current workflow. Get it running. Then move to the next.

That’s how you build momentum.