I spent three hours every monday morning qualifying leads.

I was the bottleneck for work that didn't need judgment.

zapier moved data between apps. n8n automated the thinking.

You set up a demo request form. connect it to zapier. Someone submits → zapier adds their info to google sheets, sends slack message, creates CRM contact.

Except now someone has to open that slack message, check if this person is worth talking to, google their company, decide how to respond, and route them.

The automation moved work from inbox to slack. didn't eliminate it.

Demo requests look like:

Every monday: read 50 rows, manually sort. three hours gone.

n8n is an open-source automation platform with AI nodes that can analyze and decide.

You can self-host it or use n8n cloud.

The interface is a visual workflow builder with four areas:

The critical difference from zapier:

zapier: if email contains "enterprise" → send to sales

n8n: AI reads the entire email, understands context, scores lead quality, identifies pain points, determines urgency → routes accordingly

Nodes output data as JSON. next node reads it using {{ }} expressions.

Webhook receives: {"name": "Sarah Chen", "email": "[email protected]"}

Slack message field: New lead: {{ $json.name }} from {{ $json.company }}

Result: New lead: Sarah Chen from TechCorp

Click into any field, dropdown shows available data. click to insert.

This workflow saved me three hours every monday morning.

what it does: someone fills out your demo form → n8n enriches their company data → AI analyzes fit and urgency → automatically routes to sales, nurture, or decline.

step 1: webhook setup

Create new workflow. add a webhook node (this receives data from your form). configure it: http method POST, copy the webhook URL. test it by sending sample data with postman or curl. webhook receives it, data appears in execution panel. webhook node turns green.

step 2: enrich with clearbit

Add an HTTP request node connected to the webhook. this calls clearbit's API to get company data.

settings:

This extracts the domain from [email protected] → acmecorp.com

Add authentication header with your clearbit API key. execute the node. If it works, you see enriched data: company size, industry, funding status, tech stack.

step 3: merge the data

Add a merge node. combine webhook data (name, email, message) with clearbit data (company size, industry, funding). Now the next node sees everything together.

step 4: AI analysis

Add an openai node (or claude if you prefer anthropic).

System prompt:

user message:

execute it.

AI response:

The AI connected "series B" + "250 employees" + "looking for better" to mean "talk to them now."

step 5: route based on score

Add a switch node. three routes based on {{ $json.fit_score }}:

High priority (8-10): send slack alert to #sales-hot-leads with full AI analysis, create hubspot contact with "hot lead" tag, send personalized welcome email

Medium priority (5-7): add to CRM, start nurture sequence

Low priority (1-4): send polite decline, skip CRM

step 6: handle errors

Enable "continue on fail" on external API nodes (clearbit, openai). if enrichment fails, workflow continues using form data only. add error workflow that sends slack alerts when anything breaks.

Activate it: toggle "active" in top right. workflow is now live. give the webhook URL to your developer to replace your form submission endpoint.

It’s simple.

Low stakes → full automation:

Routing support emails (worst case: wrong department, forwarded in 5 minutes), filtering obviously bad leads (worst case: miss one, they'll follow up), categorizing content for social (worst case: delete and repost).

Medium stakes → automate with checkpoint:

qualifying leads for sales (AI scores, human reviews 8+ before contacting), triaging bugs by severity (AI flags critical, human confirms before paging on-call), drafting responses (AI writes, human edits before sending).

High stakes → AI assists only:

pricing decisions (AI analyzes, human decides), legal/compliance anything (AI summarizes, lawyer reviews), refunds over your threshold (AI recommends, human approves), hiring decisions (AI screens, human decides).

My setup: fully automated support routing and lead filtering. automated with review for hot lead qualification (i check AI scores 8+ before sales contacts them). AI assists only for pricing, legal, hiring.

What broke when I built this

clean data vs reality: 

tested with "John Smith" from "[email protected]".
real leads: "JOHN SMITH!!!", "[email protected]", "acme corp, inc."

everything broke.

now fixed: added data cleaning node that normalizes names, fixes typos (gmial→gmail), standardizes formatting.

no error handling: content workflow ran three weeks. twitter API went down. 127 failed posts. no alerts. fixed it: "continue on fail" on all external APIs, retry logic, immediate slack alerts on failures.

Automation used to mean "do these steps in order." now it means "understand and decide."

I'm not qualifying leads. i'm reviewing AI's decisions. execution is now just oversight.

Start with tasks where you follow the same logic, decisions have clear criteria, and errors cost little.

Add checkpoints for medium stakes. never automate significant money, legal decisions, or strategic pivots.

So reply and tell me, which decisions are you ready to delegate?

Until next time,
Vaibhav 🤝🏻

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