How I Built My Own

How I Built My Own Telegram Lead Capture System in n8n.

The goal was simple: create a Telegram-based lead capture system that could collect enquiries in a structured way, remember where each user was in the conversation, validate the information, normalize budgets across different currencies, classify leads, and finally store everything cleanly in Google Sheets.

I come from a Python background, so writing the chatbot logic in code would have been the easier route for me. But for this project, I deliberately chose to build the conversational flow using native n8n nodes instead of relying on a Code node. I wanted to understand how state management, branching, routing, and multi-step conversations could be handled visually inside n8n.

I only used code later where it made more sense—validating lead data, parsing budget information, detecting currencies, converting values to USD, and classifying higher-value leads.

At the moment, this system does exactly what I need it to do. If the volume of leads grows in the future, I’d extend it further—for example, automatically sending myself an email notification whenever a high-ticket lead comes in.

For now, though, I wanted to keep it practical rather than over-engineer it.

Built with: Telegram, n8n, JavaScript, Google Sheets, n8n Data Tables, and a currency conversion API.