Making the decision to automate some parts of your business activity can bring solid results. For years, I have been telling my clients and audiences to “tech the tedious and automate the repetitive”.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Tech the Tedious and Automate the Repetitive in your business. #sales” quote=” Tech the tedious and Automate the Repetitive. Zapier is a great tool to get started. “]A while back I wrote about Zapier and IFTTT and shared examples you might benefit from.
Zapier is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start automating your work activities. Zapier provides connections between over 1,000 separate software applications, allowing you to connect two or more together. You can also string several together in a sequence, so that when one action occurs, that another action is taken, and possibly more after that.
Every job has repetitive, tedious tasks that are required on a regular basis. Many are done on a regular, predictable schedule over and over. An opportunity now exists to leverage the latest web tools to automate these specific, repetitive actions either one at a time or in a sequence that triggers a chain reaction. The opportunity is to “automate the repetitive stuff”.
I have found the following exercise helpful in identifying the activities in your day and then to decide which of these can be automated so you don’t have to do them yourself.
- Document the steps you go through time after time and then use Zapier or IFTTT to automate several of them together into a productivity chain.
- Create a list and write down every action/activity you do during a typical days activities from the time you wake until the day ends. Record EVERYTHING that you do. It is important that you write these down as they occur rather than try and recreate what you think you do from memory. Many of your daily tasks have been done so frequently over an extended period of time that you are not even aware of them in detail. They have become a part of your daily activity without thinking about them, yet they can take up a considerable amount of time.
Here is a brief sample of what you might find. Your list will be much longer and hopefully more detailed, but this will suffice as an example.
Zapier Sample Activity List
- Check email.
- Check your calendar.
- Review LinkedIn Profiles for those that you are meeting with that day or the next.
- Check email.
- Invite contacts that you meet to connect on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter and Google+.
- Enter the information into your CRM tool (you are using a CRM tool, right?).
- Send a follow-up email to those that you met and include info/attachments as appropriate.
- Check email.
- Plan out the route to your off-site meetings and check the traffic.
- Check to see if Marketing has sent you any leads to pursue in your CRM.
- Call those that you have scheduled to call.
- Present a PowerPoint deck to a prospective customer using your online meeting tool (GoToMeeting/Google Hangouts/ Skype).
- Send out invitations to connect on LinkedIn to those you met today.
- Send out invitations for LinkedIn for those that attended your GoToMeeting or your in-person meeting.
- Add all new contacts to your CRM
- Add meeting notes from your GoToMeeting or in-person meetings to CRM.
- Check Twitter to review activity from your current prospects and customers.
- Tweet and share your new product coming out.
- Share a tweet and/or update with a link to a new seminar that you/your company announced on their website today.
- Add all registrants for the live seminar as leads in your CRM
- Review the websites and social profiles of all registrants to your seminar.
You get the idea. Most people are surprised at how many of these ‘tasks’ they either are doing or know they should be doing to grow their business.
You are putting in the hours. Your effort is being given. Well-meaning friends and leaders will recommend “work smarter, not harder”. Yet you are not getting the results you and your company are expecting. There can be several reasons for this but typically your PRODUCTIVITY is a great place to put your focus.
As an example, you set up a “zap” that takes attachments in your email and adds them to a specific Dropbox folder you create for that purpose. Or save Twitter mentions to a Google Sheets spreadsheet for followup.
The challenge I have found in getting started is that there are so many options to choose from, it is challenging to decide where to begin and which steps will work well when automated. People have heard of Zapier, sometimes even created a free account, but have not gotten started.
That’s why Mastering Zapier was created. It is an online training course that steps you through 20 short, focused video lessons showing you how to become a Zapier Master. Here are some thoughts from me to get you thinking about the possibilities.
Have you used Zapier? Share one of your favorite ‘zaps’ in the comments below.
