How to Zap to impress

Get people to care about what you build in Zapier with these three approaches.

No one cares about your Zaps.

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But that’s about to change. It used to look like this:

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You finished building an impressive 20-step automation. It was a journey. Highs and Lows. Unexpected twists, turns, and tradeoffs. You entered FLOW state.

It was like a well-oiled machine. A stunning automobile.

It was time to let your team/client/partner know about your Zap. It was your mic-drop moment.

“It’s done,” you tell them with a self-approving nod.

You get one thumbs up reactji in Slack. Five minutes later you get a clap.

“Thanks. Looks good!” they say.

They’ll never understand.

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Here’s the truth: your team is never going to recognize the invaluable work that goes into creating a Zap.

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Your team just wants it to work.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

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Today I’m going to teach you how to change what your team thinks about what you build. After today, you’ll have three new approaches to building in Zapier that will make your work more valuable.

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Let’s dive in.

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A Ford Moment

Do you know Gottlieb Daimler? He built the first automobile 11 years before Henry Ford built one. Daimler loved engines and that’s where he focused.

Ford didn’t focus on the engine. He focused on accessibility. He answered one question: How can I give freedom to more people? He made the Model T more affordable. His sold for about $300 where others sold for $1,000+.

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With Zapier, you need a Ford Moment.

Instead of expecting your team to value the automation engine running underneath the hood, you need to put them in the driver seat.

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Here’s how you do that:

Use Interfaces to give your team an automation car
Show them the mystery by getting them to drive (a.k.a. giving them buttons to click and decisions to make)
Give them a speedometer report of what happened

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Give Them a Car

You wouldn’t give someone an engine for their 16th birthday (unless they are a mechanic or something). You’d give them a car and hand them the keys to freedom.

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With Zapier’s Interfaces, you can put your automation engine inside of a car. The number of different cars (interfaces) is growing so that you can find exactly which car (interface) your team will want to drive.

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Here’s what’s in the parking lot:

Chatbot
Form
Portal
Table
Link Cards
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Once you’ve given your team a car, you need to give them a way to drive it.

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Show Them the Mystery

Why does every good magician have a trick where they get an audience member to participate? Because people want to touch the mystery. They want to get involved!

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In the same way, the best way to get people to value your work in Zapier is to give them a driver seat to what you’ve built.

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Here’s how they can drive the automation:

Instead of automatically triggering when two fields are filled out, make a button that they press to trigger the automation.
Instead of automatically sending the email, draft the email, message the teammate and have them “approve” it.
Instead of automatically creating new leads in the CRM, create a list and have your team click a button to assign leads to themselves which creates a draft email for them to send.

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This may sound counter-intuitive. Why force a manual step in an otherwise smooth, automated process? Well, let me ask you another question. You know the feeling you get when you turn a Zap on, run it, and it works? It’s bliss.

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By giving people a reason to interact with your automation, you’re sharing that feeling of bliss. If you don’t give that to your team you’re stealing.

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There’s one more approach you can work on.

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Build a Speedometer

Some of the best automations I’ve seen in Zapier run so smoothly that no one knows they are moving in the background. But that’s a problem if you want your team to participate.

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So what do you do?

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Put a speedometer in the car so they can see how fast they’re moving. You send them a digest of important Zaps that completed, what they automated, and an estimate of how much time it saved.

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Display it in an Interface and send your team a link to it each week in Slack. Better yet, give them a button to click that says “I want a Zap like this” next to each Zap that sends them to an Interface form so that other people can request that you build them something similar.

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Follow these three approaches and your Zaps will be the talk of the trade show.

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To recap: