Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
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Our favorite Zaps: Keep your team up-to-date about online payments and purchases

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You’ve just made a sale! Now is the time to celebrate…and then promptly get down to a whole lot of work.

Whether it’s signing up for a subscription, purchasing a new item, or cleaning out your whole warehouse, customer purchases are the very beginning of a long to-do list for people within your company. You’ll want to send your customer an acknowledgment email. You’ll need to start a fulfillment process or schedule a service. The sale should be logged with a billing and accounting system.

That single transaction sets everything in motion. Zapier can automate that process, ensuring there’s never a missed step and that nobody gets bogged down as the go-between. The following four Zaps—Zapier's automatic workflows—run the communication process for you so all team members who need to know about a purchase receive word and can get down to business.

We’ve used PayPal, Stripe, Slack, and Trello in our examples, but feel free to mix and match from the more than 1,500 apps on Zapier to suit your needs.

Let the team know about PayPal purchases in your team chat app

The first thing to do with a purchase is to spread the word with as big of a megaphone as you can find. When a customer makes a purchase in PayPal, Zapier can send a message to a channel in your team chat app, like Slack or Microsoft Teams. The relevant team member can then follow up. And those who aren't involved directly in any post-purchase tasks, such as a manager, can track daily activity.

Creating a channel specifically for purchase notifications is a key part of this workflow so team members can check in as needed. This keeps everyone from being overloaded with and distracted by frequent notifications.

This is just one example of integrating your payment platform with a team chat app. You can build PayPal integrations with Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and other apps. You can also switch up the payment platform to another common app like Stripe or Square and do the same.

Post failed Stripe charges to Slack

There are few bigger headaches than when a customer’s payment source falls through. It’s like braking when you’re sailing along the highway at a smooth 70. To mitigate the whiplash, you can create a Zapier workflow that automatically posts in Slack when there's a failed charge in a payment processor like Stripe. This will prompt the relevant person assigned to this channel to act.

Advanced technique: Add another step to your Zap to automatically email your customer from a platform like Mailchimp to notify them of the failed charge and prompt them to enter another form of payment.

Create a task when a customer subscribes or makes a purchase

Not all sales are about physical purchases. Some are subscriptions, and those often come with discrete tasks for individual team members, especially when a service is involved. But taking time out of your day to add a task to a project management platform each time a purchase occurs is time-consuming, and it’s easy for tasks to slip through the cracks.

You can streamline the process by linking a payment platform like PayPal with a project management tool such as Trello. Every time a customer completes a purchase, the Zap will create the next task in the chain for everyone to see, address, and manage.

Schedule reminders after a Square transaction

With lots of purchases coming through, it can be easy for a task that’s specific to a single purchase to get lost in the fray. Sell a ream of paper? Someone needs to package that and ship it on time. Promise a customer you’ll be there by 10? Your team member needs to leave by 9:30 at the latest.

Rather than manually notifying the next person in the chain of action, you can set it up so that a purchase in your payment platform creates reminders where you need them, whether that's in a chat app like Slack, by text message, or in an email. And by adding a delay step to your Zap, you can have those reminders go out exactly when needed, whether that's an hour or a month in the future.

To explore, head to the Zapier App Directory and search for your payment processing app. From there, you'll be able to explore all the different apps it connects to, and build a workflow that fits your needs.

DIY: Make your own!

There are tons of different ways to connect your payment, team chat, and project management platforms. These examples are a few of our favorites, but there are as many ways to do it as you can dream up. What’s your go-to payment app? How can you combine it with your communication and project management apps to get the word out about purchases and streamline the ensuing flood of team tasks?

Let Zapier get that busy work off your to-do list. Search for the apps you use in our App Directory, and we'll be here for you if you need help setting things up.

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