5 Essential Business Systems to Simplify & Streamline Your Work
I’m a firm believer that creating a system can be easy AND that doing so will save you hours of time and sanity. It can stop you from missing steps or dropping the ball and means you don’t have to keep everything swirling around in your head.
Another thing that I love about systems is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are loads of done-for-you systems and templates around the internet (both free and paid for) to help you right away!
What do you want more time and energy for?
As entrepreneurs, sometimes it’s easy to neglect our lives outside of our businesses! Whether it be spending more time with friends and family, picking our favourite hobby back up, or focus on improving another area of your personal life - it can be so important to put some systems in place to make that happen!
And sometimes, we can be spending so much time getting stuff done in our business, we aren’t working on some of the most important jobs at all. Like the vision for the business, making important connections or thinking about where our next clients or customers will come from.
IF YOU TAKE 1-2 HOURS EACH WEEK FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS TO WORK ON THE FOLLOWING SYSTEMS, YOU WILL SAVE SEVERAL TIMES THAT IN THE COMING WEEKS AND MONTHS TO PUT BACK INTO YOUR LIFE AND YOUR BUSINESS - I PROMISE.
1. CLIENT/CUSTOMER ONBOARDING
Have a think about where your clients are coming from and the steps they go through when starting to work with you!
For me it goes like this:
Referral to me (almost all of my clients are referred by other clients)
Consultation (I offer a free 20-minute call to see if working together is a good fit for both of us)
Intake (Dubsado filled out with business details & contract signed)
Education (around my business & collaborative tools we’ll use)
Collaborate (we get started with another, longer call to set priorities and get moving)
For these things I have templates for the client calls, for the after call follow-up email, a set email sequence for the intake & education phases, an online intake form, and a templated Asana board for project management.
This allows for a consistent user-experience! My clients feel like they are supported and like that their questions are answered before they even ask them.
2. OFF-BOARDING
Depending on what you do, your off-boarding system might vary. It might look like giving an incentive to buy something another product or book another service. It might be a summary of a completed project. It might be a tutorial of how to use their new website or software that you’ve setup.
Whatever best suits your business, what it absolutely should include is a request for a review or testimonial. Which you should then use to put on your website, social media and more. This social proof of the value of your business is absolutely invaluable.
All of my clients receive an email after 4-6 weeks of working together or at the end of a project requesting a testimonial. I offer some prompts to get them started, some examples of other client testimonials, and little incentive they can receive if they send me a nice one that I can put on my website and social media.
3. AUTOMATIONS & INTEGRATIONS
Nearly all the digital tools you use will have the ability to integrate with your other tools. There are two ways to go about this. First check your software settings to see what native integrations it supports. Second try a third party integrator like Zapier or If This Then That!
Another fantastic thing to help you save time is to use browser extensions and email add ons to access your favorite tools faster and gain additional features.
This one is my favourite. Use templates! You can find so many templates by Googling. I use them for everything - including: emails, email newsletters, contracts, graphics, call templates, forms, presentations, and much more!
4. MARKETING
Creating a system for how you market is essential! Marketing in a way that feels natural for you AND works for your business is one of the big keys to success. A resource that I found extremely useful is the Marketing Personalities podcast - which gives marketing advice based on your Meyers Briggs personality test.
I do almost all of my marketing by referrals and a little by social media.
If you do marketing by networking or sending out pitches or pairing their business with a charity or giving back effort or whatever works for you - write it out and track your efforts!
5. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Using a project management tool is fantastic for keeping all of your ideas, resources, tasks, and processes all in one place is a fantastically wonderful thing. It also means that when you are ready to outsource it is really easy to start passing these things over to your new helper.
I recommend Trello if you are new to the world of these tools. It’s free and very helpful! However, in my business we use Asana because it allows for sub-tasks and recurring tasks!
It’s also helpful to use a tool like Loom to communicate and/or document processes.
I’d also recommend a tool for tracking your time like Toggl - because knowing where your time is going is critical for spending it wisely.
WITH THESE SYSTEMS IN PLACE YOU CAN:
save hours upon hours each week
save quite a bit of sanity
breathe easier because less is swirling around your head
provide a consistent client/customer experience
