You can save a lot of time, get more clients and run your business more effectively when you use systems for everything you do.

Doing marketing, drawing clients into your pipeline, staying in touch with prospects and clients, scheduling client consultations, converting prospects into clients, keeping records of client communication, billing clients, tracking income and expense etc. etc. are all tasks you do on a regularly (even daily) basis. Creating a system around each of these tasks or activities, makes it easier to do, saves time and can even put your business on autopilot when you are not in the office.

So, what is a system?

Without going too much into details, a system is a set of steps, methods or procedures you follow to carry out a specific activity, perform a task or solve a problem.

Thus, to create a system for a specific activity in your business you’ll need to know all the specific steps you follow – from start to end – to complete that activity.

In practice, creating systems do not need to be complicated. The only requirement is the systems should work best for YOU and YOUR business. Ultimately the purpose of a system is to save you time and to put most of your repetitive tasks on autopilot so they can take care of themselves with no to minimum involvement from you.

Systems save time and put most of your repetitive tasks on autopilot.
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Here are examples of 5 systems to simplify the process of getting more clients.

Doing Marketing: If networking and frequently attending live events is one of your marketing strategies, a system can simply be to schedule the dates of all the networking events in your calendar. This way you do not have to remember everything as your system will do the work for you. You can even set a reminder for a couple of days before the event to allow for any preparation, if needed. This way you won’t forget about the event and will be well prepared when you attend. Scheduling is a simple system that can help you stay consistent in attending those in-person events, saves time because you know it is scheduled and you’ll be reminded in time, and you’ll feel more confident when you show up, since you had ample time to prepare.

Filling your Client Pipeline: An example of a system to fill your client pipeline is to use your website, email marketing software and a free offer to capture the contact details of visitors to your website.  You can direct all your marketing efforts (the people you meet at events, all your off-line and online marketing) to your website and let your well-oiled system takes care of getting these web visitors into your client pipeline so you can stay in touch with them. This is a system that can be set up once. And best of all, it runs on autopilot while you sleep or are miles away on vacation

Staying in touch: It is important to ensure your prospects don’t forget about you. When staying in touch you continuously build relationships with your prospects and keep your services and offerings in front of them. One way to stay in touch is to publish a regular e-zine (electronic newsletter). An example of creating a system around your e-zine is to create a list of topics you want to share with your audience on regular intervals and then to schedule those topics into an editorial calendar of when each will be send out. An important part of this system is also to schedule the time in your calendar to write the content and populate your email marketing system. When you use email marketing software like Aweber, you can write your content in advance and schedule it to go out on a specific date. This saves time and have the added benefit that your communication are send even when you take an extended vacation.

Convert prospects into clients: Once people are interested in working with you, a new client conversion procedure or system can do wonders for your business. An example of a system here is to have a form on your website where prospects can inquire about your services. Once they’ve filled in the form, they receive an automated email to set-up a complimentary discussion where you get together on the phone. For the discussion you can use a specific, pre-developed script or format  to lead your prospect from just inquiring about your services to becoming eager and willing to work with you. The system is taking care of all the pre-work and you only have to be there to conduct the discussion and convert the prospect into a new clients.

New Client Intake: When a prospect becomes a client, it is good business practice to give them all the information they need for working effectively with you. An example of a system when a client says “yes” is to have a client information pack (or welcome pack) ready to send to this client. The bulk of this information pack and regular client communications can be pre-developed and only customized per client. This saves a lot of time and prevent you from re-inventing the wheel for each new client.

With workable and automated systems in place, you can simplify and streamline the process of getting clients and accomplish most of your daily client related and administrative tasks in a matter of minutes, not hours.

Systems put time back into your day – time that you can spend on growing your business with clients and income and/or taking a well-deserved break.

Your assignment for today:

• Pick one thing. . . just one thing in your business and create a system around it.
• Start documenting all the steps you take to complete that.
• Evaluate what you can do to automate / facilitate all the repetitive activities to help you save time with this in future.

The ultimate goal is to create systems that don’t require your attention every minute of the day.

To Your Success

P.S. Do you use systems in your business? Tell us about it in the comment box below.