Did you know that you can save a lot of time, get more clients and run your business more effectively when you get organized and start using 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. When you create a system around each of these tasks or activities, it makes it easier to do; it saves time and can even run on autopilot when you are not in the office.
But let us first clarify what a system is…
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 you can put most of your repetitive tasks on autopilot.
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So, let’s look at a few examples of how you can get organized and use systems to get more clients, while saving a lot of time.
Doing Marketing: Let’s say you frequently attend networking events as one of your marketing strategies. A simple system to develop around networking is to schedule the dates of all the networking events in your calendar, set a reminder for e.g. 2 days before the event to allow you to prepare if needed. This way you won’t forget about the event and will be well prepared when you attend. That is a simple system that can help you stay consistent in attending in-person events, saves time since you know it is scheduled and you will 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 and email marketing software to capture the contact details of visitors to your website when they sign up for your free offer. You can direct all your marketing efforts (the people you meet at in-person and networking 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 you can set up once and then almost forget about… and the best thing about it – it runs on autopilot while you sleep or are miles away on vacation
Staying in touch: This is extremely important to ensure your prospects don’t forget about you and for you to 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 ezine (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 to your list. 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 software like e.g. Aweber you can write your content in advance and schedule it to go out on a specific date, thus saving you time and still keeping the communications go out when you take a well-deserved 4 week 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 enquire about your services. Once the form is completed you can use an automated system to set-up an initial complimentary Discovery Session where you get together on the phone to see if you are a good fit for working together. Then you can use a specific pre-developed script or format to conduct the discovery session to lead your prospect from just inquiring about your services to becoming eager and willing to work with you. So you do not have to take hours to prepare for a first consultation, because your system takes care of most of it.
New Client Intake: An example of a system when a client says “yes” to working with you is to have a client information pack (or welcome pack) ready to send to this client. The information pack and client communications can be pre-developed and then customized per client to save you lots of time and prevent you from re-inventing the wheel for each new client.
With workable and automated systems in place, you can work more effectively, get more clients and accomplish most of your daily client related administrative tasks in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Systems save you time and much frustration. It also allows you to spend your time taking a well-deserved break OR getting more of those “yummi” clients and making more money.
Your assignment for today:
- Pick one thing. . .just one thing in your business and create a system around it.
- Start documenting and write down all the steps you take to complete that.
- Then, 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
