If you really want to take the next step in scaling your business, you need to start automating (some of) your processes.
While you can’t automate everything, there are a few key processes that you can — and should — automate as soon as possible if you want to grow your business.
Here are my recommendations for where to start with automation in your business processes:
- Scheduling Meetings, Conference Calls, and Consultations
If part of your business model involves clients booking time to speak with you on a regular basis, you need to have a good system in place to allow this to happen both quickly and efficiently.
Manually looking through your calendar and comparing it to your client’s calendar every time is NOT the best way to handle this.
Luckily, there are a ton of free and low-cost tools to help you automate this part of your business. Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, Appointy, and SimplyBook.me are just a handful of options. I suggest you try a few of them (or all of them) out because only you know which application is best suited for your business and your preferences.
But please, stop manually scheduling appointments with your clients. You will not regret it!
- Customer Support & Communication
Are you still answering phone calls, emails, and texts from your clients (and leads) both in and outside of work hours?
While there’s something to be said for personalized customer service, you can’t spend all of your time responding to customer inquiries if you’re trying to grow your business.
Sometimes, all a client wants is to know that someone is aware of their issue and is working on it. That is definitely something that can be achieved simply by automating your responses or using a 3rd party application.
No, not every question can be answered with automated responses or chatbots, but it’s a great way to filter out those simple inquiries and give yourself extra time to respond — during business hours.
- Email Marketing Campaigns
Keeping your brand name in front of your target is critical to your success, regardless of the size of your business, or how long you’ve been operating.
Sending out hundreds or thousands of emails manually obviously isn’t sustainable for a small business, or even for a larger business, for that matter.
By setting up automated email campaigns based on transactions and interest levels, you can welcome new customers, announce promotions, tease new products and services, and much more, all while you sleep, travel, meet with customers, or whatever else you need to do to keep your business thriving.
These are just a few examples of ways to automate processes to help you scale your business.
If you need help deciding which processes to automate and where to begin, let’s chat!
