To truly systemize your business and ensure that it continues to run smoothly, you have to document your processes and create a Standard Operation Procedures Manual, or SOP. Standard operating procedures are an essential part of the operating system for any company. The idea is a simple one and is used by the US military and successful businesses like McDonald's.
The SOP guidelines are created to facilitate the entire way that you do business. They are designed to make things run smoother and more effortless and help to prevent costly mistakes from occurring. Not only do SOPs simplify and formalize every task in your business, but they also make it, so no process in your company rests solely in the hands of a single member of your team.
The lack of SOPs in your business creates a condition that if key people were to leave, their knowledge and expertise wouldn't disappear with them. Without these systems in place, you are running the risk that your business may eventually be crippled because you have an operational reliance on the expertise of a handful of individuals who are the only ones who know the “secret sauce” of your business model. Having SOPs in place means you won’t have to worry that the loss of key people could cripple your business.
When documenting your business systems and creating an SOP, it is essential to include both how the task is done and the reason why the task is done and the importance of the task to the overall success of the business. Your employees must understand that no matter how menial they might think a function is, it is, in fact, an essential part of the overall design for the success of the business. The initial draft of each procedure should include the following:
These three items must be covered in the draft for the process to be successful. The method of drafting the document is simple. You want to think about it as having a conversation with a person that you want to complete the task. You are essentially having a written communication and covering every step of the process from inception to completion. You may find it helpful to include photos in the document. Illustrating the tasks could be essential for the person to be able to comprehend the task. Videos of the process can also prove to be helpful in showing a multi-step process. Your goal, when documenting your methods is to completely illustrate the task to eliminate any potential questions that might be raised as to the how and why.
The first thing you need to do before you even put pen to paper, is to develop a standardized naming convention for the documents you are going to create. Having a standardized naming convention will allow you to remain consistent and will make it easier for employees to find the correct material. While you may only have a few documented procedures to start with, as your business grows, so will your SOP. Here are some tips for developing naming conventions that will help you control how procedures are written, reviewed, published and archived.
Simply put, naming conventions are how you name your documents in a structured manner. The key is to have consistency across the SOPs. Your primary goal in adopting a naming convention is so that you and others can quickly identify the type and purpose of all the SOP documents. You want to make sure you use a naming convention that is easy to follow, understood by everyone in your team, and that is meaningful. You want to avoid using obscure or cryptic terms because if they aren't practical, those tasked with writing the SOPs may stop using the guidelines. The following are important guidelines that you should follow for naming your SOP documents.
Before you start writing your SOPs, it's essential that you give some thought to how they will be managed in the future. You need to consider how hundreds of documents, with different versions, and status controls will be managed. Be sure to create meaningful conventions and document them so that if someone takes over the process of creating SOPs, he or she will be able to use the same standards and keep your documents uniform.
Your standard operating procedures are nothing more than instructions for completing a given task. To fully understand the process that you’re documenting, you need to put yourself in the shoes of those who will be performing the task and write the document from their perspective. When you start recording your procedures, you'll want to keep the following in mind.
Write in the present tense. Keep in mind that the person who is following the procedure is performing the task now.
Avoid being vague with your instructions.
Be concise.
Get to the point and keep the words short.
Keep the steps in a logical order. Steps should follow each other logically.
Highlight any exceptions. You can use a symbol to flag the exceptions and how to go about handling those exceptions.
Highlight warnings. Warnings that the user must use caution when performing the task, have to stand out. If you have warnings in your procedures, use a larger font or different color to highlight these areas.
Include the meaning of acronyms before placing them in the text.
Number each step in the process.
Finally, the process of writing your SOP requires you to consider all the action steps in the procedure and perform a risk assessment before any work can begin.
Every procedure should list all the actions that need to be done to complete the task. To keep things simple, record the action steps in sequential order, starting at 1 and continue working upward. The most critical aspect of numbering the actions steps is keeping the style consistent. Don't change styles in the middle of creating your SOP.
By numbering each step in the procedure, you ensure that the reader will start in the correct place and it removes any ambiguity or misunderstanding that could happen if you don’t number the steps. Numbering also ensures that there is an agreed upon way for all employees to perform the same task.
The action steps are nothing more than the individual steps that are performed in each procedure. Most of the systems that you will document will be presented as a sequence. However, you also need to consider other factors, like multiple choices when performing a task, any secondary functions that may need to be completed, and other related procedures. To finalize the system, it can help to put it in context. You want to consider where the system occurs in the larger scheme of things and if there is anything the user should complete before getting started and things that should be avoided.
Include a summary sentence. Before you write any steps in your procedure, you will want to open with a summary sentence that explains what will be achieved by performing the process. The summary sentence helps to orient the reader, so they know with a quick glance if they are on the correct page. You want to keep the summary sentence short and concise. Below is an example of a summary sentence for receiving products.
When receiving products, there are several steps that you must take to ensure the correct quantity of products have been delivered and that the number of products ordered, accepted, and paid for are accurately reflected on the invoice.
Identify the main task. In the procedure heading, you will need to identify the primary task. Identifying the main task defines the starting point for the procedure. It should be written using a verb that ends in ING. For example:
Write out the action steps. Clearly write out each step in the procedure, making sure that each step is numbered in sequential order.
To verify that the items that are being received match what was ordered, you need to perform the following checks.
Confirm the product quality matches your product’s specifications.
If everything meets your expectations, accept the order by signing the invoice. If you are not satisfied with any of the product, follow the procedure for rejecting product and request a credit memo for the product you are refusing.
Once you have accepted the order, move the product to storage. You will need to deal with all refrigerated and frozen products first.
Include any sub-steps. If the procedure requires a series of options, instead of continuing with the numbering, you'll want to create sub steps, for example, 1.a, 1.b and 1.c. This helps the reader see that these steps occur under step number 1. To highlight this even further, indent each sub-step like the example below.
To verify that the items that are being received match what was ordered, you need to perform the following checks.
Check the product quantity and weight to ensure that the amount that is stated on the invoice matches the order that you are receiving.
Check the product unit price to ensure that the unit price on the invoice matches the unit price on the purchase order.
Identify secondary tasks. Identify any secondary functions that might need to either be performed with the primary task or if the task is complicated, the second series of steps. This shows the reader that the procedure is really two parts, preparing them for what’s coming up.
Include warnings and notes. You want to be sure to highlight any potential risks that the reader may encounter while performing the task and any notes to provide the reader with more information. For example, if dangerous equipment is being used to complete the procedure highlight those dangers using icons to make them stand out.
Include Related Information. Each procedure is a part of something larger; no one system stands alone. At the end of each process, create a "For More Information" section that lists any related process.
Your goal is to ensure that the reader has enough information to complete the task without having to ask for help or look at another document. One of the challenges that you will face when writing your procedures is being able to determine the readers’ experience and knowledge of the system. Here is what a process for creating a sales receipt in QuickBooks would look like.
Track the sale by entering a customer or job name into the space designated “Customer Job.”
For existing customers, use the arrow next to the space to select an existing customer from the pull-down menu.
Click on the item column to enter the item sold. Either select an existing item from the drop-down menu or enter a new item name in the space provided.
If the item is new, select the item type from the “Type” menu located in the “New Item” pop-up window.
Enter a description of the item in the "Description" window.
Select the account type that the income from the sale will apply to using the “Account” menu.
Enter the price of the item and tax code in the appropriate box.
Press the “Save & Close” button to return to the sales receipt window.
In the Sales Receipt Window, select the quantity sold.
Click on the “Payment Method” arrow to select the payment method used for the sale.
Place a check in either the “to be printed” box or the “to be e-mailed” box to select whether to print or email the receipt to the customer.
Click on the “Save & Close” button to save the receipt for your records.
After you’ve documented your business systems, you will need to begin implementing them in your daily operations. Before you fully implement them, you will want to take the time to test and measure each documented process to ensure that it works, without your involvement.
Implement the new systems for a period, like a week or a month. Allow your employees to use the documentation that you've created to follow the new processes. At the end of the agreed upon timeframe, speak with your staff, vendors, suppliers, and customers and ask them for their feedback. Use this feedback to revise and improve the systems. You will need to do this on a regular basis to keep all of the processes up-to-date.
As you develop and revise your new business systems, involve your employees as much as you can. Your employees are the ones who have been completing the tasks and will be the ones who will be using the newly documented systems moving forward. You can even have the employees develop the initial draft of the processes, leaving you to review and establish the final versions. This can help to speed up the process and gives your staff ownership of the process.
Developing and documenting processes for your business will allow you to systemize your processes to help free up your time to focus on the more critical tasks related to running your business and keep your business running smoothly when you're out of the office.
Outsourcing Your Tasks Effectively
Unless you have unlimited funds, chances are you won't be able to hire many full-time employees to handle the various essential functions when you first start your business. As a small online business owner for you to have the same efficiencies as a more massive corporation, you will have to outsource many of the essential functions of your business.
When most people think about outsourcing, they envision a "superstar virtual assistant" who does everything while the owner of the business sits back and relaxes. Unfortunately, this is nowhere near the reality. In reality, no online business can run on autopilot. To be successful, you need to take an active role and be there when it comes to making the crucial decisions.
Outsourcing works best when you have an established framework and documented processes in place that allows anyone to complete the necessary tasks. It's best to hire different people who can handle small aspects of your business, rather than looking for a single person who can do it all. By outsourcing to different people, you gain the following advantages.
You get the right person because you are hiring for a specific job.
You save money because you aren’t employing full-time employees who get paid even if there is no work to complete.
You don’t encounter a “single point of failure” where your business grinds to a halt if a worker gets sick or quits.
You won’t have to worry if someone is right for the job.
You may think that outsourcing is a huge hassle because you have to deal with multiple people. However, it is a smart business decision, especially when you are a new business owner because each project becomes cost-effective and completed by people who know what they are doing.
Your ultimate strategy in outsourcing is to build a capable team where each member specializes in doing one thing really well. Outsourcing allows you to present a professional image while making sure each of your essential business functions is cost-effective.
Here is a five-step process for locating and hiring a great freelancer. Follow this strategy for every new hire that you make, and you will soon have a team full of talented people who are capable of doing excellent work on every single project.
Step One: Identify Your Outsourcing Task
To be successful, you have to start every project with knowing precisely what you want to accomplish. You will need to know what skills are necessary to complete the task, what outcome you are looking for, and the level of expertise required to be successful. This is the best way to find and hire the right person for a specific job.
Before you write the description of the project, you will need to answer the following questions.
What is the exact goal of the project?
What problem will it solve?
Is it an ongoing project or a one-time solution?
Have you completed the process yourself?
Can you describe the mistakes that you made during the process?
Have you hired a freelancer in the past for this kind of project?
What did you learn from the experience?
Take the time to complete this exercise and be thorough when answering the questions. This step will help you in identifying any potential problems that might arise between you and the freelancer. Plus, it's an excellent way for you to make sure the project description includes every feature and elements that you need for your freelancer to possess.
Step Two: Write Your Project Description
Most of the freelance websites that you will use implement a bidding system for projects. It's your job to write a detailed description of what you want. Once the project description is posted on the sites, people will be able to place a bid for the project by submitting a cost estimation and information about their level of expertise.
Depending on the project that you post, you could receive anywhere from a handful of bids to dozens of proposals. Trying to filter through the proposals you receive can be a daunting task and one that can quickly overwhelm you. Here are some of the ways that you can begin to evaluate the proposals you receive.
Price
Feedback rating
Prior work experience
Communication skills
Work samples
Every freelance website is full of talented freelance workers. The trick to getting their attention is to write a compelling project description. It needs to be written in a way that encourages the top-notch freelancers to respond while subtly discouraging the unqualified freelancers. Including the following seven elements in every job description will ensure that the best freelancers will reply to your post.
Element One: Include a Specific Project Title
Rather than being cute with your project title, it's better to write a short description of the work that you are looking to have completed. For instance, if you need to hire a writer for a 10,000-word social media marketing report, then you should write: "Need Professional Writer for a 10,000-word social media marketing report." Write the project title, so it focuses on the primary goal. Don't try to gain more attention by writing a catch header. You want people who are interested in this project, not bidding merely because they need the work.
Element Two: List the Required Skills
It's not enough to just post a job description, especially if you want to find the right freelancer for the project. The best way to go about looking for the right person is to ask for specific experience with the task. In other words, you want to include specific skills that will deter anyone who is a generalist, or those who think they can do an excellent job of bidding on your project. Instead, you want to attract those freelancers who can demonstrate background and expertise in completing the kind of project you are looking to outsource.
For example, let’s say you need to hire someone to create press releases. Since these kinds of documents are usually written in a formal, third-person format, you wouldn’t want to hire someone who only has experience blogging or creating articles. Instead, you want to find someone who has an extensive background creating excellent press releases.
As part of the description, you want to ask for examples of similar projects. The freelancer should attach these to their bid or provide you with a hyperlink where you can check them out and evaluate their work.
Element Three: Eliminating Certain Candidates
When it comes to outsourcing, some people are right for the job, and there are those who aren't. To save yourself a ton of time, its best to weed out those who aren't right for the job before they place their bid. The best thing you can do is be clear about what you need from the beginning. This way you won't waste a freelancer’s time if you don’t think they are a good fit for the job.
For instance, when hiring a writer, you may want to ask for a native English speaker because you want the informal and conversational style that you don’t usually get with someone who speaks English as a second language.
Over time you’ll start to develop a feel for what you need for your projects. Don’t hide your requirements. Instead, post what you need specifically in the initial project description, so you don’t end up wasting yours or the freelancer’s time.
Element Four: Provide Specific Parameters
It is essential that the description you write for the project are incredibly detailed regarding what is required. You have to include every possible element so those bidding on your project can provide an accurate bid price.
For instance, you might include the following:
Specific technical skills required to complete the project
Any programming languages
Exact word counts for the project
The niche market for the product
Description of the target audience
Example products and websites
Links to your current product line
Elements you like about your competition
Providing detailed descriptions of the project and what you need will help to weed out any lazy freelancers. Detailed job descriptions usually ensure that the people who are bidding on the project are confident in their ability to deliver a quality project.
Element Five: Create a Private Description (Optional)
Sometimes the job you are outsourcing requires a certain level of privacy because you don't want to reveal too much about your business. For these situations, you'll write a vague description informing the candidate that you'll explain more in a follow-up description for those candidates that are selected. From there, you'll have them sign a non-disclosure agreement before you provide them the rest of the details of the project.
Element Six: Include a Statement About Plagiarism
Unfortunately, when you are hiring a writer, plagiarism is something that will have to be taken into consideration. Every once in a while, you'll come across a freelancer who thinks it's okay to use the same content from someone else's website. To combat this, you need to include a "zero tolerance" policy within the description of your procedure addressing plagiarism. Inform bidders upfront that you will be checking for plagiarism on every project by running the content through a plagiarism checking site like Copyscape.
Element Seven: Embed a Code Phrase
Paying attention to details is a skill that can't be taught. Either someone understands how vital it is to read instructions thoroughly, or they don't. For those that don’t, you want don’t want them to be involved in your business.
A simple way to test someone’s attention to detail is to include a “code phrase” somewhere in your job description. Either at the end of the job description or somewhere in the middle of a long paragraph. To see who paid attention to the details of your project description and find freelancers who can follow direction, have them submit their bid with the code phrase at the top.
Step Three: Eliminate Unqualified Bids
Depending on the project, you'll often get dozens of bids, which can be incredibly overwhelming. While it's essential for you to examine each one, it will take too much time to go through each candidate's job history. Here's a simple system that will allow you to eliminate unqualified candidates quickly.
Eliminate any proposals that look like a template and those that don’t answer your questions. Only keep those proposals that provide clear answers to your questions.
Eliminate any bids that didn’t include the code phrase.
Eliminate any bid that doesn’t include examples of similar projects.
Eliminate candidates that don’t have any job history on the site.
Eliminate any candidates that don’t have at least a 4.5 or better feedback threshold.
Eliminate candidates that don’t possess the specific skills that you need.
Surprisingly, you can eliminate many freelancers with these six rules. Notice that cost isn't included on this list. Right now, at this point in the process, it's more important to eliminate freelancers who aren't a good fit for the listed project.
Step Four: Pick 3 to 5 Qualified Candidates
After quickly eliminating unqualified candidates, you'll still have a large pool of freelancers that you will have to sort through. This will require you to go through the list again and disqualify specific candidates. Your goal with this step is to narrow down your choices to 3 to 5 qualified candidates. This step can be hard because the candidate pool is now filled with excellent freelancers. Now is the time for you to carefully look at each bid and decide which is the most qualified candidate for your project.
To narrow down your choices again, look at the following criteria.
The Bid Price
This is the step in the process when you have to consider cost. When deciding on a candidate, you'll want to pick a range of bid prices that are acceptable to you and eliminate those candidates who are above this number or who fall below the figure. It is important to remember that you get what you pay for, so you want to be sure to eliminate the low bids because this is usually a good indicator that you will receive poor service.
Companies v. Individuals
Pay close attention to the language of the bid. If the proposal includes words like "we" or "us" then it's a good sign that they are representing a company. While you don't have to eliminate companies and agencies automatically, you need to be careful when analyzing their work history to make sure they are worth the increase in cost.
Personalization
Many of the bids that you receive will be a "cut-and-paste" response that shows the project description wasn't thoroughly read. While the bidder may have included the code phrase, they do so in a generic response that lacks any personality and connection.
While you are going through the bids, you want to look for freelancers who seem like they are genuinely interested in working on the project. You want to look for freelancers who include comments about how they are uniquely qualified to work on your project and who can relate parts of your description to something they've done in the past.
Project Examples
Always look at the freelancer’s work examples that they provide with their bid. This can be a link to an article they’ve written, an app, an image, or a website they designed. You will also get freelancers who attach samples of their work history directly to their bid. Carefully examine these examples to see how they stack up to your expectations.
Past Feedback Ratings
For each remaining bidder, click on their feedback ratings and examine the work they’ve completed on the freelance website. Even though a freelancer has a high feedback level, doesn’t mean that they have experience working on projects similar to yours. Eliminate anyone who doesn’t have related work experience.
Timeline
Even the most experienced freelancers can be a waste of money if they can't complete a project on time. Every bid you receive will give you an expected timeline for completion. Pay close attention to the delivery dates submitted and eliminate any proposals that go beyond the norm.
These few simple rules will allow you to reduce a large pool of candidates. Be prepared to repeat this specific step a few times to find the right candidates to the short-list. Once you have a few qualified freelancers chosen, you can now move forward with selecting the most qualified candidate to complete your project.
Step Five: Pick the Most Qualified Freelancer
This is where you will make your final decision and hire a qualified freelancer to help you complete your project. Each of the candidates you’ve selected should be fully qualified to work on your project. Now you have to determine which person is the right fit for the particular task. Here are four things you can do to move forward with making a final decision in selecting a freelancer for the project.
Create a Small Test
Timeliness and attention to detail are crucial when running a business. You can test the qualified applicants for these qualities by having them complete a simple test. Give each of the potential hires a small task to finish to see how quickly and accurately they accomplish it. Here are a few ideas you can use.
Ask them a question about their bid
Ask them to reaffirm the bid price
Ask them to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement
Ask them to provide you with another sample of their work
The purpose is to give each candidate a simple task that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Give them a couple of days for them to respond. If a candidate gives you excuses or takes too long to complete the task, it’s a good indicator that you’ll get the same kind of service on your project.
Run a Small Project
If your project is complicated, you may want to consider offering a small fee to each qualified candidate to complete a little project. The best way to determine each candidate’s qualifications is to give each one a similar task and see what they come up with. While this step will cost you a small fee, it is a great way to test the actual level of experience of each candidate.
Look for Interest in the Project
While you are waiting for each candidate to return the small project you assigned them, take some time to look at each of their portfolios to see if they show any interest in the market. It helps to work with someone who is passionate about the kind of project you’re offering, although it is by no means a mandatory requirement. The freelancer you choose will work a bit harder and be more eager to do an excellent job on the project if they have some interest in the market.
Check References
Most of the freelancers that you have short-listed will have references from previous work they’ve completed. Contact these former clients and talk with them about the freelancer’s job performance. Talk to them about the level of quality, communication, timeliness, and attitude toward the project.
Don't be afraid to try and a lot of feedback about a particular freelancer. This person is someone who has the potential of becoming a crucial part of your online business, so it makes sense to try and get as much information on them as possible.
Following these four action items should help you to find the one candidate that is a perfect fit for your project. At this point, you have to rely on your instincts. If one of the freelancers feel like a better fit than the others, then they are the one that you should hire. After making the final decision, you'll create a contract and begin working with the freelancer on completing the required task.
Finding qualified freelance workers to help you work on the documents you've created will help you build a successful business that is fully systemized. Follow these guidelines to help to choose the best candidates for all your business outsourcing needs.
Chapter 6:
Automation Tools for Systemization
As a small business owner, you are losing approximately10 to 15 percent of your time when you don't automate simple tasks like posting to your business’s social media accounts. Business automation aims to improve a company’s performance by reducing costs, increasing the accuracy of data, and minimizing delays. Most standard small business functions can be handled with software solutions. Once a company automates its primary tasks, they will notice that other aspects of their business will begin to work more efficiently. Here are some of the best automation tools that your business can start to utilize to systemize your business today.
Zapier
Zapier (https://zapier.com) is one of the leaders in task automation. Zapier connects all your apps and allows you to automate your workflows by automatically moving info between your web apps so you can focus on your most important business tasks. You can integrate more than 1,000 apps like Slack, Asana, and Google Docs.
Features a visual designer that allows you to set up integrations and administer integrations without having to use code. The easy to use visual interface makes setting up your integrations a snap.
Easily connect almost any application programming interface (API), to another API. Use logical functions and multi-step algorithms for your connects to avoid triggering specific workflows when they aren't needed.
Flow
Microsoft’s Flow (https://flow.microsoft.com) turns your company’s repetitive tasks into multistep workflows. The automated workflows that you create between your favorite apps and services will send you notifications, automatically synchronize files, collect data, and much more.
Create, use, and share automated approval workflows to respond quickly and process and approve everything from time off requests to travel plans to sales opportunities and documents.
Connect securely to your cloud base services and on-premises data so you can make the most of the data you already have.
Pipedrive
A CRM and pipeline management tool, Pipedrive (https://pipedrive.com) helps you focus on actions that matter. The visual sales pipeline prompts you to remain organized, take action, and stay in control of your complicated sales process by bringing all the sales data into a single place.
The mobile app gives you access to your contact and deal information when you’re on the go. Schedule activities, take notes during a call or meeting, save call logging activities easily when you’re away from the office.
Use Pipedrive’s reporting feature to understand where you’re losing deals, forecast results, and identify opportunities for improvement.
TextExpander
TextExpander (https://textexpander.com) lets you instantly insert snippets of text from a collection of emails, boilerplate, and other content, as you type. Using the quick search feature or an abbreviation you can recall your best words instantly.
You can share your snippets with your team so that they can stay on track and on message. Access all your snippets from any device with a TextExpander account so you can give your entire support team the current answers to all your customer inquiries.
You can also streamline your email and use the fill-in-the-blank feature to create custom forms with multiple filed types and sectors.
Alfred
Alfred (https://alfredapp.com) is an award-winning app for Mac OS X. It's a workflow automation tool and a hotkey tool that allows you to navigate your interface with your keyboard rapidly. You can create and automate complex workflows that you trigger from a hotkey.
Launch applications and find files on your Mac and the web. Alfred learns how you use your Mac and prioritizes the results, saving you countless hours.
Alfred’s Powerpack feature uses powerful workflows to perform tasks more efficiently, allowing you to cut down on the repetitive manual tasks that eat up your valuable time.
IFTTT
IFTT (https://ifttt.com) stands for If This Then That and is the free way to get all your apps and devices talking to each other. With IFTT you can bring the Internet of Things (IoT) into your pocket with mobile-based automation tools.
Use widgets to run specific Applets with the simple touch of a button on your iOS or Android devices.
Automate tasks between a wide array of apps, services, and devices. Their web and mobile app are easy to use and support IoT devices and voice assistants like Google Assist and Amazon Alexa.
Shortcat
Shortcat (https://shortcatapp.com) allows you to navigate your screen with your keyboard, effectively rendering your mouse useless. It helps you to boost productivity by removing the need to take your fingers off the keyboard.
It leverages the Accessibility API, which is supported by all applications that are included with Mac OS X and many other applications.
The program lets you keep your hands on the keyboard to click, which saves you both time and energy.
Robotask
Robotask (https://robotask.com) is a powerful tool for PC users who are committed to automating their workflow. The program allows you to automate repetitive tasks on your PC that range from launching applications to checking email.
With Robotask you won't have to create batch files or write complicated scripts to develop simple or complex automation tasks. It uses its visual interface to allow you to select and combine actions to fit your needs.
Create automated tasks and automatically execute them when certain conditions apply.
Tallyfy
Eliminate the chaos from your business processes with Tallyfy (https://tallyfy.com). This workflow software turns your daily tasks and approvals into automated, repeatable processes. It eliminates the pain of emails, calls, papers, forms, and spreadsheets.
You can easily map existing flowcharts or SOPs into Tallyfy templates and simplify your work into actionable steps that reflect real-life workflows.
Its open API allows you to connect to most of your existing tools.
Intercom
Catch, convert, and keep more customers with Intercom (https://intercom.com). Intercom is a customer messenger platform that allows your customers to get in touch with you straight from the web. It’s perfect for sales, marketing, and support.
Use bots and live chat to automatically qualify, route, and convert more leads in less time.
Send targeted emails and push and in-app messages to quickly onboard and engage customers, turning more signups into paying customers.
Delivra
Delivra (https://delivra.com) is a results-driven email marketing automation platform that makes it extremely easy to engage your audience and increase revenue.
With its marketing automation, you can deploy smarter email campaigns that are more efficient and customized for your audience. You can create triggered responses, easily segment subscribers, send emails based on consumer behavior and create dynamic content.
With weekly reports delivered directly to your inbox, you can keep track of the progress and performance of each email campaign. The weekly insights will provide you with subject line analysis, the top-performing content, and the number of social shares by channel.
Autopilot
Spark new customer relationships and rekindle old ones with the simple and straightforward Autopilot (https://autopilothq.com) program. Engage with your customers at the right time with personalized emails, SMS, in-app messages, and postcards.
Use the program to connect to your apps and automate tasks to capture a richer view of all your contacts and engage with them based on their behavior.
Easily track your performance to get insights into which messages convert, how your messages are trending, and what is driving sales. Quickly visualize your revenue funnel and optimize your process on the fly with real-time results.
mHelpDesk
mHelpDesk (https://mhelpdesk.com) automates your customer contact, scheduling, billing, communications, and everything in between. The program was designed to supercharge your repetitive, manual business processes so you can focus on what really matters.
Track every stage of the job with complete visibility of your workflows. You’ll be able to see the progress of every job in real-time. See every change in a job that has occurred using the Activity Log feature and holds your team members accountable for their actions.
Save yourself time and money and speed up your cash flow. In less than 60 seconds you can start accepting Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover with the easy to set up payment processing system.
As you start to put stable systems in place in your online business, consider adding one or more of these powerful and easy to use automation tools. Automating the repetitive and repeatable business tasks will free up your time so you can focus your time and energy on the essential functions required to grow your business.
Chapter 7:
Scale-Up Your Business to the Next Level
Now that your online business is structured correctly, and you have the right people in place to handle the essential functions, the time has come for you to begin scaling your business. Having a well-structured operation in place will provide you with the luxury of using your own skills to grow the business in whatever area where you're an expert.
This is where most people try to start their online business. The general thought is that if you are an expert in a given area, that will be enough for you to start and run a successful business. However, talent in one area is simply not enough.
You, unlike so many other small business owners, have a distinct advantage. Unlike other online business owners, who quickly find themselves in over their heads and scrambling to try and master a dozen different tasks at once, you have a reliable system in place that has freed you up from having to deal with every little task personally. Instead, you can concentrate your efforts on utilizing your specific talents to grow your business.
Scaling your business might seem overwhelming at first when you're already swamped with work and home life. While it can be challenging to find the time to focus on scaling your business correctly, the following information can help you tackle the process without breaking a sweat. A good part of scaling a business merely involves getting your ducks in a row before you start ramping up business.
Create the Right Strategic Plan
Your strategic plan is the road map that directs your company’s focus to the fewer and better things that will allow you to dominate your market niche and create explosive growth. It prompts you to look at the big picture. It also helps you to prioritize and allocate your company’s resources to their best advantage. Finally, it helps align your team on the big picture, so they can better manage their responsibilities and contribute more to the needs of the company.
When it comes to creating your strategic plan, you have to ask yourself the following three questions:
Why is your company in business? This first question cuts to the heart of why you’re in business in the first place.
What is your singular goal? You need to think about the one goal that you are mobilizing all your company resources to accomplish over the next three to five years.
What’s in it for you and your team?
Creating a strategic plan isn’t a one-time activity, but one that will continually evolve as you learn, refine, and re-create your business. Every quarter, you need to revisit your plan and map out the next 90 days. You’ll want to determine your top three strategic priorities for the coming quarter and write up a simple one-page plan of action that specifies exactly what you must do that quarter to grow and develop your business.
The reason why this process works so well is that it forces you to take a fresh look at your business every three months while also allowing your team to dive deep into the execution of actually accomplishing meaningful progress on the areas of the most importance in your business.
Done well, these 90-day sprints will reward your business with the most significant benefits of regular opportunities to change and adapt to the market demands.
Measure Effectiveness with Accounting
Sound systems have a way of increasing efficiency throughout your business, allowing you and your employees to accomplish objectives and give your customers what they want every single time. Your business accounting should be the master system of your business that can measure the effectiveness of all your business processes. Your accounting system is the brain of your business, processing all of the data related to the activities of your business and providing you with strategic information that will allow you to drive growth and profitability.
In many small businesses, accounting is seen merely as the system that is used to pay the bills, reconcile the bank, invoice customers, and prepare tax returns. What many small business owners don’t realize is that it is the perfect system for gathering business intelligence.
Your accounting information will reveal the strengths and weakness of your business. It can tell you what went wrong in the past and what can be done to improve in the future. The accounting systems you use in your business can reduce large quantities of complex data into understandable and straightforward information that contains the seeds of solutions for all the problems your company may be facing. It is also the basis for making critical business decisions.
To develop the perfect business requires discipline and a systematic course of action. You must understand where you are at, where you are going, and how you are going to get there. To do this, you must use strategic information and systems to achieve financial control. When managed correctly and grown correctly, your business can become profitable and reward stakeholders while creating economic and personal freedom for you.
Every business has one or two "key numbers" that drive its economic engine. If you want to be able to scale your business, you have to have knowledge of and control over these numbers. When this happens, everything else will fall into place. If you haven't already identified these numbers, you need to do so now. Paying attention to these critical numbers will make all the difference in your ability to scale and grow into a successful business.
Focus on Sales and Marketing
Every company has to generate leads. If you don’t have any leads, then you won’t make any sales. If you can’t make any sales, then you won’t have a business. It’s that simple. If you want to sustainably scale your business, you have to evolve from growth based on your personal production to growth based on the stable base of system, teams, and controls you’ve established.
Sales are everything you do as a business to make your offers as useful as possible and to close selling opportunities. Your offers can be delivered in a variety of ways, from call centers taking phone calls to trained sales reps, to sales letters to an interactive website and everything in between. It is your sales and marketing efforts that will find your clients, generate sales, and increase revenue.
Too many small business owners focus solely on sales and marketing because they feel they have to as opposed to wanting to. They feel intimidated by the idea of selling, but to be successful, they must focus a majority of their energy on generating profitable sales. If you don't, your business will never thrive, let alone survive.
When you first start your venture as a small business owner, you focus your time and energy making sure that sales happen, which usually means meeting with clients and closing the deals yourself. As you begin to look at scaling your business, you have to focus your attention on creating repeatable and scalable selling systems that don't depend on your involvement to function. This might involve building advertising systems that will generate leads, hiring and training new sales reps to close deals, or eventually hiring a sales and marketing manager to take over.
To build a sales and marketing department that can function without you, the following systems need to be included in your growth strategy.
Lead generation systems that can consistently generate the lead volume that is needed to make sales.
Lead conversion systems to consistently convert leads into paying clients.
Tracking and reporting systems to measure the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. This will allow you to optimize your selling system over time.
Tacking your results is an essential part of scaling your business. You can do this by creating simple spreadsheets that tell you what is and is not working. After you've gathered the numerical data, you can determine the best lead generators, the best lead converters, and the best current client resellers and invest in scaling up those efforts.
The first step to removing obstacles to scaling your sales and marketing efforts is to pinpoint your company’s most costly lead-generation weaknesses. The following checklist can help you evaluate your company's lead-generation challenges.
You don't have enough leads to sell to, or your lead generation is erratic, and you don't have a consistent lead stream you can't count on.
You don’t have a system to organize and maintain your leads.
You don’t have a structured lead scoring system.
You don’t systematically track your lead-generating efforts.
You don’t have a system to generate leads.
Your current lead-generation processes aren’t scalable.
Your current cost per lead is too high.
Your lead quality is too weak.
You have a ton of lead-generation ideas, but you just aren’t able to effectively implement them.
Your marketing is too reliant on you.
Check the box for any of the challenges that are currently hurting your business. If you check more than three boxes, go back through the list and circle the one pain point that hurts your business the most. This is where you will need to focus initially.
Five Steps to Build a Baseline Lead-Generation System
It’s not enough for you to just learn new tactics to generate leads and close sales.
You need to build the systems that help you to accomplish these tasks.
The problem with having informal systems in your business is that they leave your business vulnerable. If you get sick or busy, there is no one else who knows how to do the fundamental processes that you have stored in your head. Informal systems that are locked in the minds of you and your key employees aren't scalable. Here are five steps to take to build out your baseline lead-generation system so you can scale your business.
Step One: Determine the Marketing Tactics to Focus on First
Look at all the lead-generation tactics that you've used and picked your single most important one. This will be the tactic that you will systemize first. If you're not sure which one is the most important, ask yourself if you could only do one thing to generate new leads, what would it be?
Step Two: Draft the Process Layer of How to Implement the Tactic
Using sticky notes, write down the steps that you will need to follow to implement this marketing tactic. Each sticky note should contain a single step. This is an effective way to document your process because it frees up your mind to lay out the steps and edit them as you go. Once you have the process of executing the marketing tactic, write it up into a simple step-by-step recipe.
Step Three: Create a Round Scorecard to Track the Tactic
The key to this step is to gather relevant, objective data that will tell you how well your marketing efforts are going. You need to be able to compare tactics to make smart, strategic decisions about where to invest your time and money.
Step Four: Package the Process
You need to determine the best way to package the process that will ensure your team and business follow the steps consistently to get the results you want. You need to ask yourself, what the best format is to package the critical stages of the system so that it is followed consistently.
Step Five: Implement, Track, and Refine
When you pay close attention and track the results from your lead-generating efforts, you’ll start to spot opportunities to improve your system. You and your team will continuously find ways to tweak and improve your baseline lead-generation system so that you can continue to produce more and better-quality leads.
Implementing Marketing Controls
When it comes to your marketing efforts, there are four essential controls that you need to have in place to make sure that the right steps are being taken, at the right time, to get the correct results. To make sure your marketing systems continue to operate smoothly to produce quality leads for your company.
Marketing Calendar
The first step to ensuring that the sales and marketing systems you've put in place operate smoothly is to develop a marketing calendar. Take the time to lay out your essential lead-generation campaigns for the next 90 days on a standard calendar. Next, add the deadlines for any key steps that are required for you to run that campaign successfully.
A marketing calendar is an excellent visual control to make sure that you remain on track with the precampaign steps required to make your lead-generation efforts successful.
Standardized Marketing Collateral
Whether you develop a template email that is sent to everyone who registers on your website, a glossy white sales brochure your sales reps use, or a white paper that prospects can download from your site, having standardized marketing collateral is an effective control to make sure your prospects are getting your best sales message.
Your marketing collateral will not only help your prospects learn about your products or services, but they can be used to train new employees on the product knowledge they will need to have to be a productive member of your team. Start small and build out your marketing collateral in bite-sized chunks.
Develop a Marketing Scoreboard
Create a simple scoreboard that gives you the high-level of results of your marketing efforts. Start by using the following three numbers.
Your Cost per Lead – measure the total cost of a particular marketing campaign and divide it by the total number of leads that were generated during a specific period. Knowing your cost per lead helps you compare which lead tactics are the most cost-effective.
Your Cost per Sale – measure the total cost of a particular marketing tactic and divide it by the total number of sales you made from that tactic.
The Return on Investment – a powerful way to equalize various marketing tactics so you can see which one has the most significant return on investment. Calculate it by dividing the total sales you made with that tactic by the total amount you spent on the tactic.
Implement a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)
Your CRM is the system you use to organize your customer and prospect data and how you manage those relationships over time. When used correctly your CRM can help your business ensure that leads are appropriately captured and followed up with on a timely and effective basis.
Hire the Right People
To grow your business, you’re going to need talented members of your team to both spark and support growth. Whether you are adding new members to your sales team to increase sales or engineers to design new products, your company's most significant source of leverage is its ability to attract, hire, integrate, and empower talented employees.
One of the only ways for your company to create and sustain rapid growth is for you to systematically make your business a place where great talent wants to work. Here are some simple ways in which you can do that.
Deliberately define and profile your ideal employee. Take the time to establish a profile of your business’s perfect employee. While the specific qualifications will vary between positions, you can think of several common traits, beliefs, and drives that you want your employees to encompass. Think about how you can build simple filters in your hiring process to weed out any candidates that don’t fit into your profile.
Be selective about whom you invite on your team. Great talent tends to thrive when working with other talented individuals. Keep your standards high as you hire and consider upgrading weak team members as you have the opportunity and cash flow to do so.
See the whole person and manage individually. While your company has to have standard HR policies in place, you can still use your common sense in applying those standards. The goal isn’t to treat all your employees the same, but to produce amazing results by getting your team to perform at its best.
Remove poor performers quickly. If you have poor performers on your team, it is essential that you provide them with proper guidance, coaching, and training. However, if after a time it becomes clear that they can’t perform at the level of those around them, then you have to remove them swiftly and decisively.
Now that you've found the right talent you can begin to enlist them in developing ideas to scale and improve your company. Every six months, ask each of your team members to go through the company, department by department and write there three best ideas for scaling and improving your business.
Once they've completed, the tasks spend some time going over the results. Choice the top suggestions and hold a team meeting to go over the results and allow them to help you pick out several of the best ideas to implement in the company immediately.
Repeat this process over time and watch how your company benefits and improves with the ideas, as well as how your team responds and grows when they see you take their input and ideas seriously.
Conclusion: The Final Words
When it comes to running a successful company, it is important to remember that your business, as well as the markets you serve, are not static, but are in a constant state of flux. This means that over time you'll need to refine and redesign your systems and controls. The more you grow, the more that growth will require you to evolve your systems.
Rapid growth will continue to make increasing demands on your outdated systems. The systems that worked for a $500,000-a-year business will no longer be sufficient to cope with a $5 million company. This is why you need to approach your systems and controls as a work in progress as you continue to scale your business.
As you grow your business, your policies and controls must grow with you if you want to run a successful business.
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