When you look at a successful entrepreneur or business owner do you ever wonder how they manage to get it all done?
The answer is they have systems in place.
It’s true. The most productive people all have one thing in common: they don’t reinvent the wheel every day. Instead, they’ve figured out the best, most efficient way to do every task, and they create a system to do just that.
No matter what business you’re in and what projects you find yourself tackling, a systemized approach will help you:
- Work faster and produce more
- Produce higher quality results with fewer mistakes
- Easily outsource the tasks you don’t like to do
The Magic of Templates
How many times do you answer email from potential clients? What about responding to customer concerns?
These tasks and become more effortless when you create fill-in-the-blank templates that can be re-purposed for specific cases/people. Templates can be as simple as a “canned response” in your email client or help desk, or you can use software such as Text Expander (for Mac) or Phrase Express (for Windows). You might even create a template document in Dropbox or Google Drive to house all your templates for easier access for you and your support staff.
While templates will undoubtedly save you time, the real beauty is that once they’re created, you can easily outsource things like email and even sales. Simply instruct your assistant on the proper use of your templates, and you’ll be free to do other, more important things.
Checklists Prevent Mistakes
It might seem counterintuitive, but when you perform the same tasks repeatedly, it’s easy to miss a critical step. You might think you paid your bills this month—you might even remember doing it—only to look back and see it was never completed.
But when you implement checklists, it’s suddenly much more difficult to miss an important task.
You can easily create checklists for all your common tasks and projects using nothing more than a text document. If you’re managing a team, checklists in your project management system allow you to see exactly what tasks are complete, and which are still outstanding.
Templates and checklists turn smart business owners into productivity superstars, and it’s easy to get started. The next time you answer an email you’ve answered before, save your response. The next time you set up a new product in your shopping cart or create a new opt-in page, take the time to record the steps. These documents will make future projects easier and faster to complete, and best of all, you can hand them off to your assistant to do instead.
And if you’re techie, make a video tutorial and show the steps with an over-the-shoulder training.
Automated Follow-Ups Make the Next Step a
No-Brainer for Systemizing
As any smart business owner knows, the key to passive income is a well-established (and full) funnel.
So of course, you’ve optimized your opt-in pages and monetized your download pages and have encouraged more buyers through well-placed upsells and down sells.
But what about the follow-up? Do you contact customers about the products or services they didn’t buy? Do you encourage them to use the products they have purchased? Are you making sure they know about all your other wonderful programs?
If not, you’re missing the boat. But the good news is, this can be easily managed with just a bit of simple automation, and when done right, it will smoothly lead your customers from one purchase to the next, at the exact right time for them to take advantage of your best offers.
Segment Your Audience in Your Email
to Save Time
Many autoresponder services allow you to target emails based on reader action. Want to send a follow up email to those who clicked a specific link? Create a segment and mail away. Want to re-engage with those who haven’t opened your emails in a while? Easy to do, and you can potentially recover subscribers who have gone missing. Of course, you need a more sophisticated email service like Constant Contact.
These tactics require that you know your audience and your products exceptionally well. Study your stats. Know your open and click rates. Pay attention to the promotions that work, as well as those that fall flat. With information in hand, you’ll be better able to effectively segment your lists and make the most of all the parts of your funnel. Knowing your audience takes the guess work and time out of mailing to those who have no interest in specific products, services or events.
Segmenting your list in the long run will save you time and produce higher quality prospects for your business. The more hands-off you can make your systems the more time you will have to do the higher-level work that makes your business more money.
Making small changes in your business can yield big returns. Systemizing as much as you can like other successful entrepreneurs will help you be more productive and make less mistakes.
