Practical Systems That Propel Service Businesses
In 1913 Henry Ford created the assembly line which was the catalyst that increased output by 500% in one year. Creating systems and processes in businesses of today can have the same effect that allows businesses to propel forward.
So, what problem/s do better systems solve for businesses, it’s a list that’s a mile long which includes:
Problems with sales
Problems with time and productivity
Problems with business fulfilment
In this article I’ll share how service businesses can adopt better systems to grow their business as I’ve seen with countless businesses who’ve often thought the problem they had was not the problem that was really going on - i.e. lack of sales is not always a marketing problem.
Using the list above, I’ll share some ways systems can help solve this.
1. Systems to solve sales problems
This is a meaty one, the number of systems that can make up an effective sales process for a business is mighty. The common systems that are often neglected when it comes to sales include:
How leads are captured
How sales conversations are conducted
How leads are followed up with
How leads are nurtured until sale
How leads, turned clients, are onboarded
How clients are retained and re-engaged
For most businesses, it’s done on a whim and if they’re lucky, a spreadsheet. Just more attention on building the systems that support your sales will help to convert more clients when you’re following the same process with each lead + they will convert much quicker because that’s the whole reason for having a system, to save you time and get better and more consistent results.
2. Systems to solve time and productivity problems
When they say time is money, no one is joking in business because this is an absolute rule, we all agree that time is precious. So, tightening up how you and your team spend your time is imperative.
The first step to start saving time and being more efficient, thus more productive is to know exactly where you are spending your time. I always suggest using a time-tracking tool such as Toggl by which you’ll input every task you work on - do this for a typical work week and the results will be eye-opening.
Hack: from the moment you start using the time-tracking tool, you’ll start saving time. It’s like having someone look over your shoulder to see what you’re doing. And, it reduces and eliminates task switching because you’ll have to update the software each time you do. So using it alone is a win.
Once you have the results after using it for a week, we can start to see what needs changing. This will reveal the cold hard data that can help make more informed decisions in business.
3. Systems to solve business fulfilment problems
As a business owner, have you ever felt unfulfilled, unhappy or just plain bored in business? You are not alone. This can become a problem when these feelings impact how you run your business. From a systems perspective, when you have no systems in place, you’re a bit of a scatter-gun, things are all over the place, there’s mountains of paper on your desk or a million tabs open on your desktop - it’s messy and so is that mind of yours.
When we bring systems into a business and do-so one new system at a time, business owners start to feel the relief, the sense of organisation and their happiness can start to return. A chaotic business doesn’t allow people working within it to have the freedom they expected, whether it be time-freedom or freedom of choice.
One of my most simple yet favourite systems for businesses is a monthly reset session where they:
Look at the month just been
Look at the month ahead
You can decide what measures you look at inside this monthly session, for clients of mine it has included sales, leads, audience, projects, team. Doing this type of reset once a month where you look back as well as look forward, helps to keep business moving along while making incremental improvements.
Building systems in any business is something that is the foundation of growth in which there are many payoffs. My best advice when creating and improving systems in your business is:
Start with the systems that will make the biggest impact (often it’s sales or team related)
Start creating systems as you go - if you’re following up with leads today, document what you’re doing. Keep creating the systems as you go in real time and it will save you doubling up your time later.
If you’d like more practical advice to help grow your service based business, have a listen to my podcast Good Marketing, Good Business.
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