The Main Parts of Your Business to Focus Systemization On
Welcome back to our bootcamp on systemizing your business. Today we’ll talk about some of the best places to start adding systems into your business.
Ordering and inventory is a good place to check for potential automation. If you have tangible products, then you’ll be handling orders as well as inventory at some point.
This can take a lot of time – unless you have automated delivery systems in place and automated inventory checkers. This allows your computer systems to do the time consuming tasks that can really add to your hours.
You save money by having a system that can handle anything you need to keep in stock. When you make a sale, you need to make sure that your business is systemized.
For example, if you have an online business and you sell information products, every time you make a sale, you have to send it out. If you’re only selling one or two of these a day, then it’s not a big deal.
But as your business grows, you could get hundreds of orders every day. To take the time to manually send out each order would not only keep you chained to your computer, but it wouldn’t be a very efficient way of doing business.
Plus, you have to take into account how the customer feels. If you might not answer the order for a digital product for 2-3 hours, your customer will feel frustrated that you don’t have an automated system in place to send them the product instantly.
Handling the money is another area of automation to consider. By systemizing your business, you can set it up so that when a customer orders, the system takes the payment and sends the product.
This frees you up to continue to make other items or to work on different tasks. You have to have a way to keep track of all kinds of payment options. You need to know what amounts come in and what amounts go out.
If you can’t find the record of someone who says they bought your product, but now they want a refund, you could lose money by being forced to trust that customer’s word if they don’t have proof of purchase. Or you could risk damaging your business reputation by refusing.
When you systemize, every order is documented, as are the refunds. Having a system in place can keep up with payroll, with the deposits you make for the company, petty cash and with the company expenses that you have to pay and more.
Keeping up with invoices and making sure that your employees are paid correctly falls under a system that handles the money. So you want to make sure that whatever you use for that is systemized.
Customer service is an area that you really do need to make sure you systemize. Without happy customers, your business will suffer. You want to make sure that from the moment a customer contacts your company, they experience a convenient and easy way to get their needs met.
This won’t happen if you have a ticket system that alerts you to high priority situations, or a virtual assistant who handles incoming customer communication as it occurs.
With systemization, you can have a cordial, professional greeting that your customers receive on autopilot, letting them know you received their inquiry.
You always want to make sure that you’re continuing to generate interest and income for your business. This means that you have to keep those leads coming in for future profits.
You can’t do that unless you’re reaching out. If you’re trying to do everything yourself or you’re having others do it manually, you could miss out on reaching more potential customers.
You have to bring in customers to keep your business thriving. By systemizing the lead generation process, you can be acquiring new business while you work on other things.
Even when your business is closed for the day, and you’ve taken off to recover from an illness or to have a day out with your family, a systemized tool such as an autoresponder opt in form paired with an online ad campaign can let your business keep working automatically for you.
You can systemize in other areas of how you brand yourself and connect to your audience, too. There are tools that help you schedule content, run ads, and launch new deals to your customers – without you having to be there helping it all unfold.
Having automated systems that compile order information also make it a lot easier when it comes time to look over the books for profitability and tax reporting. What systems do you use in your business to streamline and standardize the customer experience?
Come back tomorrow for our wrap-up on adding systems to your business for maximum productivity!
Make today count,
Jenn Glidden