The 5 Must Have Processes You Need To Scale Your Business

by | Aug 31, 2020 | Blog, Systems

The 5 Processes You Need To Scale Your Business

 

A business is only as strong as it's systems & processes… when I say systems & processes, I mean what happens when someone is unhappy with your product and asks for a refund, do you have a system or do you decide in the moment, do you have to get involved for that to even happen or can your team handle it without you?  Is the answer different depending on who has been asked? 

The answers to those questions will tell you so much.  

I have some common myths for you about systems. These are all things that I have heard people say before that are just not true! 

  1. I’m new so I don’t need systems yet.   If you ever want to get out of the rat race of doing everything yourself you will need to start to take things off of your plate.  When you hire someone and have zero systems in place, you become the bottleneck.  If you started created a few systems of things that you were already doing, you could them pass them off to your new employee or contractor when they started, making your life and him or hers much easier.  More to come on how to actually make the system.  
  2. We are so busy we don’t have time to put them into place.  The busier you are… the more clients you have.. The more you need to put these in place so you are giving a great customer experience or balls will start to drop. 
  3. We’ve been doing just fine without them.  You will hit a ceiling at some point.  Without systems in place you will max out your business at some point.  Yes, it might be a million dollars but if you can hit a million dollars in revenue, you’ll want to hit 2, or 3, and it will kill you to see your business plateau at 1 million.  The worse part is when you finally cap out, you will have to slow down to put these in place.  

A process is a systematic series of actions directed to an end result.

Right now as I record this my performing arts academies are open.  Someone is working and possibly talking to a customer as we speak.  Maybe she is signing up a new client right now.  For some of you, that might make you nervous.  Maybe you are wondering if someone else would do it just like you, would they forget to upsell, or kick off the onboarding process the exact way you would?

But I am not nervous because we have systems and processes and she is following them to a t.  She is doing each step exactly the way that I would.

Here’s the best part.  The studios are running the way that I ran them but I don’t have to be there 24/7.  No…. trust me when I say I put my time in.  The family dinners missed, the weekends at work, NO MORE of that because of systems and processes.

I’m also not going to get a phone call if she gets stuck on something.  We have a process for that too.  In fact most people that work for me, don’t actually have my personal cell phone number.  

Last week in foot traffic

  • Recently…. Someone on our team had their appendix burst…..
  • Zero warning
  • Wasn’t able to quickly help us transition
  • Just on our plates….
  • We covered for her 1.5 weeks – 

Today we are going to talk about 5 core systems you need in your business.  These 5 systems I am going to talk about are all housed in Monday.com for us.  It is by far the best project management system we have found and I’ve used a ton of different ones over the last decade. 

  1.  Marketing/Sales – I started with this one on purpose because getting a system that is going to constantly attract new leads and sales is of the utmost importance in your business.  Businesses should always be looking for more leads and sales and if you try to tell me that you are maxed out or at capacity then it’s probably time to add another person to your team.  This is basically what Foot Traffic Formula is all about.  It is a 4 part system that helps us first drive traffic, then capture their contact information, immediately offer a solution to their problem – yes that’s right we don’t wait a few days, weeks or months before we sell, we offer a sale right inside of our funnel, that is how we make money every single day even while I’m on vacation, sleeping, or with my family,  Our secret sauce as I like to call it is how we track the most important metrics to continue to increase our traffic and conversions.  Now I know that sentence or two doesn’t seem like a lot but it is a massive step by step system inside of our business.  We have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, to-do’s assigned to specific positions.  It is the fuel that continuously gets added to the fire.  If you’ve ever wondered how Foot Traffic has grown so fast it is because we practice what we preach and marketing and sales is a key area of focus for us.   
  2.  Customer Relationship Management – CRM – in case you ever wondered what CRM stood for…. Now although we typically offer something to buy very early on in our customer journey, not everyone buys right away, it doesn’t mean no all the time, sometimes it's just not right now.  If they don’t buy remember we have collected their contact info so can continue to follow up and nurture.  This is another specific system you will need.  Where are you storing information about your hot leads, your hottest customers that might want to buy more from you?  Inside of our Monday.com boards we have a Sales board and a Members board.  We have information on each of our clients, notes about their business, some personal things they’ve shared with us about family, their goals, etc.  We are able to keep tabs on when is the last time we reached out, touched based and so on.  Same goes for potential clients.  If you are one of our clients right now at some point you probably were labeled and color coded with the phrase hot lead and someone on the team was following up and reaching out so you will feel supported.  Now you know one of my biggest pet peeves is when businesses wine and dine you when you aren’t a client and then they get you and then go radio silent.  Not at Foot Traffic because we take you from the sales board and right into our Members board and we continue the same experience.  This only happens now because it’s a system.  We definitely weren’t this good 2 or 3 years and we aren’t nearly as good as we will be 5 years from now, because systems make it so much easier to get better and better.  
  3.  Client Experience – Have you ever bought something and so did your friend but you had a completely different experience than her, now if your experience was better you might feel guilty and if it was worse you’re probably upset and frustrated, maybe even made a public complaint to the owner.  Here’s the thing referrals should be a big part of every business.  Why? Because if you are doing a good job your clients should be shouting you out from the rooftops which means you have clients who are friends.  Think about it?  Probably 99% of us have clients who are friends.  Do friends talk and share everything good or bad? Of course, do you think they are talking about you? It’s possible.  Whether it’s the friend that had the good experience bragging or the other one complaining you will probably come up.  When you do you want to be consistent.  You want to make sure when the one friend says the welcome basket was beautiful wasn’t it and the other one should respond with “I know right?” Not, “what welcome basket? I didn’t get a basket.”  You see what I mean?  In Monday, we have a board for on boarding a customer, off boarding a customer and everything in between.  
  4.  Operations – Sounds so boring doesn’t it? I know, but it’s everything.  Without operations your business doesn’t operate smoothly.  This is where it’s time to pick your project management software, email system, will you use Google Drive or Dropbox, etc.  And then after yes, you put every single system and process documented in your project management software.  Even if you are a solo entrepreneur, you should have one of these.  That is what we use Monday.com for. 
  5. Finances – Yes, even if you know your in red, or you just can’t figure out how your business could make so much money but you still aren’t getting paid? 

Yes, I’ve been there you need to know where you’re at so you can get to where you’re going.  

Here is what I suggest.  A daily sales checkin.  I log on to my Clickfunnels dashboard and look at how much money I brought in yesterday from our sales funnels.  Yes, remember the goal with Foot Traffic Formula is to sell every single day.  Sometimes I’m blown away and it motivates me to do more and sometimes I think what happened yesterday?  And we fix the problem and get it back to where it was.  

Then I do a Finance Friday more thorough checkin.  I look at all the bank accounts, my CPA transfers our Profit First numbers.  All of this is a process and a system.  What’s yours?  Is it, oh shoot I think the credit card was due yesterday and you hurry and log on to your account?  I hope not!

Before we wrap up, let’s talk about how to get started putting systems in place because I know right now you might be incredibly overwhelmed.  You’re thinking where am I even going to start?

  • The answer….One at a time and assign everyone to do their own systems.

One tip here is all systems documented in Monday are for the position not the person.  So for instance Claire has been here for a few years and her position has changed a lot we don’t want to have Claire’s systems, we want to have Customer success system, accountability coach system so if someone moves up in the company or is repositioned then you can easily train the new person with positions systems or otherwise Claire would have to figure out well I’m keeping them but this ones yours and it becomes messy.

Remember before when I mentioned this is a step by step process.  Well we created a brand new social strategy to repurpose all of our content into a million different pieces of micro – content and of course we put that in a Monday.com board for our team.  

If you want to get your hands on it, we’ve put together a new product called The Content Machine and we share our Monday.com board with the exact process plus a real example for you to see it in action so there is no confusion.  (you don't need to use Monday to see it) however once you see it I think you will change your mind)

stacytuschl.com/machine – 

All for just $27, yes, – not $2700, just $27, this system is gold, go check it out and let me know what you think.  

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You know I can not say enough amazing things about Monday.com. So before I go, here are some tips about how to use Monday to set up all these amazing new systems you are going to implement! 

    • When creating your system Monday.com has so many useful building blocks. These building blocks are what you use to set up your systems. Here is just a taste of what they have! 
      • There are integrations so that you can upload things like Zoom, google drive, and so much more
      • There are forms you can link to boards 
      • You can have a calendar hook up – you can see what you and your team are assigned to today on your calendar 
      • There are different timeline views 
      • Notifications – both on your phone and computer 
      • Subitems – this is in beta- but soon you can have other tasks assigned under your big assignment! 
      • Map view  
      • Time tracking 
      • Guest permissions 
      • File sharing  
      • Separate workspaces 

  • If you are looking for a good place to start creating systems- Monday.com’s- intuitive work plan template- is great! It is designed to articulate your required steps in order to achieve a stated goal; Use concrete actions to execute your objectives and deliverables.

I hope you have found this helpful and you can start seeing why accountability and a good project management software is key.

I’m partnering with Monday.com to help spread this message to help small business owners combat the chaos in their business.

If you want to try out monday.com with a 14 day free trial go to www.stacytuschl.com/monday

I know you’ll love it as much as I do!  Let’s build systems together to help you make more time and more money doing what you love.