If a company is to not only survive but also thrive, it is essential to develop simple, repeatable systems for handling common business tasks and functions. Instead of dealing with inconsistencies and the need to invent new processes as different situations or problems arise, having a set system for how things get done can speed up work completion and improve overall productivity – and in many cases. cases of customer satisfaction.
There are many aspects of business that entrepreneurs should systematize, but below are the members Council for Young Entrepreneurs share some of the most impactful. Consider developing systems for these areas of your business and start improving your team’s productivity today.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. The sales process
As an entrepreneur, having simple, repeatable systems is critical to the success and sustainability of your business. An aspect that is often overlooked, but very useful to systematize, is the sales process. This includes lead generation, closing deals, and following up on customers. Having a clear, step-by-step system for sales can improve efficiency and consistency, and ultimately generate more revenue for your business. For starters, it’s important to identify the key stages of your sales process, map out each step, and then refine and optimize it over time. Automating and streamlining tasks such as lead tracking and email follow-ups can also ensure that no opportunities are missed and that you are always on top of your sales pipeline. – Miles Jennings, Recruiter. com
2. Set appointment
One of the most important but overlooked tasks that can have a dramatic effect on sales is making appointments. Taking too long to respond or even getting queries through the pipeline can be easily avoided by installing systems that provide custom and automated responses. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
3. Financial Transactions
One business aspect that entrepreneurs should focus on systemizing is their financial operations. This includes invoicing, accounting, budgeting and financial reporting. By having clear and repeatable systems in place, entrepreneurs can reduce the risk of financial errors and ensure they have accurate and up-to-date information about their financial performance. To get started, business owners should identify the key financial processes in their business and document them clearly and concisely. I recommend using cloud-based software solutions to automate manual tasks such as invoicing and accounting and streamline their financial operations. All this can free up time to focus on growing the business and making data-driven decisions. – Andrew Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings
4. Communication
Clear lines of communication are essential for any small business to survive. Without proper communication, your team can become confused and overwhelmed, leading to reduced productivity and quality of work. To get started systematizing communication, establish a set of standards for how communication will take place and set expectations for how quickly to respond to messages, the appropriate way to communicate, and who is responsible for what. Create a system to track all messages so they can be easily accessed and reviewed. Make sure everyone in the company understands their role in the communication process and that this is discussed with each new hire. – Rachel Bother, PRESS Modern Massage
5. Customer Data Management
Systemization brings efficiency and consistency in business functions while enabling greater automation, and indeed this is critical to the survival of a modern business. While most aspects of any business can benefit from systemization, managing and tracking customer data is a critical function that should be systemized as a priority. This includes collecting customer information such as contact information, preferences and purchase history and organizing it using data management tools and cloud storage in a way that is easily accessible and analysable. In addition, having a system to track customer service requests, complaints, and feedback is essential to responding in a timely and effective manner. – Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz
6. News listing monitoring
With the 24-hour news cycle, you need to know when your brand is relevant before it’s too late. But if you keep up with news listings and your competition, it can so easily fall by the wayside. Make it systematic with tools as simple as Google Alerts. When you keep track of your company name, important buzzwords in your field, your competitors and updates of the platforms or tools you use most often, you get a great collection of everything important delivered straight to your inbox every morning, without having to search of the Internet parts. This, in turn, can help you create new content, perform better SEO, and even up your PR game. – Kaitleen Shee, TO GROW
7. Onboarding and training
As companies transition to hybrid work environments, it has become essential to find seamless and responsible ways to integrate new employees, not to mention the geographic barrier that makes this more challenging. Create a planned process and structure. This should include a digital library of manuals for job descriptions, roles, expectations, learning modules or materials needed for training sessions and scheduled days for orientation and training. All of these can be easily documented and accessed by anyone on the team at any time. Orientation and training usually take a lot of time, so having a system in place allows new hires to be useful to the team more quickly. This benefits the company in more ways than one, as the same process also sets a precedent for periodic organizational training. – Tonya Bruce, Lead Beautiful, Inc.
8. Content Updates
I suggest entrepreneurs systematize their content updates. If you want to attract new traffic to your site, you need fresh, entertaining and accurate blog posts. You can easily start this process by creating a category called “Updates/Rewrites” on your project management tool of choice. Add outdated or irrelevant articles to the to-do list and work with your content marketing team to update articles at least once a year. – John Turner, SeedProd LLC
9. Customer Service
One business aspect that every business owner needs to systematize is customer service. Handling customer complaints, feedback and inquiries can be daunting at times, but you need to handle it patiently without losing your temper. Your customers may yell at you or want an immediate answer to their question, or even vent their frustration on you, but you can’t just yell back. So make sure you train your customer service team accordingly and streamline the process to make it less frustrating. Identify the general duties and functions of customer service, such as answering customer questions, resolving customer complaints, and providing customer feedback. Then develop a system for each task, such as a set of FAQs for common customer questions or a standard procedure for handling customer complaints. – Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite
10. Decision Making
The best thing I ever did was to systematize decision-making as far as possible. We had issues in our company where employees couldn’t move forward with tasks because they needed approval from leaders or stakeholders. It so happened that these leaders were on vacation or otherwise engaged in critical tasks. So we came up with a system where we told everyone the following: if the change you want to make is permanent, wait for a response from your team leader. To get approval. But if the action you want to take can be reversed, go ahead and make the best possible decision. Then bring it up later so the leader can check. This helped us move forward and create autonomy without making drastic mistakes. – Syed Balky, WPB Beginner
