Creating Repeatable Processes In Your Business
There are many fun and exciting things to do when you start your business. You have brand colors to pick out, headshots to have taken, a business name to decide on, and people to meet. Focusing on processes may sound boring compared to all that, but you’ll be excited by the outcomes of creating repeatable processes in your business.
What does creating a process look like?
You want to start with mapping out your client journey. You can do some brainstorming, then draw it on a big piece of paper, use a whiteboard app, or any other way that works for you to collect every possible detail. Think about how your clients find you. Social media? From a referral? Networking? Then consider how they get to actually working with you, what your onboarding process will be, the steps of the service you’re providing, and how you will end your work together.
Now you can identify the different processes you need to serve your clients and run your business successfully. You want to pick one process to start with instead of jumping into all of them at once, which would be overwhelming.
For example:
As a consultant, your work is custom and requires a process to create and present a proposal.
As a website developer, you need a process for onboarding that requires obtaining information through questionnaires, a way to upload branding assets, and a system for setting up necessary files.
As an interior designer, you need processes to share design plans and secure the proper approvals.
As a social media manager, you need processes to create and schedule social media content.
Let’s consider the onboarding process, and start by determining your starting point and ending point. Let’s act as if the client has signed the contract and paid the invoice. We need to be clear on the steps from that to holding your first strategy session. What will you have to accomplish before the meeting?
The steps might look like this:
Client questionnaire needs to be completed
A Google Drive needs to be set up
Folders need to be set up in Google Drive for photos, logos and fonts, and the copy
The strategy session needs to be scheduled
Target milestone dates need to be established
Additional payment dates need to be set
Now we need to put the list in order making sure to fill in any gaps we missed. At this point, you as the business owner have a template that you can check every time you onboard a new client. Next, you want to choose a place to keep your documented processes - you could use a Google doc, a project management tool such as Trello or Clickup, or another platform that you use for business operations.
Now we can figure out how to optimize the process. We can decide who needs to do each step, what we need to actually get that done, how we can possibly streamline or automate it, and - this is the part that can get overlooked but is a huge opportunity - how will it look from the client’s perspective?
For example, maybe the client questionnaire needs to be written or updated. Where do we house it and how do we send it? It could be on your computer and can easily be attached to an email. If you use a CRM, we can create a workflow where it triggers the questionnaire to be emailed once the invoice is paid. Scheduling apps, payment apps, CRMs, and other platforms can all be used to automate pieces of your processes.
Once again, thinking about it from the client’s perspective - if you think they might feel pressured to finish that questionnaire before your strategy session, you can provide some instructions, like, “Please plan to send the questionnaire back at least 48 hours prior to our meeting. The best way to attack it is to schedule two or three one-hour-long blocks and work on it a bit at a time. Take time to step away and sit with the answers. Then go back and make any updates.”
Now we’ve gone from manually sending a document to having the document automatically sent once they’ve paid their invoice and some clear direction on how to best complete the task.
Once you complete your first process, you can decide strategically which one you’ll do next, and keep going until you have all the processes necessary to manage your business with efficiency and success.
Developing processes can be overwhelming. If you’d like some guidance and support with your processes, let’s schedule a time to talk.