How is that automation, the thing that saves you tons of time, can also be the thing that takes up a lot of time? Once set up, automated tasks for your business are a lifesaver, but getting started can be very difficult for business owners. Many businesses know that an automated business will save them time but they are struggling to set things up and aren’t sure why. This leads to frustration and ultimately the business owner giving up and continuing to handle many tasks manually.
Here are 4 reasons you’re struggling to automate your business.
Lots of Custom Work
One of the biggest reasons I see business owners struggling to automate is they are still doing a lot of custom work. Be it packages, proposals or invoices, custom data and automation don’t mix. The more streamlined you can get with your service offerings, the more you can automate. And while it sounds easy enough, this is actually a big one a lot of business owners struggle with.
What’s even more interesting is that these business owners believe they are really streamlined! One of the first things I do with all my done for you clients is an asset inventory. I review their proposals, forms and emails to offer advice on how to remove custom data so I can later automate through Dubsado.
Here’s a perfect example. I was working with a woman who used Trello for her clients. In her onboarding email she always included a specific date that her clients would no longer have access to their shared Trello board. This made it impossible for me to automate it.
The solution?
The date she picked was always two weeks out. So, instead of saying the specific date, we changed the sentence to read “in two weeks you will no longer have access”. Easy! A simple change made it super easy for me to automate and she never has to manually send that email again.
Lack of Tech Knowhow
Lack of tech knowhow is hands down the biggest reason business owners fail to automate. And I get it. By the time most business owners come to me they are already overwhelmed with client work and the idea of watching YouTube videos and troubleshooting Dubsado workflows is the last thing they want to worry about. So they don’t. So much so that they continue to manually send contracts, invoices and welcome emails. No wonder they have no time and are feeling overwhelmed!
While it can feel “easier” to just keep handling everything by yourself and sending out items manually, it’s a recipe for mistakes and burnout. Get support. A little help up front opens the door for LOTS of help in the future (i.e. automation and delegation).
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
“I didn’t know I could do that.” My Dubsado setup clients say this to me all the time. I’ll be in the middle of training them and they are shocked at what is able to be automated. What used to take a couple of hours to accomplish now happens with the click of a button – ok, it’s two buttons but you get what I’m saying here.
Knowing what’s possible when it comes to automation can be tricky. To help, here’s a quick list of a few of the items you should have (or be working to get) automated:
- Sending proposals and contracts
- Invoicing
- Welcome emails
- Reminder emails (for contract signatures, questionnaires and payment)
- Testimonial requests (you don’t want to forget this!)
- Scheduling calls
All of these items can easily be automated and when they aren’t, huge time sucks.
The Ten Percent
While most of the people you work with will follow a similar path (same price, same service offering, etc.), there will always be outliers. Don’t get hung up fretting about those one off scenarios. Work to get your process as streamlined as possible and just know that outliers can still be handled manually. Remember, it’s better to have 90% of your clients moving through an automated workflow than zero.
And who knows. If you start to realize that a “unique” scenario happens pretty often, maybe the solution is 2 separate workflows. One workflow that applies one half of your audience and another that applies to the remaining half.