Tools That Will Make Running Your Business More Efficient

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How do you feel about the idea of getting your business operations organized? Do you feel enthusiastic or overwhelmed? I find the task of getting organized and staying organized is a delicate dance that I do within my business and life every day. I found a quote that is helping me to see how getting organized within my business can have a direct impact.

“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.” – Anonymous

I can relate to that because it is so true. Ask yourself how much time did you spend today looking for an important email in your inbox or an electronic document on your computer? I am sure it was at least 5 minutes. Now add up all the 5-minute experiences like this for a week or a month and you will begin to see how much time can be wasted and money lost by not being organized. Here are a few tools that can help you get more organized and spend your time on money-making activities.

Receptionist & CRM - It is important to have a tool in place to take care of potential and current customers that will leave them with a professional feeling but won’t break the bank. I recently wrote a post about the CRM tool Zoho and the phone tools Grasshopper and Google voice. Check it out here.

Project Management - There are so many reasons why using a good project management tool is an important piece of running your business. Simply put it saves you time and that will save you money. Check out this post I wrote describing what to look for and a few tools that might be useful for you to check out.

Professional Employer Organization - Well this isn’t really a tool but more of a resource that will help you to manage your team (if you are in a growth stage) in a cost-effective way. According to Investopedia, a PEO is an external company that handles your business’s administrative, financial, and human resources (HR) needs.” Check out their list of the top 7 best PEO Services for 2021 to start your research.

Not having a systemized way to run your business can create a lot of headaches. I hope that you will check out some of the tools above to move you toward success on your workflow journey.

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Do You Have Systems In Place To Run Your Business Efficiently?

Running a business is a full-time job. Remember the good old days when you would work for someone and they took care of everything? All you had to do is show up and start working. In contrast, you are now in charge and it is up to you to have an organized way to run your business daily. These are the systems, tools & processes you use to run your business. Here are a few categories to consider:

Customer Center - This is where all things customer related live. This is where the initial customer meeting is documented for each customer. If they were a lead that turned out to not be a good fit then you would document why. You should have a CRM tool to help manage this process along with standard operating procedures to follow so that consistency can be maintained. A good CRM tool to check out is Zoho CRM.

Office Management - The place where we do business has changed in 2020. Some people are working at a traditional office while other people are working remotely. No matter where you call the office it is important to establish a few processes that will help you to stay organized. Do you have a way to make & receive customer calls when you are out of the office? Do you have a standardized greeting to answer customer calls? Some good tools to check out for phone communication is Grasshopper or Google voice.

Running a business is a lot of work. It is helpful to minimize friction and maximize efficiency by taking a look at your current processes to see where you can make improvements.

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3 Tech Tools You Can Use To Communicate With Your Clients

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The month of March went by way too fast!

We dedicated the whole month to taking a sharper look at how to give your health and wellness business a reboot, tips on how to make your online business more sound and ideas on how to attract your ideal client. As the month ends we will round it out by looking at 3 tools you can use to communicate with your clients. We all know it is hard to find good clients so ensuring they keep coming back is paramount to keeping your business healthy.

 Communication is key.

Using email only to talk to clients can get cumbersome. Here are 3 tech tools you can use to stay connected with your clients.

1. Slack: This is a collaboration tool with many bells & whistles. If you have a project with a team and you need a way to keep your client in the loop then this tool may be just the one to use. Check out how it all works here.

2. Ryver: This is a competitor to Slack and has a lot of great features. The best part of using this tool is that it is free. You can check it out here.

3. Google Suite: Google is the best when it comes to having tools for text-based chats, file sharing, email and video chat. The cost for the basic plan is just $5. 

There are all sorts of techie tools to use as a way of staying connected to clients. The most important thing to remember is to make sure your client knows how to use the tools so that you can make the most out of it. So what tools do you love using to stay connected to clients? Share in the comments below.

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