Automation: 4 Ways to Save Time and Look More Professional
Recently I held a 5-day challenge and one of the topics I covered was automation. Since business owners are often complaining about not having enough time, I thought I’d talk about 4 Ways that Automation Can Help You Save Time and Look More Professional.
Automating means that certain things are set up to happen automatically, without waiting for you to initiate an action and without going back and forth with someone.
If you’re not reaching many people or selling to many people, you may not feel it’s a big deal to manually send people a free gift or a digital product they’ve purchased, or to go back and forth, back and forth to try to schedule a time to talk or get a contract signed.
However, there are a number of problems with doing that.
- There’s the time factor. While it might seem manageable at first, the more your business grows, the more inefficient and time consuming this becomes. You would be better off setting up some of these systems right from the beginning so you can focus on more revenue-generating activities instead, and you won’t have to bother with trying to set these up once you’re too busy to deal with it.
- People don’t want to wait for free gifts they’ve signed up for or digital products they’ve purchased. With the evolution of the internet, people are used to receiving digital products immediately after signing up for them or paying for them. It’s just the way it is. If they don’t receive it right away, they’re going to be bugging you for it and thinking you’re trying to cheat them.
- It makes you look unprofessional. Chances are you’re not online and immediately able to respond to a free gift request or purchase to be able to send people their product. Like I just said, people don’t want to wait. They want it now. If you’re waiting 12 hours, 24 hours, or even longer to send somebody a free gift or a product they’ve purchased, or you’re going back and forth multiple times to attempt to set up a phone appointment, or you’re making new clients print off, sign, and scan or fax back a contract, that’s not nearly as efficient or professional as someone who:
- Has a free gift opt-in set up where immediately after signing up, the prospect is added to your email list and they receive an automated email with their free gift.
- Has automatic digital product delivery set up in their shopping cart system so that immediately after payment, they can either download their digital product on the thank you page and/or they receive an automated email containing their product download link.
- Who has an online calendar set up so people can schedule discovery or strategy calls instantly, with ease – a time that will be convenient for both of you. You will both get notification of the appointment and, depending on the system you choose, you may both get reminder emails prior to the call.
- Who has a contract platform set up where they upload their contract, specify the areas that need to be filled in and signed, and send it off to their new client to be digitally signed. The new client fills in their info, signs it digitally, and both parties receive a finalized copy via email.
I think you’ll agree with me that someone who has automated free gift and product delivery set up, a convenient online calendar system for discovery sessions, and a digital contract platform is going to look more professional. It will be easier for them to stay organized, save time, and provide their prospects and clients with better customer service.
>> I would love to hear from you in the comments below about your experience with automation. How have these forms of automation improved the quality of your business? How have you or your clients benefited from them?
If you don’t have all of these systems in place, I’d like you to choose one and commit to implementing it within the next few days. Let me know in the comments below which one you’ve chosen to implement! If you need help setting any of these up, just give me a shout.
Next time I’m going to be talking about some key ways you can use automation to save time in your online marketing strategy.
