Ramon Ray from Smart Hustle Magazine and Erin Mathie from Business Made Simple joined forces in a recent YouTube Live event for a candid, informative discussion on “5 Ways to Improve your Business Organization and Increase Sales.” Ray and Mathie discussed some of the challenges all business owners face when it comes to the fundamentals of staying organized.
Ramon Ray: I struggle with organization, Erin. What do you mean by organization when it comes to running a small business?
Erin Mathie: Organization is a process, and there are many different phases of organization. At Business Made Simple, we run a lot of events. If you’ve ever run an event before, you know there are so many moving pieces, and it’s hard to keep track of them all. Often, a customer ends up in a space where they are getting a lot of leads at an event, but because things can be chaotic during the event, they aren’t always following up with those leads.
Ramon Ray: How does one address an undefined process?
Erin Mathie: Looking at processes and defining them into small executable steps is a huge starting point for any business organization. A CRM software platform like Insightly tracks who’s in charge of a project, who’s following up on a lead, and what communication has happened to date is critical.
Ramon Ray: Why do you think it’s so hard for organizations to be organized?
Erin Mathie: A business organization is a kind of a living, breathing organism. It’s always evolving and changing, so we need to make constant adjustments. Even as a one-person business, it is never too early to start figuring out logical processes and start to organize them. If you wait until the growth has already happened, it’s going to come back and bite you hard.
The biggest struggle happens because businesses can grow too fast. Sometimes we think if we can just get in a certain number of leads then all problems would be solved. Or, if we could just close that big sale all problems would be solved. But what really happens is when businesses start to grow and see some success, it starts to clog up their systems. Then suddenly a business owner is realizing that they don’t really have a defined on-boarding process for new clients and things start falling through the cracks.
Ramon Ray: How much does the human dimension come into play in being organized?
Erin Mathie: Sometimes the most difficult hurdle to overcome is trying to figure out the human part. The first piece is to show people what’s in it for them. Employees might ask, “why are you making me track all these calls that I make?” Showing them what’s in it for them when, for example, they can pull up and look at a report that will show them here’s your hottest prospects to call, or here’s the last time you talked to this person. This is a critical first big step.
Ramon Ray: So, you don’t have to be the center point of information if you have a proper organizational plan?
Erin Mathie: Sometimes there’s kind of a double-edged sword where some bosses are thinking this is great, everybody comes to me because I’ve got all the information. The other side of that is that the boss can’t get their own stuff done because they’re constantly interrupted by people knocking on the door. You should really seek out avenues to empower other people or else your business can never grow.
Ramon Ray: Give us some of the tools and best practices you use in your business with clients to help you operate as a more organized company.
I use Insightly CRM, which I love. It’s the CRM platform I recommend most often, especially for service-based businesses. It’s great not only for managing customer relationships, but also for hooking to platforms such as QuickBooks. I love being able to connect to these types of applications and have them tied to one another.
Ramon Ray: Erin, can you provide any tips to prevent process paralysis when implementing processes or when trying to be organized?
Erin Mathie: That’s a fantastic question. I think some people think about developing processes like they’re going to be running a nuclear power plant. What I really recommend is that you put together bigger chunks of your processes and then dive into the details so you can put in all those little pieces on a to-do list.
For example, if you had a task that says ‘set up your expo booth’, but then in the details of that task, you can put in things like ‘here’s how we want the table set up’, and ‘don’t use the yellow tablecloth’, and ‘here’s where you can find the hooks to hang up the banner’. All those specifics can be included more in the details, and they don’t have to be set up as individual tasks that somebody would have to check off a list.
Ramon Ray: Erin, if a business owner says to you that they definitely want to take some steps to try to be more organized, where can they start on their own for today?
Erin Mathie: Where I would suggest a business owner starts is to look at where the pain points are. If the pain points lie in client nurturing, for example, then think about figuring out a way to do that. Maybe that’s through developing a MailChimp campaign that can demonstrate appreciation without having to take a lot of time. Or if a pain point is event management, plan out exactly what should happen for events, when it should happen, who should do it, and how it should be done–and then test it out. Once that time is freed up, roll that process into the next pain point and start freeing up some more time for you.
Listen to the full conversation between Ramon Ray and Erin Mathie on YouTube.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
