5 Signs That It’s Time to Automate
Eek! Okay, so I may not be able to control myself here because I just love love love the puzzle of connecting business owners platforms & tools and strategizing seamless, effective workflows. So, I’ll try to keep my “geek-ness” in check, but if I can’t? Sorry, but not sorry.
So, how do you know when you should be considering automation for your business? Read on to learn about some tell-tale signs that you may be due (or even past due!) to consider setting up & automating your systems.
You’ve established set services, offers, or products in your business.
Look at you! Maybe you’ve been in business for a bit or you’ve just had a very clear vision from the start. Either way, you know exactly what you are offering, the value, & how to deliver it every time. This makes is SO easy to look at the big picture and identify areas that don’t need that personal touch to take them off your plate with proper systems & automation.
You’re finding yourself doing a lot of the same tasks over and over (and over!) again.
Monthly invoices, welcome emails, informational packets, onboarding questionnaires, appointment confirmations & reminders… need I go on? If you find yourself copy & pasting the same information to send to prospective or new clients you can stop right there. YOU don’t need to be doing these things. Let’s say you spend 30 minutes a day on emails? Over the course of a week that’s 2.5 hours, a month - 10 hours, a year - 520 hours? I’m sure there are much better things you’d love to use that time for!
Speaking of time.. you’re running out of it! Ever feel like there aren’t quite enough hours in a day?
You know you should be focusing on other things to grow your business, but of course can’t stop doing the day to day tasks that run the business. You’ve got so many ideas, but can’t seem to find the time to strategize or execute. Chopping down your tedious “to do’s” is a game changer to free up your time (or your teammate/employee) to do more revenue driven activities and tasks.
Your business is growing & in demand! But things feel like they’re slipping out of your fingertips.
Love this one for you! But gosh, it can also be so stressful. When the demands of more (whatever) it may be start to increase it can be so much harder to keep track of all of the details. This is when the ball gets dropped - errors are made and things are forgotten. Your customer or client experience is impacted and as the caring business owner that you are that just amplifies your stress.
You find yourself wondering if it’s time to add on a new member to your team.
Don’t get me wrong there is definitely a time and a place to add team members into your business. Before you do you need to make sure you have your business systems set up. Why? Otherwise they’re just another (new) component to train & juggle through the chaos. Once your systems are set up it’ll be much easier to onboard a new team member. It will be clear what you are handing off to them so they can do their job smoothly.
Okay so truth? I could probably name a few more signs it’s time to automate, but I think you’ve got the idea here. In my opinion it’s never too early to take a look at your systems and start automating what you can. Most likely if you found yourself nodding your head to any of the items on this list you probably should have already!
