How I Automated 50% of My Tasks and Scaled My Business

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Operating a advertising company isn’t any stroll within the park. It requires repetitive, time-consuming duties. With the shopper listing rising, the guide workload will increase to some extent the place you want no less than one — if no more — staff to deal with the stress.

I spotted this to the bone as repetitive duties and guide work piled up. The primary blow was that it grew to become more durable for our staff to execute duties on time. Additionally, it incessantly precipitated burnout or fatigue that interfered with the standard of our work.

To deal with this, the primary and quick answer that got here to my thoughts was hiring a number of staff. However that wasn’t possible, as recruiting extra staff would require further administration and enhance overhead prices.

So, after re-evaluating some workable choices, I lastly discovered a greater method to streamline my operations — automation. Regardless of the skepticism, I made a decision to provide it a shot and began automating my enterprise processes. The outcome? I used to be capable of offload 50% of my enterprise duties.

Here is my complete journey, from switching to automation to attaining sustainable progress with out hiring further staff.

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Figuring out the time-consuming duties

Earlier than diving into my automation methods, let me spotlight the duties that slowed me down and have become the most important bottlenecks in my workflow:

1. Handbook lead technology

Initially, I spent half my enterprise days simply nurturing certified leads. I needed to goal corporations that wanted optimization for buyer acquisition and funnel administration, which took a substantial amount of time.

Even after sifting via numerous web sites, social media profiles and directories, I hardly discovered companies that wanted scalable advertising techniques and progress methods.

And the outcome? I step by step began to overlook alternatives.

2. Buyer assist overload

As I inspected additional, I came upon that the client assist representatives of my firm had to reply to each inquiry, handle complaints and supply options — all manually.

As you’ll be able to think about, with the rising variety of buyer assist requests, it grew to become more durable to maintain up, leading to slower response instances. The worst half was that the repetitive queries consumed an excessive amount of time, leaving little scope for them to deal with critical buyer points.

3. Monetary monitoring and reporting

Processing invoices, reconciling accounts and producing monetary stories have been greater than a time drain for my staff. Manually monitoring funds led to miscalculations and inaccurate stories. The inefficient administration made future revenue predictions and finances planning an ideal impediment, because it all resulted in errors and misplaced income.

4. Shopper onboarding and communication

The following large problem I confronted was managing shopper onboarding and communication. Every shopper required personalised consideration, contract processing and documentation.

So, it consumed a big portion of our workweek to maintain observe of each interplay, tackle queries and guarantee a clean onboarding expertise. The shortage of a structured system impacted our shopper satisfaction and retention.

5. Assembly scheduling and follow-ups

Environment friendly communication and well timed follow-ups are important for my staff, particularly when executing the Consideration, Curiosity, Need and Motion (AIDA) framework. Nevertheless, the guide processes, together with scheduling conferences, became a serious roadblock.

Plus, we needed to coordinate assembly instances throughout completely different time zones and make infinite back-and-forth emails, which impacted the precision of that framework. At its worst, we have been susceptible to potential shopper drop-offs.

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Choosing particular options

That stated, after noting down the problems, I spotted that many of the time-consuming duties might be labored round utilizing automation. And here is how I did it:

1. LinkedIn Gross sales Navigator and Apollo.io for automated lead technology

I built-in LinkedIn Gross sales Navigator and Apollo.io to eradicate my guide lead technology drain. These superior instruments are designed for extremely focused searches based mostly on particular standards corresponding to trade, service or firm measurement.

Apollo.io’s e mail finder and verification options have been a lifesaver, considerably lowering the time I spent on guide analysis.

Greater than that, we might attain our target market in minimal time. We narrowed down our search with LinkedIn Gross sales Navigator and because of this, our firm additionally witnessed as much as a 17% larger win price on common.

2. AI-powered chatbots for buyer assist

First, I attempted addressing buyer overload points by implementing an AI-powered chatbot on my web site CRM. It was programmed to deal with buyer queries and supply primary troubleshooting.

After testing a number of chatbot designs, I made a decision to evaluation one and join it with our CRM. It was successfully linked with HubSpot to entry buyer information, observe conversations and replace buyer information.

This ensured personalised assist and decreased our workload by as much as 40%. The effectivity allowed my staff to supply 24/7 customer support with improved response time.

3. QuickBooks On-line for monetary monitoring and reporting

For monetary monitoring and reporting, I discovered QuickBooks On-line, which integrates with our cost gateways and financial institution accounts.

This superior software program successfully automated our bill technology, cost processing and monetary reporting. Additionally, I built-in a devoted reporting and enterprise intelligence software, Fathom, with QuickBooks and ensured seamless monetary reporting.

In consequence, I witnessed an elevated accuracy of my reporting by almost 95% and was capable of scale back the reporting time by 75%.

4. HubSpot for shopper onboarding and communication

I used HubSpot’s strong suite of automation instruments to handle our shoppers’ onboarding and communication processes. The highly effective workflow automation builders of Hubspot helped to automate contract signing via an built-in e-signature software.

It automated our doc assortment through file request workflows, and the sequence software allowed us to ship personalised and focused emails to shoppers. We might simply monitor shopper interactions and progress via onboarding phases and establish points.

Total, we turned a sophisticated course of right into a time-saving, clean system and ensured a streamlined shopper engagement by 50%. We might additionally observe our advertising success and alter the plan accordingly. Nevertheless, the important thing profit was lowering our onboarding time by 20%.

5. HubSpot and Calendly for assembly scheduling and follow-ups

To enhance follow-ups and deploy the AIDA framework, I carried out HubSpot. With HubSpot, my staff successfully manages follow-up emails, reminders and duties based mostly on particular actions and timelines. We have been capable of enhance our unsolicited mail automation and retargeting consistency by 90%.

I used Calendly — one of many widespread scheduling instruments — to automate our scheduling. It was built-in with my staff’s work schedule, and we might set the assembly instances accordingly.

This helped my staff large time as a few of the repetitive duties like including new leads, sending alerts and syncing information have been accomplished very quickly.

In any case that automation, I efficiently streamlined guide duties and boosted effectivity by a whopping 50%. The outcome was clear: My staff grew to become extra productive, shopper satisfaction improved, and the general high quality of our work elevated — with none further employment. Automating the processes not solely saved my helpful time but additionally helped my staff scale back errors, enhance accuracy and deal with what’s most vital.

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