Do you wish there were more hours in the day to get everything done? When it comes to business, working more hours does not necessarily mean greater success. In fact, it is better to find a way to work smarter instead of harder. Automation is one way that you can work smarter in your business.
Let’s look at how it could literally save you hours every month and even increase your sales.
What Is Automation?
Automation used to mean making machines faster and more efficient. But now the term can be applied to using resources to make your business faster and more efficient!
Automating is the process of streamlining repetitive manual tasks and using a whole raft of tools to your advantage. You can automate some aspects of your finances, your client communication, your lead generation and your sales process. The great news is that automation doesn’t have to cost the earth. You can use a lot of cost effective, or even free tools to save your business oodles of time.
How Can It Work For Your Business?
To get the most out of automation, you need to select the areas of your business where you will save a significant amount of time. These are some of the areas you could consider…
Marketing
How amazing would it be to generate sales just from a well crafted email campaign? Well, you can do that by using an email management software like Mailchimp, Mailerlite, or Active Campaign. Send your email database through a journey that builds trust and educates them on how your business can solve their problems. This series of emails would automatically send and ultimately result in sales for your business.
Social Media
It can be such a headache remembering to put regular posts on social media right? So stop trying to remember. Instead, use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Grum to load all of your social media posts for the week or month. This will save you a bunch of time and ensure you keep engaging with your audience.
Finances
Explore the capabilities of your finance software. It is highly likely that you can set up recurring invoices for regular amounts, streamline the reconciling of your accounts and generate reports for your tax and GST payments. If you are still trying to struggle through with an excel spreadsheet, now is the time to upgrade.
Document Sharing
If you have a lot of collaborative projects then you need to embrace Google’s suite of services. By sharing your document with the parties involved, they all get real time updates and can see what edits have been made. That means no more emailing documents around and wondering if you have the most current version or not.
Project Management
Chasing up with the various people involved in a project, or working out what stage you are at can be very time consuming. Using a project management tool like Asana will keep you fully organised at all times. You can assign tasks to certain team members, and track your progress on each project. At a glance, you will know where everything is at in your business.
Calendar Apps
Trying to arrange a convenient time to speak with colleagues, clients and prospects can be nightmare. Utilising the power of an online booking app allows people that want to speak with you to book a time that is convenient for them. You simply block out the times you aren’t available and let them book in a time that suits.
As you can see, automation is a powerful way to streamline many aspects of your business. By using these tools you can save yourself time and an awful lot of stress! It really is all about working smarter, not harder!
Speaking of working smarter, have you check out our marketing strategies yet?