Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, Melissa Swink discusses the transformative power of automation, AI, and smart systems. She shares practical strategies to save time and enhance efficiency in all areas of a business’ operations, including sales processes, client onboarding, team training, and accounting. By leveraging technology, business owners can streamline their operations, improve client experiences, and ultimately grow their businesses without the burden of manual tasks.

Key Highlights:

• Automation can significantly reduce manual work in your business. It's important to identify repeatable processes, first, and then lean into automation to fuel growth. 
• You can streamline your sales process through online bookings and pre-qualifying steps. 
• Client onboarding should be systemized to provide a consistent and positive experience.
• Using a single tool for multiple functions can save time and money.
• Team training can be simplified with organized resources and checklists.
• Accounting automation can eliminate the need for manual invoicing.
• Investing in systems is often more cost-effective than outsourcing tasks.
• No time? Virtual assistants can help identify and set up automation systems for you.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and In today's episode, we are going to talk about the magic wand that will make manual work disappear. Yes, you heard that right. And who can't use a magical wand these days? I mean, I feel like...

I shared the first concept from the mini workshop, which is the number one fastest way to get anything done. That is in episode 35. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, highly recommend going back and doing so because that will be a game changer for you as well, particularly when it comes to being more selective and intentional about what we are choosing to spend our time on. So with that being said, the magic wand that will make manual work disappear.

is leveraging AI, automation, and systems. Yes, we're gonna break all of these down. So if you're one of those people who's like, wait a second, that sounds way too technical for me, or maybe you're thinking like, I hate systems, I'm a creative person. So when we start talking about operations and logistics and all those sorts of things, my brain starts to shut down.

Don't worry, we're going to break this down and make this very approachable, very easy to understand, very easy to implement as well because I have another magic wand that will help you take care of all of this in a very simple way. So I want you to consider the repeatable or the recurring processes that occur in your business on say, maybe a daily or weekly, monthly, quarterly, even yearly basis.

So a couple of examples here include, we're gonna start with talking about sales, your sales process. So whether you are a service-based business or you have a brick and mortar retail store, there is ultimately a process for getting potential customers or clients, whatever the word is that you use, potential patients if you're in the health industry, but how they find your business.

and ultimately make the decision to do business with you. And so to give you an example of the sales process, I'm gonna share with you, there is another owner of a VA company that I have conversations with on a regular basis. Now she and I have very different business models, we have different clientele, but it's always great to find out from her how she's running things.

and what can I learn from her? What can she learn from me? And one of the things that she shared with me is that she has really automated a lot of her sales process. And I'm like, well, tell me more about this because being fully transparent, I still do the vast majority of the sales for my company. And so I'm like, how are you making this more efficient for you and your team? And she was sharing with me that she basically had her team help her create

like a fun type of quiz that she has available on her website. Don't ask me the name of the quiz, but basically what this does is has a potential client who lands on her website, go through the process of kind of answering some questions. I would imagine, you know, a little bit about them and their business. What are some of their goals? What does their current team look like? These are some of the things that I ask. And she asks some very specific questions.

And ultimately that quiz automatically determines and routes them to the next appropriate step. So let's say somebody fills out this quiz and she finds that some of their answers indicate that they might not be ready to work with her and her team. What she does is she has a page that they will be directed to of here are your next steps before you hire a VA. And she has some resources in there.

I think she also has an option to schedule maybe like a 15 or 20 minute consult with them for how they can specifically get either themselves and or their business ready to work with a virtual assistant. So these would be people who, know, normally she or her team would get on a phone call with or do some type of consultation only to find out that they're probably not quite ready to move forward with working with her.

And that is time well spent. have seen where, you know, even in my own business where people who were not quite ready to work with us have ultimately come to us at a point in the future where they were ready to make that leap. But in this case, this is very, it serves them very well because she's providing them with the resources. She is giving them an option to receive maybe a little bit of coaching on how they can be more prepared to work with the VA.

Or if they are an ideal match, like yes, it seems like their business is at a point where they are ready to bring on a VA, they have some things in place that make this an ideal working relationship for both of us and everyone involved. Then they are routed to go ahead and schedule a formal consultation with either her or a member of their team. And that kind of goes through that sales process.

So looking at your own sales process, what are some of the things that you can do in order to make that easier? It could be starting with something as simple as doing online bookings for consultations and then having a scheduler with maybe a short intake form, like finding out a little bit more about them and where they're at and their goals and things like that. It can be really, really simple or full on a quiz or other just

depending on what your sales process looks like, other ways to automate some of these things and make it easier for people to do business with you, but also requires less time invested on an individual basis for you and your team members. Okay, another example and a key area in your business where there's probably some recurring or some repeatable processes is the client journey or client onboarding. So I would say these two go hand in hand.

Because yes, it's really important that when somebody decides that they're going to do business with us, yes, they're in. What does that process look like to get up and running? For one thing, we want to make sure that we provide great customer service and a consistent experience for our clients. But then we also want to make sure that they get up and running and working with us successfully so that they want to keep coming back for more. We want to make sure they have a great experience and that we have ultimately

solve the problem or meeting the need that they have. So I have a client that I've worked with a number of years ago. She used DubSado for her client management, if you will. Now DubSado is a software tool. It's like a CRM. There's many more like it on the market. So insert whatever software that you're using here, or certainly there are types of software that are specific for industries.

I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole of CRM tools, but she used Dubsado to number one, send out contracts to her clients. She was in the coaching space. And so she had a contract that would go out from Dubsado and the client would ultimately be able to electronically sign and complete any intake forms that went along with that. Their payments were automatically initiated, whether they were paying in full or maybe they were doing a payment plan.

All of that was handled within one system. And then ultimately when they were enrolling in one of her programs, they received an email drip each step of the way of that program. So they're welcome email. They're week one, they're week two, what have you. And it just saved her a lot of time. And it actually saved her on having a variety of software tools to pay for because it was all in one place. She was not paying for, say for example,

DocuSign or some of the electronic signature programs for the contract. She was probably using an accounting system like QuickBooks or Xero or FreshBooks or something like that, but maybe this saved her on bringing information over from one system to another and maybe manually entering payment information or manually billing. It was all in one place. Similarly, she may have had an email marketing

software tool like Mailchimp or Flowdesk or there's so many out there. Insert whatever email marketing tool that you use here. But she then would need to manually transfer the client's information over to that system for that email drip to work. And so she was able to streamline a lot of this by using one tool and one system to handle it all. Okay, the...

Third example that I want to give you here for your business could be team onboarding and training. I know we have worked with several clients through one of our VIP strategy sessions. If that's something that you're curious to learn more about, certainly send me a message. I can share more. It's more where we do deeper dives with our clients in terms of their processes, their workflows, maybe putting together an action plan for a goal that they're working towards or a launch that they have coming up, things like that. But we've done

several VIP strategy sessions with clients who are getting help with team onboarding and training. So for example, one was in the healthcare space where they have multiple practitioners enrolling with their team and to help serve their clients. We also had a realtor who was onboarding new agents underneath her. And so, you know, when we're looking at, you know, enrolling new team members,

or onboarding new team members, we find that we are often having these same conversations over and over and over, right? We wanna make sure that they know where to find information. We wanna make sure that they get set up on maybe our payroll system or accounting system. We wanna make sure that they have our handbook or our, for us, it's our independent contractor agreement, just depending on what types of team members you're enrolling, but we're having similar conversations

we're receiving and requesting the same information from everyone, how do we systematize this? So for us, we actually found that a really simple tool solved this problem. And so basically we have just a Google sheet that has links to each training or each type of document that our client, or excuse me, our team members need to watch, read through, complete, et cetera.

and it's just all in one Google Sheet. have a template that has links to each of those things. Now granted, we did create those documents. We did create those videos. We used Loom, by the way, L-O-O-M, just like a screen share video or we've even used Zoom just to record, know, here's how we do things at our company. Here's how you can be successful with working with our clients, things like that. We have all of those tools saved.

and linked in this one spreadsheet. And we just make a copy of that spreadsheet for each team member where they can go in and click and check that they watched that video or they read that document or they submitted that information. And then also make some notes along the way for any questions or things that they want to talk about. And then when we have our live onboarding call with them, we don't have to go through the same information over and over and over with them. They already have that.

It's literally just walking through, make sure that they have all their questions answered, that they are feeling comfortable with moving forward with working with our team and our clients. And that has been a game changer. Again, pretty low tech in the grand scheme of things. Literally having a spreadsheet checklist with links, but it works beautifully. Okay, the last example that I'm gonna give you here for repeatable processes in your business, accounting, particularly in the billing area.

Believe it or not, I talk with potential clients all the time who are like, I am manually invoicing my clients. I could use some help with this from your team. And we 100%, that's something that we offer. But again, when we take a look at in the grand scheme of things, we want to be investing in systems and processes and, you know, softwares and automations as much as we can before we outsource because it does not make sense.

to pay someone to do work that can be resolved and made more efficient by a tool or software, things like that. So I'll even give you an example for myself, for a long time, I would block off two days a month, so we bill twice a month, some clients renew on the first, some clients renew on the 15th, and I would about five days beforehand, block time on my calendar,

Maybe like a half an hour you guys it was not a crazy amount of time where I would just literally go in and I would manually like replicate last month's invoice Update maybe the month and the date or something like that Maybe add in a miscellaneous charge here or there if we had an extra project or something and I would manually invoice our clients and then on The first I would go in and check, know charge, you know account on file

with credit card or checking account on file. And so maybe this took me a couple of hours a month, but it was so simple for me to upgrade my QuickBooks online software subscription in order to do all that manually or to do that automatically and thus remove the manual work from my plate. This upgrade you guys probably cost about $25. So I think it was, you know, QuickBooks solopreneur to QuickBooks essentials or something like that. And so then

I was able to create invoice templates that were just automatically sent out every month and then those payments were automatically processing every month. I didn't have to touch it. The only time that I had to go in is if a client's payment failed, like maybe they got a new card or a card expired or something like that and we just needed to update their information. Now certainly now my assistant handles all of that for me. Thank you so much. But the point is is that

I was spending a couple of hours every month, so again, not a huge amount of time, but for $25, that was all automated. Also, as long as I'm trying to sell you on why systems and tools are the way to go before we start talking about delegation and outsourcing, if I am on vacation or if ...

my daughter's off of school or I'm just not available that particular day that payments need to be processed or invoices need to go out, it doesn't matter because it's all being done for me. It's one less thing that I need to touch in my business in order to make it run. Okay, so all of this being said, I hope that I've got some creative juices flowing for you in terms of yes, I'm doing these things all the time. These are processes that I do on a regular basis.

Now, how can I make this easier? Again, don't want to scare you with the tech side of things, because here's my pro tip for you. You can have a virtual assistant or some other type of service provider, depending on what you're looking for implementation support on, set these up for you. You do not have to do the research to figure out what system or tool is going to make sense for you. You do not have to be the one to

implement all of it and upload all your information and set up all the templates and all the timing and all of that, you can pay somebody to do this for you. And trust me, it's so much easier that way. I feel like anytime there's a project that is solely on my plate, there's always something else that's more pressing and more urgent that gets in the way. So I highly recommend getting another person involved and helping you get these things up and running. So if you're not tech savvy,

No problem. Ultimately, you need to describe what you want the system to be able to do for you, and then the right service provider will ask you clarifying questions along the way and ultimately test the system to make sure that it is performing the way that you need it to. Okay, thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope that this was helpful for you. If you're listening and you know a business owner or an executive who's just

working so many hours and they've got big goals that they're working towards and they've mentioned like, I could really use an assistant or I'm thinking about hiring a VA or I'm thinking about hiring a bookkeeper or a social media manager and start, you know, whatever here. I highly recommend sharing this episode with them because it is my professional opinion that automating and systematizing

makes more financial sense before we outsource because again, we don't want to be paying people to do work that could easily be reduced or completely eliminated by implementing a system or a tool for a relatively low cost. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much for tuning in today and I will see you in the next episode of Make Space for More where we will grow your business beyond you. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.