What Should You Systemize First?

What’s good, everybody. Greg Hickman here and in this video I want to break down what you should actually systemize first when you’re looking to kind of add automation and really start to make your business more scalable. Let’s dive in!

For three years, my agency built funnels and automation systems for the biggest names in marketing today since then have transformed that agency into a hyper-profitable training and consulting business. While everyone is out there and talking about scale like it’s some sort of destination, we’ll be asking the real questions. How do you transform your business into a more scalable model using the knowledge, skills, and expertise that you already have? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me in a follow along as I learn, apply and share the strategies I’m using to build my multimillion dollar business. My name is Greg Hickman and welcome to scale up.

Oftentimes clients or prospects think people getting lost in the term like autumn

mation or systemizing my business. And it kind of leads us to a place where like we’re not really sure what that means or where to start. Like where should I start to systemize, right? MMM. You probably heard from other podcasts or other people who listen to our books. You’ve read that as you want to make your business bigger, you want to grow, you want to kind of evolve into that CEO role if you’re not currently already that you’re going to need to have systems in place, right? So that you can remove yourself and other people from being bottlenecks in certain parts of the business. And you know, there’s a lot of different areas of your business that you could be systemizing. And so in this, you know, and this time together in this video, in this podcast, I want to break down where I think you would kind of received the biggest bang for your buck and what systems you need to create first, or at least what areas of your business you need to create first to create more scalability.

So, uh, let’s jump in, right? So what to systemize first. Now we need to understand that there are different areas of your business, right? Um, we have, uh, we have sales, we have marketing, we have, uh, delivery fulfillment, we have operations, right? Like those are all different divisions of your business. And when it comes to what you should systemize first, the order that we like to implement is basically from the inside of your business out, meaning from the closest point of transaction, the closest point to the transaction, and then outward in both directions. So let’s look at this. Uh, one of my mentors, Brad calls this the business bow tie. Uh, so if you envision a bow tie, right? And at the center of the bow tie is the transaction. This is where the sale is made. This is where the, the Greens are, are brought in, right?

The revenue, the sales, et cetera. This is where they transition from. They’re not just a prospect anymore. They’re now, they’re now a paying client, right? That exchange has happened and we have different levels that go outward in each direction, right? Um, we’re not talking necessarily about a funnel, but this is more about like a client experience and the stages that happen along the way. And so if in in the middle is where the, the sales that the transaction actually happens, we want to start there, right? We want to start looking for where can we create a system and leverage automation and technology to streamline what’s happening in and around the closest points to the transaction. So, um, if we kind of look at, I’m going to kind of remove the, the green there and if we look at then one layer out on each side we have, these are the two, you know, these two stages of the closest point of the transaction.

So what are these areas, right? So first we have, um, you know, here is sales, I’m sure. Let me use a different color here. So if you’re listening on Itunes, like I’m drawing kind of a bow tie at the moment and the first section to the left, right? The closest point to the transaction before someone comes to client is the sales experience. Right now, the most immediate experience that happens for a client after they give you money is onboarding, right? Is how you onboard clients. Now, if it were me and now we’re working with you in our business, these are the places where you’re going to find the most amount of leverage. A lot of times oftentimes, uh, with many of our clients when they come in, um, if you look at optimizing in this realm first, just creating a repeatable, uh, documented and streamlined sales experience and new client onboarding experience, you are going to be able to get more of the right clients and often two to three times your client capacity without having to change much if you have leads coming in, right?

Because how you onboard is going to be way more efficient than the way most of you guys are probably doing it right now. And if you’re having say 10 calls a week, but you know, say 10 sales calls a week, but some of those calls or you know, really not qualified, you’re now going to possibly be on less calls, but more of those less calls, you’re going to increase your conversion because they’re going to be more of the right people. Right? Um, and so you’re taking back and maximizing your time by not wasting it with unqualified leads, right? So we really want to focus kind of first on sales and the initial part of our delivery experience, which is onboarding, right? And so we always look to systemize sales and onboarding slash first and kind of fulfillment. Beyond onboarding is like how are you going to continue to go about delivering them the results, you know, depending upon what you’re delivering, whether it’s an online program, eight, 10 12 weeks, a year long program, or it’s some sort of service that’s delivered over the course of a couple of months, like the initial experience that they get from giving you money to kind of kicking off the experience, whether that’s done with the kickoff call or whatever, that’s onboarding, right?

That is designed to put them in momentum and get them really warmed up and attuned to what they should expect working with you really start to train them to be good clients, right? It’s a great opportunity to reset expectations, show them how you work, how to be successful, how not to be successful, and we do that in that onboarding phase right now, the systemization of fulfillment in general, you’re going to get really a long way with just focused on kind of the fulfillment and delivery structure. But from an automation perspective, we want to start closest to the transaction. Like I said. So sales and onboarding from there, we would then move into the next layer, which is our marketing, right? Um, if we can start to streamline how we market, right? Um, and we’ll make this, uh, oh, let’s make this a different green. We’ll make this a lighter green.

So if the next stage we moved to his marketing, uh, for where we’re adding systems and leveraging automation and technology to make our lives easier, finding the, creating a lead to client journey experience, which obviously includes the sales experience is going to make it really helpful for you as a, as an agency owner or a service provider when you’re, when you take on new clients. Because like most service based businesses, when you add a new client, sales and marketing stop, right? And then when you finish that client project, you go back to sales and marketing. It’s like starting all over again. It’s like starting up at the titanic from a standstill. Whereas if you have a, a, a marketing and sales system that’s moving leads to the sales experience and helping you convert them while you’re in fulfillment, you’re actually, uh, not gonna lose that sales and marketing momentum and, um, you’ll be continually filling your pipeline on the front end so that you’re not coming back to go back to that feast or famine. I got a hunt and find new clients, right? So we always want to focus starting at the closest point of the transaction. So let’s look at from a goal, right? If we look at our goal here, we want to focus on the sales system first, which really is, uh, the goal is to focus on the sales system so someone else can execute it so someone else can execute it, right?

How great will it be in your business when you can hand the sales playbook over to a new sales representative or a new closer that basically understands where the lead is at, when they get to them for that conversation, making that sales conversation a whole lot easier, right? The sales experience should be preparing prospects for a floor of the conversation and can actually do some of the preselling and the priming that the sales representative is going to need to make the sale actually happen. So the goal first is to systemize the sales experience, right? And now if you’re sitting here saying like, well, I don’t want to manage people, um, first of all, that’s a whole nother conversation. That’s a limiting belief that we need to, to knock out of the way for you. But when you design the systems appropriately, the type of person that you need to hire and what they need to do to be successful becomes way clear when you have the system already built out, right?

Dropping a sales rep into a undefined sales process is gonna make that sales rep’s life a whole lot harder. Uh, and probably you’re in order for it to convert like you want, you’re going to need a really experienced sales person. When you have a choreographed sales experience and you streamline it, you actually can, I don’t want to say get away with not a player sales people because you want a player sales people, but like it almost turns, okay, sales people into sales, rock stars, right? And then so the next sales system first and then the next is our delivery systems. And like I said, we always start with onboarding because we find that’s a key place where we can really start to increase the client capacity. And what I mean by delivery systems is you need to be able to have your team take care of a lot of your clients support.

They’re coaching the delivery of the thing, right? The fulfillment of the thing can’t necessarily rely on you because at the end of the day, um, if the business revolves around you, the owner, that is a complete disservice to your clients, right? So while your clients think that they want you or you think that the clients want you one on one, doing all of this stuff, that you’re actually a bottleneck, which is going to slow them down. So as you add more clients, each client is going to feel that more and more as your, the sole a delivery person. Okay. So like I said, we always start closest to the transaction and we start to move outward as we go to systematize and automate our business. All right? So, um, that’s what I wanted to share with you today in this episode. You know, stop losing and getting confused on like where to systemize and what like we literally reverse engineer from closest to the transaction outward, um, sales and delivery first.

Then we go into marketing, then we can go back into some fulfillment and, and, um, you know, client success and then we keep expanding out to lead generation on the front end side and we go into, uh, you know, retention, upsell, cross sales on the backend, right? All of that stuff is, uh, are areas in your business where we need to systemize, but we start again at the closest point to the transaction. Now, if you found this helpful and you want our help deploying these systems, we’d love to chat with you about our flagship program foundations. Um, you can visit us at system dot. Ly forward slash apply. Um, and or click the link below if you’re watching this on the youtubes. Um, but that’s all I got for you today. Start closest to the money. Work your way out. That’s where you start to system.