Imagine going to a business and talking with a prospective client. After the meeting, the prospect tells you they are interested but not quite ready. They hand you their business card and ask you to touch base with them in two months. You go back to your office and throw the business card in the trash. I mean, you know by the time two months comes around they will have forgotten about you and most likely won’t buy from you anyway.
Imagine going to a business and talking with a prospective client. After the meeting,
the prospect tells you they are interested but not quite ready. They hand you their business card and ask you to touch base with them in two months. You go back to your office and throw the business card in the trash. I mean, you know by the time two months comes around they will have forgotten about you and most likely won’t buy from you anyway.
Stick ShiftSound crazy? Maybe so, but it’s not completely off target from what actually happens when you have no systems or automation in place. Maybe you put a note on your calendar to follow up…and then it never actually happens. That’s your business being driven by manual transmission.
Think about driving your car. Have you ever driven a manual transmission? I have (my vehicle is one). There are some challenges that come with it. First, you always have to have that right hand free to change gears and the left foot ready to push the clutch in. Stop and go traffic can be challenging. Being stopped on a hill is even more challenging (my biggest fear when I drive!). Along with the usual awareness of watching the other guy is the awareness of how fast you’re going, what gear you’re in, downshifting, upshifting, and the list goes on! With an automatic transmission, you can put it in drive and go.
Now imagine your business being driven by automatic transmission. You get back to your office, you add them to a series of emails specifically geared towards whatever product or service they’re interested in. Sixty days passes and an email goes out asking them to schedule a call with a link to your calendar. A couple days after that a task goes out to your assistant to follow up with a phone call.
The same thing can happen on your website. Are prospects coming to your website and falling through the cracks (manual transmission) are they coming into your funnel and receiving messages specific to them (automatic transmission)? Do you know what their interests are or do they all get the same emails? Do you have a way to target your messages automatically based on their interests?
Is your email marketing, your ecommerce and your customer relationship management system all in one place or are you scattered over two or three applications? Do you even have a customer relationship management system?
I have to admit…I discovered something a couple of weeks ago. I have worked in Infusionsoft for seven years for multiple clients, but for my own email marketing, I used a different system. My contact management system was somewhere else. I had thought about switching to Infusionsoft but didn’t feel like I was ready for it. After all, I don’t sell anything online and my contacts are not in the thousands.
Then I decided with the changes coming up in my business, it’s time to make the switch. And I have kicked myself in the rearend for not making the switch earlier! The organization I’m feeling from having all my contacts and email marketing in one place is really a great feeling!
I have my Virtual Assistance business, but I also have clients and prospects related to the equine assisted therapy that I do. My old system was really hard to keep track of where people came from (not between the two organizations but within each of them). Using Infusionsoft has made it so much easier to keep track of people, specifically for the equine assisted therapy whether they’re in the system because they attended a turkey shoot or our family fun day. For the VA business, I can target my messages whether someone already has Infusionsoft or doesn’t have it yet. I continue to think of more and more possibilities for my own business and now just need the time to implement!
I do monthly phone calls with clients and I take notes while we’re on the call. I keep the paper with important information and put it in a file. But now, I can keep those notes in their contact record within Infusionsoft. And the same goes for prospects. Instead of keeping the paper in a prospect file (or notebook), I can add it to their contact record and quickly and easily find it when I need it.
I’m able to monitor the clicks I’m getting from my social media marketing, and I can also even keep track of visitors to my website, where they came from and how long they spent on my site.
Are you ready to upgrade your manual transmission for an automatic transmission? If so, click here to schedule a call!
