Q&A: Business Systemization – Where Do I Begin?

So you're really interested in starting to systemize your business workflows operations. Maybe you've watched some of our videos here about SOPs standard operating procedures and now you are psyched to get your business workflows really flowing, but you're a little confused as to where to start. If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. Today what I'm going to be doing is taking you inside our exclusive client only live Q and A we have every week to give you just a segment of our broader conversation where we talked about this question of where do I start with building my business systems. The person asking this question was just getting into our orbit and learning about some of our core frameworks and was trying to figure out where to begin the massive journey of systemizing once they've defined what their processes are. Throughout this clip you're going to hear mentions to some client only resources while the clients viewing this have a little bit more context on what that exercise is. I just want to get ahead of it and say for anyone watching this on the public side, that that's referring to our proprietary exercise that helps you define what your business processes are in a visual hierarchical chart. If you want a preview of what this exercise is for free, you check out the description below where we have some information about that. But otherwise let's break into this clip and talk through the question of where should I start systemizing?

It's just hard to think about what process to work first and I see that I don't have a great process in certain areas. I, in my opinion that is where it's so overwhelming.

I think asking the question is a great place to be because I think if you're not asking this then you're just going to try to start everywhere and then you, like Mariah said, you get overwhelmed, you half heartedly do things. I was going to say another word, but half heartedly do things and then you, you end up getting burnt out basically. So when it comes to the process to work on first, there's kind of a simple rule of thumb that I like to use. If you are far enough along in foundations that you've made your process org chart. Now I'm making an assumption here, if that's not you, let me know in the chat and we can kind of tailor this. But I'm assuming by now you've kind of dived into a little bit of foundations, you would have started your process org chart to define what the heck my processes even are. If you haven't done that, I would say that would be a good exercise to start with because then you still don't know the answer, but you at least know what your options are for your answer. Once you do that and you've defined all your processes. Awesome, Clive. Then what I would look at is where money changes hands and go to the smallest process near that point. That's where I would start. If I had to pick something, you know, if there's something that's a glaring issue and that clearly has a great return, sure, make that top of the list. But for most people it is going to be pre sales or post sales and whatever processes on either side of that, the smallest possible one. That's where you're going to want to focus because pre sale, post sale is usually the highest return on investment. Let's say we're a home services business, right? I've got drywallers coming into this house. So let's just say you're a drywaller. And if I was trying to start systemizing my drywall business, I'd be looking at my process org chart. I'd locate where I close new drywalling clients and usually that's going to be after I inspect the property. Then I send a quote, then they accept it. So if I was looking to systemize something, I'd probably look at my follow up to quotes or like so I sent the quote but then they never responded. Or how I create the quotes, that would be my pre sales focus. On the opposite side I would be looking post sale, how do I schedule the projects? Once someone signs the quotes, how quickly do I do that? What's all of the little sub processes of that? And then after that how do I actually prepare for the day of the job? How do I get the crew in order? How do I make sure that they have all the materials they need? Those would be the two areas I'd focus on first. Which is more important is going to depend on where you think you're weaker. Both will be great returns. If you are struggling right now to generate leads, I'd probably focus pre sale. If you have clients but you just want to be more efficient, I'd probably lean towards post sale. Clive, if you're a cleaning company, that's actually perfect. I would say kind of very close to the drywall example here. Assuming you're B2B cleaning, not sure if you're B2B or I guess you could also be B2C. It would work kind of the same way. Your flow is going to follow that drywall or example pretty closely. In that you would have a quoting period, sending a bid, getting the bid accepted, then you start the job B2C. Okay, perfect. So then for B2C, both of these things, your experience is going to matter a lot more than B2B. That's going to be more driven by the numbers. So for you, the return on process work is probably going to be higher than our B2B cleaners in this community. So right now, Clive, if you had to pick a side, which is the greater struggle, fulfillment or sales? We have to focus on the upsell and the recurring clients. All right, so post. So in your case, I would first focus on onboarding new clients. If you're not doing any onboarding of new clients, any scheduling and booking and crew prep, I would then focus on the renewal process, which is also where money changes hands, but it's just on the retention side. And I would just go to the very bottom of your chart. For anyone who doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about here, when you define your process org chart, the smaller you get, the lower you get on that chart, the more tiny the process is. So rather than trying to systemize onboarding, we're systemizing how, how to send kickoff email. Tiny little pieces. And that's how it becomes achievable and measurable. So we might focus something like retention. Okay, so there is no system. But then let's start designing what that could be. So for your piece in a cleaning company, we might have a function called something like retain our clients. Right. How do we do that? Some ways that you would frequently see that done is by having account managers get in touch with that person. Another way to have that be done would be to have a system around staying in touch with the clients, collecting feedback regularly. These kinds of touch points to keep your relationship alive. When we break something like staying in touch down to smaller pieces or processes, One of those processes might be as simple as sending reminders before your contract renews. It's very simple. Another one might be calling every customer at the nine month mark if you have 12 month contracts and seeing how they're doing, seeing if they're happy with the service, seeing if they're going to renew, if they have any objections to renewing, and so on. These are all little processes you could implement that feed into that larger goal. If you don't have a system yet, that's fine. We can be a little aspirational here and look at what we want the system to. What's the job of it? Right. Retention or sales what pieces do we want to have happen there? And what's the tiniest little thing we can do to move in that direction? Use vinegar too. Yeah, use, use emails. I mean, it could be very small, but I think one of the easiest things might be just. Yeah. An email being like, hey, you've been with us for three months, would you like to continue or so on? I think just starting with one thing and then doing that very well would be a nice place to start.

I think the, the key there is doing it very well because I think when you start doing stuff so many, it kind of loses that quality until you've really honed in on one.

Yeah, that's the danger. Right. Because you have a blank slate, Clive. That's such an exciting space to be. You could do anything. You could, you could pop by and literally go to people's houses. Um, I know cleaning companies I've worked with in the past, that's what they did. The owner would circulate and go with the cleaners on a certain day, just randomly as a quality check. And to actually talk with each of her clients, which was crazy. I mean she had 300 clients or so and she would do that every day of the year. She. She'd go to a different one for 30 minutes just to meet the customer. There's so many different things you can do. But heed Mariah's advice here and pick one and do it well. And if you're not sure which one to pick, I would look at the one that is that all of your peers in this industry have found to be super high return. And if you don't know what that is or if you don't have peers, just pick the thing that feels most like you would appreciate if you were your client.

I love this comment because it deals with the process words chart. Yep. I'm also currently in the process or chart since mid December. It's really a lot seven figure Amazon, FBA business. But it's so worth it to finally look at all the processes and question them logically adds a ton of value, I think, I think that's one thing that when you're first starting out in the foundations course, we've seen a lot of members. No, I don't want to say struggle with the process orgs chart but it is, it can be overwhelming. Yeah, it can be hard, especially if you're not because it's a different way to think about. About it. And I think that's what's so good about the exercise because it makes your brain have to think about it.

Yeah. And I would just say that it's, it is challenging. But the nice thing about it is that the exercise is flexible enough that it can suit how your brain works. But the beauty of it, once you have it, everything after that becomes a game. Right, Clive, Once you decide, like you just said here, once you decide what you want your process to be, just one little piece, then it's the fun part of like, all right, let's bring this to life. And so that's kind of the step that's important for this piece. A hefty beast. Yeah, it can be a lot. Oh, is the process Org chart following eos? So no, actually, when, when we started this journey, you know, I have, I've read eos, I've followed scaling up, I followed all the different models out there. But what I've found is that most of these programs have a tendency to treat process as a footnote. And so that's why we've developed this framework as kind of the stopgap. I would put the process Org chart and the accompanying foundations training as complements to the major frameworks out there, the eos's, the Agiles, the scaling apps, the whatever other framework you're implementing here. I have not yet found one. Even the process books like the E Myth, I have not yet found one that actually addresses this issue in a meaningful way, other than just saying you need an owner or a few other basic things. So what the processor chart and the process driven approach is, is kind of like an expand expansion pack you can plug into those operating systems. It's compatible, it doesn't compete with them, but it dives much deeper into an area that for them is generally just put your stuff here. And it is compatible with the EOS standard work principles and several other key attributes. So there you have it. That was just a sampling of one of our casual improv discussions that we have every week with members. In terms of how you can start figuring out where to systemize first and, and what specific level of the systemization journey you should focus on if you didn't gather from that quick clip. We really focus on starting simple with little achievable goals, and then start systemizing out from there once you realize what exactly it is you could be working on. When you're getting started, heed Mariah's advice from this clip and start slow, start with intention and focus on quality over quantity. As your processes start really working, you can choose to add, add more, but most of the time higher quality, fewer quantity is going to be the better way to go than just doing a lot of things poorly. If you have any questions about systemization in your own business, feel free to drop a comment below. And of course, if you'd like some help on your particular situation, if you'd like to talk things through or be part of conversations like the one you witnessed here with this short little clip, consider joining us inside the processdriven membership. Every single week inside our client community, we are going through and answering questions just like this, about a dozen of them a week, and all of our members have access to our backlog of preview previously answered questions, which is well over a thousand questions at this point. If you're looking to get more Serious about systemization, SOPS, ClickUp, SmartSuite, or anything in between, it may be a perfect time for you to join us. Until next time, enjoy the process.