5 awful, mundane, and tedious tasks I’ve completely automated.

Systemizing and automating the tedious has changed the course of my business while letting me focus on the important stuff.

There are so many mundane, but really important, tasks that I have to do with my business…and even life. The problem is that although I know they’re important, I hate doing them. And often, I don’t them as a result.

Thank god for software automation.

So without further ado, here are some things that I have automated:

1. Adding inspirational quotes to Linkedin.
   

   I’ve linked together 2 wicked services. Quotationspage.com has a quote of the day, and best of all, they have an RSS feed. I then use a service called ifttt.com to tie the RSS feed to Buffer which then eventually feeds it to Linkedin. Sounds complicated, but it’s not.

2. Managing my intake on appointments.
   

   On my appointment page, the process is extremely automated. It’s a 3 part form: 1^st it asks for an email, secondly it asks some more in-depth questions, and thirdly it directs to a calendar that is linked to my Google calendar. But if at any stage someone doesn’t complete it, then it will automatically send an email asking if there is a reason why they didn’t complete the form.

3. Billing, billing, billing
   

   On projects that allow it, my clients are billed automatically. Best of all, my clients enter their payment information directly to my payment processor so I don’t have to worry about onerous things like PCI compliance. I personally use Freshbooks for this task, but there are many options

4. Educating people in my network
   

   I do a lot of networking, but I only have so much time to tell people what I do. The solution is that I invite people to join my mailing list right on the spot using a web form that is loaded on my phone. Because it is tailored for that exact purpose it is an extremely effective way of building a relationship with someone and it is a very effective way to keep “top of mind.”

5. Long term follow ups.
   

   For my telecom side of the business, my sales cycle is 6-9 months. As a small business, managing that cycle is simply not possible to do without some help. The solution is to automate this cycle and slowly educate the customer on the benefits of hiring me. A lot of people end up unsubscribing over the months, but that mostly says that they were likely never going to become a client anyway and saves me some a lot of work.

None of this stuff was easy to do, and it took a lot of trial and error, but the benefits are huge. I spend a lot more time on the meaningful customer interactions and less time on the mundane (but still important) stuff.

If you want help mapping out what can be automated in your business. Please Apply here for your sales automation plan; space fills up quickly, so act now to reserve your spot.