How an effective CRM and workflow system could kick-start your growth

19 July 2021

After a challenging (to say the least) 18 months or so, business is slowly getting back to normal. Or at least a new normal.

With that, it’s important to look at the opportunities in front of your business and how you can help kick-start your recovery and growth.

Reconnect

With the challenges of keeping your business going and adapting to all the changes we have faced together, it’s possible that you’ve lost contact with key customers or relationships.

If you have, there’s no time like the present to reconnect with those people. Revisit your customer lists for the last 3-4 years and see if there are opportunities to reconnect and support those people you’ve not heard from in a while.

There could be a lot of opportunities out there with businesses and people that you’ve previously worked with that may just need a little nudge.

A good CRM system will help you identify those customers you haven’t worked with for a while and their potential value to the organisation going forward.

Referral partners

Where does your work come from? Marketing? Outbound sales? Referrals?

There are so many avenues that can drive business but understanding them can help you to truly accelerate your growth.

Are you tracking their effectiveness though?

Use your system to understand and monitor the key relationships and drivers for your business.

By tracking the source of your work and who is referring work to you, you can begin to proactively manage these key relationships.

With word of mouth still the most powerful marketing tool, your customers and referral partners could, and should, be your most potent sales tool.

Automation

One of the biggest barriers to businesses scaling up and achieving their ambitions is time. With limited resources and big ambitions, it’s important that we maximise our time and opportunities to grow the business.

This means eliminating process waste and automating processes that add zero value to the customer experience.

That statement is important. When deciding what to automate, you do not want to subtract from the value you offer your customers. Automation should be about adding value to the business.

If you automate the wrong elements of your process, you could reduce the perceived value your customer receives, so focus on those processes that won’t negatively impact your customers’ experience.

Automation can free up a huge amount of time, though. We aim to improve the productivity of our customers by at least 20%. Imagine what your business could achieve if you effectively gained a day a week.

Measure

We’re champions of EOS (Entrepreneurs Operating System) at Blue Wren. This gives us a solid framework to help manage our performance.

One of the principles of this framework is to create a simple KPI chart to track our progress towards our goals over a 90-day period. This keeps us on track and helps us focus on what’s important.

When implementing an effective system, you need to be sure what you need to track and what metrics are important.

Whether it’s staff utilisation, sales figures or project profitability, getting a grip on your figures will help you achieve your growth ambitions.

Conclusion

There’s never been a better time to focus on improving your business and kick-start your growth. Evaluating the systems you use and how effective they are is a great place to start.

We help businesses achieve their targets by getting to know their organisation and the unique challenges they face. If you’d like to discuss how we could create positive change for your business, get in touch.

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