As a boutique agency, you know that staying organized and efficient is crucial to running a successful business. And a large majority of your business is held in the deals you close, and the services you provide. Having systems in place can help you streamline your workflow, improve communication, and ultimately lead to happier clients and a more productive team (without taking up too much of your time). Here are a few tips to three tips to help you systemize your boutique agency’s workflow:
Tip 1: Identify Your Processes
The first step to systemizing your workflow is to define your processes. Contrary to how the day may feel, every service and task you do inside your agency has a start and stopping point. When we can map out what processes it takes to complete important agency client tasks can help you bring more control to you and your team members day. They also can support you in determining scope, and how you move your clients through every step of your offer.
For example, if you are mapping out your scoping process:
1. When does a person become ready for the scoping phase?
2. What information do you need from the client in order to scope?
3. How can you gather this information?
4. When does the scoping end and move into contracting phase?
From here you can determine what the next steps are to completely move someone towards the end of the process. This will also help you create a consistent process that can be easily replicated for each project, so you aren’t reinventing the wheel for every new client that comes through your doors.
Tip 2: Invest in Amplifying Your Work Effort
With all the questions, documents and email communications you send out on the daily, now is a perfect time to amplify the work you’ve already done with templates! Templates and checklists can help you standardize your processes and ensure consistency across projects. Create templates for proposals, contracts, emails and questions, then use checklists to ensure that no critical steps are missed. This will help you save time, minimize errors, and improve the quality of your work. PLUS, these assets can protect you and your team’s time, energy and creativity for more important things, like driving your business progress.
Tip 3: Automate Busy Work
In small doses, automation can save you time and reduce error on repeatable tasks that need to be completed the exact same way. There are many tasks that can be automated, such as sending out invoices, following up with clients, and scheduling social media posts. Automating these tasks can free up your team’s time and allow them to focus on more important tasks.Keep in mind that every thing doesn’t need to, nor should be, automated in order to have a systemized workflow in your business; We use a 4-step process with our agency clients to work backwards on simplifying their processes as much as possible in their operational engine™️ before moving forward with any light automations they need.
What software do you need to systemize?
Now software can be what hangs people up the most when it comes to systemize, but we at The Afro Coach firmly believe that tools are only meant to equip an already functioning workflow. We are merely adding tools to help move them along. With this in mind, while there are a plethora of tools that are available to you to use, we recommend choosing ones that suit your personal working style, and works well with your team size and current processes.
In conclusion, systemizing your boutique agency’s workflow can help you stay organized, improve communication, and ultimately lead to a more productive and successful business. Defining your processes, amplifying your work with templates, and automating your workflows are three key tips to help you systemize your boutique agency’s workflow. By implementing these tips, you can streamline your workflow, improve efficiency, and provide better service to your clients.
Need additional support in systemizing your agency or service provider business? Check out our services here at The Afro Coach, where we specialize in helping you take the stress out of scaling and maintaining your business growth, and providing you the guidance, strategic support and implementation skills to set your business up to support you as much as you support your clients.
And stick around! Check out our related blog-trainings to help you understand how to systemize your boutique agency.