TOR 058: 3 Areas Every Business Must Automate To Massively Improve Productivity (Plus The Tools To Use)
Here’s the latest edition of The Optimized Report newsletter, which features 1 actionable tip every Sunday to help small business owners dramatically improve their performance, profit, and potential without sacrificing what's most important—TIME.
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I've been optimizing my businesses for over 15 years now.
For some years, it's been a struggle, but during that time, I've created eight-figure yearly systems with an ultimate goal of surpassing $100m. I've invested thousands of hours into mastering business, that I've become great at generating results while doing less work.
This has allowed me to focus on higher-impact activities and spend more time doing the things I love.
But, do you want to know one secret (that anyone can do)?
Automation!
Learning to automate redundant activities frees you and your team to focus on high-value activities.
Here's where I started my automation journey and the areas we continue to improve on.
1/ Automate your core procedures.
Every business has different technology stacks, which I address in the following sections, but you have to look at your procedures with the opportunity to automate.
Here's how it works:
Step 1: Identify a core procedure that requires a lot of manual administrative work.
Step 2: Locate the section of the procedure that takes up the most time.
Step 3: Ideate a few ways you can automate that section.
Quick note: Don't think, "this is how it's always been done." That's a mistake.
These steps help you identify the areas that you can improve through automation.
2/ Automate your CRM or ERP activities.
Here's how it works:
Avoid manually handing off tasks, paperwork, or next actions within your CRM and ERP processes.
Instead, look for ways that automation can trigger these actions for you.
For example, new sales opportunities get an automated email to schedule a discovery call with a pre-assigned sales rep. Or automatic order updates that keep your customers in the loop about their orders.
The ideas are endless; you just have to ideate and then automate.
Here's an example of one flow I use in my ERP system:
If you avoid manually executing procedures and automating them, you'll unlock hours of time and untapped potential to focus on the higher impact activities—like more sales or coaching your team.
3/ Automate your marketing.
Every marketing campaign should be riddled with automation.
A lead engages with your website, enters their details, and instantly gets connected with a sales rep to have impactful conversations.
Manually doing anything in marketing once the campaign is launched is insanity.
So many things can be automated.
Here's how:
1/ Identify your core marketing campaign.
2/ Look for areas that require manual tasks.
3/ Automate them.
Simple.
The best tools for automation.
There are a lot of tools you can use, but over the years, I've found the following software hard to replace.
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign is a software system that allows you to automate nearly every marketing and sales function.
Zapier:
A software platform that allows you to integrate different pieces of technology.
It's insanely robust, and there's practically nothing you can't automate with Zapier—unless it's driving your kids to school.
Salesforce:
Salesforce has a diverse system called flows which you can automate nearly every function.
It's advanced, so you'll likely need to hire someone to develop your flows if you don't have any experience with flows.
Don't believe manually doing certain activities is the best way; find ways to automate as much as possible.
