Preventing a Disaster

Many disasters are preventable, however, there are those when there is nothing to do but hope you survive the storm. In business, we do not like to think of the later, but we certainly do need to concentrate on the first and do all we can to prevent them.

So, what are some potential disasters?

You forgot to follow up on a lead

An order got misplaced

An invoice is lost

You double booked a technician

You gave a different quote when a prospect came in to buy

A sales person is off, and no one knows details to help assist the prospect who just walked in the door

You missed a meeting

You sold more products to a customer who already has outstanding invoices

A staff takes too long to process a phone order and the prospect hangs up

You are unable to find the customer’s history while an irate customer waits

You spend too much time batch invoicing your customers, can’t get to other important work

So on and so on and so on…

What do the above and others like it have in common?

Systems, systems, systems! While it use to be a paper system, in today’s world it would be a software and web system. You would enter into the system important information about the marketing, sales, and operations of your business activities. The system would remind you that there was something that needed to be done. Many business activities could be automated to happen on its own. For example, if you wanted to send a prospect 5 different emails, 1 every other day (drip marketing), you could enter the prospect into the system, and the system would automatically send out the emails (auto-responder).

So let’s look at those same business disasters and see what a system would do.

You forgot to follow up on a lead – your system would list all outstanding leads until you follow up on them

An order got misplaced – your system has all orders sorted by date/number or by customer

An invoice is lost – your system has all invoices sorted by date/number or by customer

You double booked a technician – your system shows you who is working on what job by date and time

You gave a different quote when a prospect came in to buy – your system has the original quote that is easy to find when the prospect comes in to purchase

A sales person is off, and no one knows details to help assist the prospect who just walked in the door – your system has all the details of every contact with your prospects including quotes, proposals, notes, etc

You missed a meeting – your system has where you should be by date and time and reminds you ahead of time

You sold more products to a customer who already has outstanding invoices – your system warns you that the customer has an outstanding balance when you try to sell them more products

A staff takes too long to process a phone order and the prospect hangs up - within seconds your system can create a new order and start the process of filling that order for the customer

You are unable to find the customer’s history while an irate customer waits - within seconds your system has all the history of every contact and transaction with the customer so you know the full story

You spend too much time batch invoicing your customers, can’t get to other important work – with a click of a button your system creates and prints all invoices for customers who needs a re-accruing invoice (i.e. annual alarm monitoring invoice)

So on – There is a system in place for all aspects of the business from the time you are prospecting to get a sale, you create or provide product or service, and finally follow up after the sale. Nothing is left to chance.

There are many other day to day situations that businesses face that a system can prevent disasters from happening. And like insurance, systems are what you want to add before there is a problem.

Keith Narsansky, CMA is the Software Architect and Business Process Engineer at The Business Solution. The ultimate marketing and management software and web system (including CRM) that helps small business save time and money; improve customer satisfaction; increase sales; and run their company with ease.