Overcomplicating Your Business Systems

In this episode of CRM Success Secrets, I'm Mary Sue Dahill, your host. We're diving into a unique perspective to explore effective business systems. We'll dissect the reasons behind this complexity and provide practical advice on how to simplify. Join us as we uncover the downsides of excessive technology, the organic growth of systems, and too much marketing. You'll learn how streamlining your tech tools and taking a strategic approach can lead to CRM success in your coaching or consulting business

Takeaways

• Overcomplicating Business Systems
• Impacts of Overcomplicating Business Systems
• Strategies to Simplify Business Systems
• Importance of Prioritizing Business Systems

Quotes

"Simplify your business systems to avoid overcomplication and create a streamlined path to success." - Mary Sue Dahill

"Don't let shiny new marketing tactics distract you from creating a solid and effective strategy that yields results." - Mary Sue Dahill

Featured in this Episode

Mary Sue Dahill

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marysuedahill

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

01:07 - How Organic Tech Expansion Can Complicate Your Business

02:01 -The Consequences of Scattered Systems in Business

02:45 - Why an All-in-One CRM Is a Game Changer

03:33 - The Art of Strategic System Growth: Simplifying Your Business

04:48 - Overcoming the Shiny Object Syndrome

05:54 - When Too Much Tech Hinders Business Systems

07:33 - Spotting Gaps and Clunkiness Through the Customer Lens

09:02 - Conclusion

Product byhttp://www.heartcastmedia.com

Transcript

Mary Sue Dahill:

What are the 5 biggest CRM mistakes that business coaches and consultants make? Hi. My name is Mary Sue Dahill. I'm the host of the CRM Success Secrets podcast. And we're talking about the biggest mistakes, and I've seen them happen across many, many business coaches and consultants because that's who I work with on implementing their Sales and marketing strategies into the Work Smarter CRM. So I have a very unique perspective on what is working and what isn't working. So this is a 5 part series. We've already talked about the 5th biggest mistake, which is, not You're continuing to grow your mailing list, and this episode we're gonna talk about the 4th biggest mistake, which is overcomplicating your business systems. So there are really 3 ways your systems become over And you can avoid most of them for sure.

So the first is that too much technology is being used. This is kind of related to the 2nd issue, which is organically growing your technology ecosystem over time, and then the 3rd is incorporating just a bunch of marketing strategies and tactics. So let's talk about each of them in a little bit more depth here. So the first issue is too much tech is being used. So a lot of business coaches and consultants Don't really have the tech savvy to know how to connect all of their systems, and so that is part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that, you know, they organically purchase tools. So they Have a need. They purchased this tool.

They have another need. They purchased a different tool. And then, you know, they have a 3rd need, and they purchase a 3rd tool. So Now you have 3 tools, and you have to connect them somehow. Otherwise, what you have is you have your data all over the place, and, you probably don't have, your mailing list is probably not really representing all of the people that should be on your mailing list because you have other contacts in different places. And when you have a bunch of different tools, you have a couple problems there. One is that, You have to figure out how to connect them, and that's where people lack the tech to know how to connect them. Zapier has made it much easier, but at the same time, a lot of people still find that very complicated.

The other issue with having a bunch of different tools is that many times You could have used fewer tools if you actually knew what all of the features and functions in each individual tool was doing. Also it just makes creating a system across those tools much more difficult. So the solution to Too much technology is to look at an all in 1 CRM solution. When all of the features and functions are in one Tool. It makes so many things so much easier. First of all, you only have 1 password. Second, you have 1 support team that you can ask Questions to. And 3rd, the tool is meant to work as a cohesive whole.

So when you're looking at building a lead generation system, creating a client onboarding. You don't have to be worrying about what each Tool can do because you know your tool will be able to do all those things, so avoid having too much technology in your business ecosystem. The second issue is organically building your technology systems over time, and this is just a process of growing, really. But at a certain point, you need to take a step back and look strategically at your business systems. You need to look at what technology is included in your ecosystem, what Are you actually using? What are you not using? Decide upon what your OneData point of reference is, which is usually a CRM, and then make sure everything is feeding into it. But again, if you're investing in an all in one solution, you're going to have All of the features and functions that you really need. And as a very small business, you shouldn't need a bunch of different tools. As we already talked about, it creates complexity.

The third thing that creates complexity in your business is, Just incorporating a bunch of marketing and sales tactics. This is the shiny object syndrome of marketing where you hear some guru talking about the newest way of growing your mailing list or the latest Approach to launching a new product. And so you want to try it out. And, you know, if you're strategic about it, Obviously, not a problem, but what I have found is that many business coaches and consultants will try all of them and never settle on one. And so this creates complexity because you are rebuilding things all the time. Everything is always new. There's no ability to make it better, more streamlined, more integrated with your other business systems because you're constantly changing things. So those are the 3 ways you over complicate your systems.

Too much technology, organically growing over time and never taking a strategic look at your business systems, and then 3rd is incorporating the latest and greatest marketing tactic. So, what happens when you have an over complication of your business systems? Well, first of all, you won't actually create a business system. You might create something that completes one task. But a system is a series of actions, and, when you have a bunch of different technologies or you don't know how they work Together, then you have a situation where you don't know how to connect them, and so, just one example is an easy example is Somebody can book time with you on your calendar. That's, you know, a one off thing, which is awesome, but what if You wanted to, you know, give somebody access to a lead magnet, and you can actually follow this process if you, go download the or not download, but take the, CRM system score Hard quiz, you will kind of follow this process, so you complete the quiz. At the end of the quiz, it redirects you to a scheduling page, and then you can schedule, and then you'll be added into the follow-up sequence for, reminders and things for your actual appointment, and there'll be some nurturing in there. So that's like a complete system. If I was just scheduling the appointment, I wouldn't have some of those other pieces in there.

The other issue with having over complicated systems is that your customers totally feel it, and this Can sometimes be really blind the The business owner can be blind to these issues because they're not going through the process like a customer would. They probably did years years ago, but they haven't ever gone back and, tried to Go through their process as a customer in a long time and but your customers are doing it, and what they're feeling is they're feeling gaps in your systems, They're feeling that it's just clunky, that it doesn't make sense, or maybe it just makes them feel bad. So, it is worth taking the time to go through your systems as a customer would, like once a year, maybe twice a year, just so that you identify when there's a problem in the process. And, the 3rd issue which we talked about was, you know, incorporating a bunch of marketing tactics. So the impact of that is that you can't get a rhythm. You are constantly creating something new, and you are constantly having to build new content. You're constantly building systems. I have seen that particular issue so many times, and it's just really a waste of effort in some ways because you just don't get any traction on anything and can't make a lot of forward momentum.

So In your business, 1, you want to be more strategic about what your business systems are. You wanna simplify your technology ecosystem, and you want to be focusing and honing in on the process you want to follow for your marketing and sales for sure.