Ep. 34 | Why Your Client Management Software Isn’t Working the Way You Expected

If you’ve been managing clients, doing all the things, and still feel disorganized, overwhelmed, or burnt out, this episode is for you.

In this episode of the Systems Rehab Podcast, I break down a common issue I see with established service providers: having client management software or a CRM in place, but still feeling like your systems aren’t working the way they should.

Using a real client example, I walk you through why CRMs like HoneyBook aren’t the problem and what’s actually missing underneath the software. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with needing more forms, more automations, or switching to a different client management tool.

This conversation focuses on the systems and strategy behind client management, not the software itself.

We’ll talk about:

• Why client management tools and CRMs don’t create clarity on their own
• The importance of client flow and understanding how clients move through your business
• What happens when there’s no intentional client journey in place
• Why automations fall apart without a clear process
• How intentional client experience systems naturally lead to better client retention, repeat business, and referrals

If you’ve ever thought, “I have a CRM, but my client management still feels messy,” this episode will help you identify where the disconnect really is and what to focus on before rebuilding your systems or adding anything new.

If you’re ready to get clarity around your client experience, uncover bottlenecks in your client management systems, and build a process that actually supports your business growth, check out the Client Experience Accelerator a 90-minute strategy session designed to help you map your client journey, identify system gaps, and move forward with confidence.

👉 Learn more at yoursystemspro.com

or for a limited time you can book a HoneyBook Audit HERE

🎙️ABOUT THE HOST

Hi, I'm Kenniqua Lewter, Client Experience Systems Strategist, HoneyBook Educator, and the host of the Systems Rehab Podcast. I help service providers create client experience systems that save time, strengthen client relationships, and build a business that runs with ease. 

➡️WAYS WE CAN WORK TOGETHER

🌿 5-Star Client Experience CRM Build
A done-for-you HoneyBook CRM that organizes your clients, automates processes, and creates a seamless experience. Perfect for service providers ready to streamline operations. LEARN MORE🌿 Client Experience Accelerator

Let's keep the conversation going. Send me a DM on Instagram or Threads @kenniqua.lewter

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Transcript

Kenniqua Lewter (00:00)
if you've been managing your clients and you feel like you're doing all the things, but everything still just feels really messy. You feel disorganized. You feel like your business isn't streamed done enough. You feel burnt out and overwhelmed. This episode is going to be for you. I just wanted to go over a couple of reasons why.

this could be happening for you. Now, I recently worked with a client that came to me. She has a event venue space. She was doing designs with weddings and other type of events, et cetera. Right. And so she came to me wanting to go through and to knowing that she needed to get systems in place. So I'd go through.

I set up client experience systems. We typically use HoneyBook for our CRMs. And she wanted to get this set up because she knew coming into the new year that that is quote unquote the thing to do. But at the time, she didn't necessarily have the budget in order to be able to do that. So totally OK, 100 % fine. So what I offered her instead was just a little bit of clarity.

and strategy moving forward to see what exactly those gaps are that she's missing if she feels like she's doing all the things. So this client, had HoneyBook. She had HoneyBook. And matter of fact, she had HoneyBook for two years. And she felt like she had a couple of forms. She had like a contact form. But it just wasn't put together, right?

And so what I did was, like I said, I offered her an audit. Let's go through and let's audit exactly where you are. And then I'll audit your HoneyBook account to see what parts can actually be connected. I'll go through and do a full video review and I will give you the next steps and you can decide whether or not you want to DIY it and fix these things yourself or whether or not you want me to go through and do it.

So, so far, she did opt on the form, because I sent out an intake form. She did opt to go through and DIY, which is totally fine. That has nothing to do with the feedback that I provide. I'm gonna give you all the things to go through and fix, right? But if you're in the same boat that you know, okay, I have this issue. I know that everybody is talking about on threads or wherever.

and I understand that I need to have some type of client management system in my business, and I have one, but it just doesn't seem like it's working, I wanna give you one suggestion, something to take a look at that I did with this particular client to provide her that clarity to help her move forward. So what I typically do is, so like I said, I went through, I suggested the audit for her.

So then I sent her an intake form. So I have an intake form because a lot of the times it's not just the tool or software itself. So I want to kind of preference too is that a lot of times we think that just because we go through and we get a tool or software that all of our problems, they're all going to be solved because we've gotten the thing that everyone has been talking about or you saw something and you're like, okay, I can see everything that this can do. So I got it. I'm using it.

I think I'm using it to the best of its capability, but there's still some things that are just still missing, right? So we think that tools and software are going to fix the issues. And a lot of times it's the things that happened before even using the tool or software, it's what's going to kind of connect those pieces for you, which is why I'm helping in providing you with this information, this little tidbit that I want you to take away from this episode to consider if this is you, okay?

So I had her go through and to fill out an intake form. Now this is where on the intake form I go through and I ask a lot of different questions on this intake form. So I ask things like, know, currently like where are your clients coming from at this time? What is your current client flow like? How hard does it feel or confusing right now for you to go through an onboard clients to be able to receive payments to follow up with clients?

What do you wish that your system could actually be doing for you at this time? So I asked several different questions. They're in depth. I'm looking at the form right now. It's probably about 20 different questions that I do ask. And the reason why I ask this is because this, asking these questions, it gives me a lot of information and details. I even ask about offers and pricing. Like what's your offer look like? Like what's your offer structure? What is the pricing of these offers?

I ask these things to get a lot of clarity around what exactly is the flow from your business. So how clients are coming into your business, the communication, what's going on, what are the touch points that are happening with your client between the time they inquire with your business and then the time that you actually off board them and stop working with them, right? Or when the project is actually completed, if it is completed at all.

Depending on your offer, it may be like some type of retainer offer or something like that. But with this particular client, when she filled out the intake form is that I can kind of already start to see what the issue was and the issue. It wasn't a systems problem. It wasn't because and I wouldn't mean a systems problem. It wasn't a software or a tool problem. It wasn't because she picked the wrong software like she took.

She picked HoneyBook and HoneyBook is just not working for her particular business because that's not true. HoneyBook works for a lot of different types of business. I have plenty of clients that have event venues that does decorating and things like that. And so that wasn't really the case. And really it didn't matter what tool she used, whether it was HoneyBook or whether it was Dubsado, whether it was Moxie, it really didn't matter.

What was actually missing as I was going through her intake form was that she wasn't really clear on her client flow. And so that is one of the things that can happen. And when I mean by client flow, there was no clarity around how clients are actually interacting with

with our business. And so what happens is, is the clarity flow is going to be like certain things like what happens when someone submits an inquiry into your business like or how do they inquire about your business? Is it where?

They're going and they're DMing you on Instagram or they go into your website and complete in a form. Do they send you a random text message, right? To book your services. Like what actually happens if they want to, if they raise their hand and say, hey, I do want to work with you. What exactly does that? What does that process look like? What happens when they book your services? So after they go through and say yes to your services, whether this is for

of then decorating whether this is for your photography business, whether this is for your virtual assistant business, what happens when they book the service? And so a lot of the times we put a lot of focus in, like if we have some type of focus in on the inquiry phase, right? We're like, okay, I know I need to have a form at this point, but I haven't actually had those other steps built out.

is really just kind of paying attention to those particular things in the client flow and how the clients are flowing throughout your business. So what happens when they go to book the service? What happens during the service? So when you're actually in the delivery mode of providing whatever it is that you whatever service or deliverables that you've promised to them, what happens during this phase? And then what happens after the service is complete?

And I found just looking at her inquiry intake form after she went through and paid for the audit, that was the number one thing that I saw was there was no clarity around how the clients are moving. And so when we don't know exactly how the clients are moving, what happens is it makes it so much more difficult.

for us to be able to figure out, I have this tool, whether it's HoneyBook, Dubsado whatever client relationship manager that you're using, it makes it very difficult to say that I'm going to build out all of these forms, I'm going to build out a proposal form, I'm gonna build out an onboarding form, I'm gonna build out a questionnaire, I'm gonna build out these automations, these email templates.

It's very difficult to be able to say these are all the things that I need when we don't have an underlying pathway of what exactly we need at what point of the buyer and client journey. So that is one of the things. So of course I did go through, we went inside, I went inside her client management system, like I said in this case it was HoneyBook.

And she had things set up like so she had some form set up. She had some emails set up. She also tried to go through and set up some automation. But again, nothing was actually connected to an intentional process because there was no process in place. There was no process for onboarding. There was no process for intake. So every single client, number one, got a different experience. So one of the things that

we do when we work with our clients. So when we go through, we build out the CRM system. So I do have a service called the Five Star Client Experience CRM Build. And when we do that, one of the first things that I do is that I go through, we map out, we do a 90 minute strategy call, and we map out the client journey. This is so important because this allows for me and the client to collab in a visual way. So we do this all visually.

where they can see exactly these are, this is the process of how the clients are coming to us. What's the next step? What happens next? And during each part of the client journey, I'm asking questions and I always laugh because I always tell my clients when I do this strategy call with them, I always start this strategy call with number, well, two things. Number one, I always let them know that when we're building out the client journey, we want to build this out for the thing that we want majority of our clients to do.

I think sometimes what we do is that we say that our services, that they're so custom that we can't build out an actual automation or we can't streamline it or we can't build out templates because our services are so custom. And though you may have certain parts of your services custom depending on what exactly that you do, but there should be some type of baseline that all of your clients go through to kind of keep that same client experience

throughout your exact process, right? And you can still create templates. So like if you have a custom package, you can create a template where maybe your contract overall says the same thing and there may be like little tweaks that you have to make before sending out the contract or maybe you have to put in a little bit of more information about the pricing because maybe it's a custom price, but the base of your offer is still around about the same.

But when we're going through and we're mapping it out, we're keeping everything, we're building out for the most part of what we want 85 % of our clients to do. Now there is going to be times and of course we build in follow ups. We build in these extra touch points that are very important to keep the client retention through the process.

But overall, what we wanna do is make sure that we can keep majority of our clients on this one baseline, right? On this one baseline. So what I mean by that is like, I've worked with clients in the past that they're like, okay, clients come to me, let's say they're a photographer or something like that. Clients wanna work for me and they send me a text message. But if you have some clients that send out a text message and then other clients that will go to the website and fill out the form, how can we make it where we get

90 plus percent, if not all, to actually fill out the contact form and go through the process versus sending you a text message. Right. And so that's what we build out the client journey for. But the next thing I always have to go through and tell clients is that as we're going through and we're building this out, we're doing this strategy call is that I'm going to ask you a lot of questions and I'm going to question some of the things that you say. Like I'm going to ask you why.

I'm one of those people that I just want to know why, not because it's I'm being rude or I'm being mean about it, or it's not good enough. It's none of that. So I always have to let them know. Like I'm going to question what you say as far as why are you doing it this way? Just because if you tell me the why, then I can go through and I can say, okay, being that I know why you want to do this,

the way that you're doing it, the way you might've been doing this process, maybe it's manual, I have a solution for you that we can automate it and it's still ultimately going to resolve this issue in this particular part, So I've resolved your why and I've just put it into a container where it's like, I can automate this because now I know why you're actually doing it or I know the end result of it. So if there's a better way to go through and do it.

this is why I'm asking why. So I always let them know that. Like I'm not trying to say like, you're not doing it good or anything like that because we're all doing things at the level of what we know and have the information for at that time. And that's all that we can do, right? That's all that we can do. And so I'm always questioning them as far as why. Asking those questions because as the system strategist, that's my job.

to try to go through and automate as much as your process is possible. So you can go through, you can start saving more hours, you can start getting that admin work off of your plate because most of the clients that come to me, they come to me because they want to be able to just do what they love doing in their business. And normally that's the work that they did. So if they're a photographer, that's what they wanna do. They're an event decorator, that's what they wanna do.

They are like, have a client that has like a dog concierge. That's what she wants to do. She's out taking care of dogs and cats. She does not want to go through and work on the admin stuff. So those are the things that you really want to focus on. Like really think about, okay, if I'm using something, a tool right now, and I feel like this tool isn't working. have I actually created my process?

Have I actually wrote it down? Have I actually visually mapped this out? Do I know what this process is? Have I actually gone through and thought about these things? And what are my goals for this process? So one of the things that I do in my business for my clients is because our goal is to help our clients build client retention, For them to be able to get more clients.

back into their doors, So if someone pays you once, they're more likely to pay you again. Even if it doesn't have to be next week, it could be a month. It could be three months down the road, six months down the road. They're more likely to pay you again. And so my goal with building out the systems for my clients is to help them to build client retention, to have people come back to them, as well as to get referrals and just getting that repeat business, retainers, et cetera.

That way you can kind of not reduce your marketing because you're still going to be marketing your business, but it takes so much more effort to go through and obtain a new client than it is to kind of keep the ones that you have. And so that can take a lot of pressure from, from all of my clients here.

So one of the things I was able to go through and do, so those are what you wanna keep in mind. So what I did with this particular client, like I said, we did the audit, so I gave her that information. So based off of the intake form, I said, look, before even going into your HoneyBook account, let me give you this information. Let me give you this advice. This is one thing that I recommend that you work on first, okay? Work on this first. Now let's go ahead and do the...

the audit, right? And I pointed out, I went through and I typically do this audit, I go through and I do a whole video and everything. But I went through and say, you know, these are the things that I could see that you're doing well. And these are the things that need to be improved, These are the things that need to be connected together. But again, when we're connecting things together, we're connecting things to the baseline of our client journey, how the clients are moving through.

So if you've been struggling, like again, trying to go through, you're trying to figure out, okay, I've been using some type of client management system, but it does not seem to be working for me, I really want you to go through and just consider that. Just consider maybe as a little bit more work that I have to do on the front end. And when I do that work on the front end, it's going to bring me clarity of how I can go through and connect the dots.

So before you switch over to anything else, it doesn't matter what you're using. You know I love HoneyBook over here is what we set up for our clients. But honestly, it doesn't matter what you're doing, what you're using, because majority of the CRMs, client relationship managers that I see, they all work

most of the most popular ones do about all the same thing. So it really doesn't matter exactly which one that you're using. It's about the systems and the strategy that you have underlining that software that makes everything go through and connect together. I hope this episode just brought that little bit of clarity for you in case that you are struggling with that part that you could go through and just give you something else to think about with that. Because again,

when you have that clarity and you've built out that client journey, you're actually very clear of how your clients are going through your business, how you want them to go through your business, you're including everything that you take and you prioritize the client experience. And especially if you're thinking about like how we're thinking about is trying to,

how am I going to get more clients to stay with me and come back to me? When you do that, your clients are going to feel more supported in the process because you've thought about them in the beginning. You've thought about them in the beginning. Before you set up anything else, you've thought about them. And that's gonna help them to feel more supported. They're gonna feel more guided. They're gonna feel more cared for from the start. And that's going to help your clients to come back to you. They're gonna rebook your services.

and they're also going to refer you to other people, That is what that's going to do. And client retention becomes something that is natural when you include intentional systems and have them implemented into your business.

if you've been struggling to manage your clients, manage your clients, you're feeling overwhelmed by your client management tool or you're wondering why your clients aren't coming back or referring you again, it's probably not the tool. It's probably just the system that you're missing underneath. And if this sounds like something that you need support with.

I do offer our client experience accelerator. our client experience accelerator is our 90 minute strategy session where we work together to figure out the bottlenecks in your business, to figure out what exactly is stopping you from moving to that next phase in your business. So if you go to yoursystemspro.com,

You can go check out the client experience accelerator. It also comes with, like I said, that 90 minute strategy session. I also provide you with a full action plan after our call. And you get seven days of chat support with me inside of our custom client portal. So it's kind of like a kind of like a slack, but it's inside of our custom client portal. That way, as you're going through and you're working through your plan, you're implementing some of the things that I'm referring to from that action plan and from our strategy call.

that you can still get clarity around the issue that you have so you can move your business forward. Okay, so if you go to yoursystemspro.com, definitely go through and check that out. And again, I appreciate you tuning into this week's episode of the Systems Rehab Podcast. And I cannot wait to talk to you again next week.