The 7 Systems Of A Highly Effective Firm

Everyone talks about ‘systemising’ your business, but then fail to tell you which systems you need. And the challenge of implementing systems is how to build them so they STICK. 

We’ve all experienced the frustration of introducing a new process to your business, only to see it fade away after a short while. 

I always liken it to rebuilding the same part of a wall over and over again. Building systems in a business can very much feel like building the first few rows of a wall, then they get knocked down and you have to rebuild them again with the next idea and the next. But it just never seems to gain height. It’s tiring.

This happens when we don’t get everyone’s buy-in, because they don’t know why we’re doing it in the first place or how they will benefit when it’s in place. 

It’s just another crazy idea from you, they think. Let’s go along with it for a while and you’ll soon drop it like everything else.

For systems to work effectively, they need to include…

• A why. Why are we doing this in the first place. How do the clients, the team and the business benefit?
• A checklist. This is simply a list of tasks that ensures all the correct things happen every time, to the correct standards. This could be an automated series of events.
• A check for the checklist. Anything you expect, you have to inspect, so there needs to be a checking process in place to ensure the standards are met.
• An improvement strategy. Nothing ever stays the same and left unchecked, it will be getting worse. So, you have to actively improve your processes with an appropriate rhythm, such as every quarter. Without this, the rows of bricks in the system get knocked down or fall down.

If you want consistently high results, your systems need these elements.

Now let me outline the 7 systems we have in place in our firm and which have helped us to provide greater value, wow our clients and build a scalable business. 

1. The Attraction System

This is where you identify your dream prospects and attract them in their highest quantity and quality into your firm. If you don’t know who you want, you can’t really complain when you don’t get them.

2. The Nurture System

This is where you connect with those prospects and nurture them over time to the point where they make it clear that they want your services. This is rarely in place and a huge sinkhole of lost opportunities. Our nurture processes are 12 months long for new prospects.

3. The Sales System

This is where you turn a prospect into a client and upgrade existing clients into buying more from you. It’s where you define the relationship you intend to have with a prospect, wean out the time wasters, propose to them and convert them into your dream client. Without a sale, no value can be exchanged and so this is fundamental to the growth of your business. It’s the one most people avoid, but the one that has the potential to have the greatest impact and where we should always start. This is the one we’re going to be locking down.

4. The Onboarding System

This is where you wow your new clients by making it super smooth to onboard them with minimal pain for them and you. This is their first interaction with your practice and so it’s important that you nail it. It’s also where you onboard existing clients into new services. We’ve got this process totally locked down and delivering high levels of wow already.

5. The Delivery System

This is how you ultimately deliver your service to your clients. It’s where you maximise the lifetime value you provide to them by procedurising, planning and doing the work. All of the low-level activities are put on autopilot and your team are freed up to work on their highest value activities, with high levels of accuracy and fast turnaround times. Get this right and you will form deep and meaningful partnerships with your clients, where you’re an intrinsic part of their success. 

6. The Finance System

This is where you continually maximise your income by ensuring that you’re pricing profitably and have THE most robust payment system that automates the flow of cash from your clients to you. Without this in place, you will be leaking profits, leaving money on the table and the more clients you get, the worse it will be. This system is the one you must be an expert in because it’s ultimately where you’re helping your clients to achieve financial maturity too. But you don’t have the right to help your clients to achieve this, until you’ve mastered it yourself first. 

7. The Staffing System

This is where you attract, recruit and grow the best people that perfectly fit your culture and your aspirations. You can’t grow your business; all you can do is grow your people and they will grow your business. This only works if you have robust systems in the first place with no cracks and a clearly defined set of useful core values.

Number 3, the sales system is the key to unlocking the success of all other systems, but it’s also the one that’s disliked and so tends to be avoided and I've written a whole chapter on it in Selling To Serve.

What I want to do throughout the course of the book is to reverse that thinking and share with you a totally different approach to selling, helping you to discover that it is in fact one of THE greatest skills you can have in your firm and life.