Growing your business? Here’s a team member you can’t live without!

Growing your business? Here’s a team member you can’t live without!

If you are at the stage where your business needs more hands on deck, you’ll know that building a team can bring as many challenges as it solves. There’s the investment of time in the recruitment process, for a start, and then the onboarding, training, delegating and empowering hurdles need to be cleared so that you can ensure you get the best from the people working with and for you.

However, there’s another challenge that comes with growing an owner managed business and that’s the ability to keep track of everything that’s being done.

Is it safe to look away?

You will have built your business to date knowing everything about everyone. You’ll have dealt directly with all your clients, know immediately what work is due, when the deadline is and whether anyone hasn’t paid on time. To go from this to managing others who have their fingers on the pulse can be disconcerting.

But it doesn’t have to be. There’s a way of ensuring all your team members do things in the same way you always have. This tool can ensure all team members can see the progress made or issues outstanding. It will capture everything from emails to overdue payments. I’m sure you’ve guessed, but if you haven’t, it’s Capsule CRM and it’s the business critical member of your team. The one without which you simply cannot grow your business.

Why can’t I grow my business without a CRM?

For business success, a few things are key:

• Quality of data
• Consistency of processes
• Systems that can scale with you
• Customer experience

Let’s look at them in turn.

Quality of data

Data is a critical part of business in our digital age and the way in which you store and access it can be the difference between success and failure. You need to consider everything from confidentiality, to GDPR, and not forgetting excellent delivery that ensures your customers feel like they are the only person on your books.

If your data is a mess, your business will falter. You will forget something, feel overwhelmed and everything will take twice as long to do (at least).

With Capsule, all your data is in one place, consistently recorded and because it’s a multi-user system, everyone can record things in a uniform way which also ensures everyone can be briefed on a customer account at any time. It’s neat and tidy, it reminds you of what you need to know, when you need to know it, and it can show you your finances if you integrate it, for example with Xero.

When we worked with Eleos Partnership to implement their Capsule CRM. They said “Capsule has turned a set of numbers into a relatable business planning tool.”

Consistency of processes

Capsule CRM is fully configurable for your business so you can agree a process or series of steps with your team and then create this within Capsule so it tracks everything for you. You can allocate users to tasks and deadlines, and see at a glance how your business is performing and what is overdue. Put simply, Capsule is your eyes and ears in the business while you might be out generating new leads. This consistency is one of Capsules greatest benefits and the reason our clients with multiple users love it so much.

Kate Cooper, Absolute Architecture, was a client who had just started to build a team when we worked with her, said “If a client speaks to different people, the conversations are captured centrally meaning we are more professional and efficient.” We revisited Kate a year later - find out how she's getting on here.

Systems that can scale with you

Of course, Capsule will grow as your business does. That’s the beauty of it being a bespoke system. You can add extra contacts, opportunities and cases. You can batch tasks together and check, for example, that everyone has done their sales calls or hit their deadline for deliverables for the month.

Capsule is continually being evolved and updated. The latest addition was the ability to send emails from within it, enabling full visibility of all conversations. Even more peace of mind for the growing business where the CEO can’t be hands on with everything.

Helen Steel, Streamlion Consulting was on the precipice of huge growth when we installed Capsule for her and said “Using Capsule has enabled me to utilise saved time to work on, not in, my business.”

Customer experience

One of the greatest risks of business growth is that, somehow, your delivery is watered down or your attention to customer satisfaction is pushed out by ever increased delivery demands. Capsule will help you avoid this either by simply prompting you to check in with a client regularly or by allowing you to create step-by-step tracks which ensure every team member remembers even the smallest gestures that help you to stand out from the crowd. It’s so easy to personalise that it will even enable you to incorporate your thought processes, for example when onboarding a new client. You could set a task to ‘check in with new client after 24 hours’ and apply it to every relevant account.

We worked with will writer, Ally Ilott, Heritage Estate Planning, to implement Capsule and she said “Capsule opens automatically and basically runs my business. There’s no risk of people slipping through the net and I hadn’t realised how much of my mind that worry was occupying.” We revisited Ally a year later - find out here how she's gone from strength to strength.

In Conclusion

When we grow our businesses, we need to do so with the confidence that we can maintain standards and keep a lid on costs and efficiency. Capsule meets these requirements in spades.

We always advise clients to work with a CRM when they know they want to scale. According to Vorsight.com, only 3% of your pipeline is actively buying, with a further 56% not ready and another 40% almost ready. These statistics show the importance of having a system that can track this and be ready to cope with increased throughout when it comes.

Who Am I?

I have been working with CapsuleCRM for over a decade and helped many clients increase revenue, reduce costs, make the most of their contacts, manage their pipeline and deliver great customer service. Capsule is an excellent way to capture your leads and clients once you’ve identified them using your avatar.

I can design and install the perfect bespoke version of Capsule to meet your needs. Capsule really is a great solution for coaches, consultants and business owners and when it is integrated with Transpond and Xero you have really solid foundations in place to grow your business.

I’m always happy to have a chat – you can contact me at [email protected] and sign up to receive my Growth Hack Bulletin too.