He's happy with only HALF the job?!?!?!?
[Spoiler alert - he's ecstatic!]
Oh my goodness! I just got off the phone with one of my previous clients. I called him just to check in, to see how he’d been going through COVID. And to see if he’d actually implemented the CRM that he initially engaged me to set up for him
And surprise, surprise – the CRM is still waiting to go live. And he couldn’t be happier! He even kept thanking me, and telling me how much I transformed his business!
I know what you’re thinking, right? How could be possibly be happy when he hasn’t actually put in place the thing he engaged me for?
Well, when he engaged me, he thought he needed a CRM to solve his problems. He was spending most of his time on the phone, dealing with a lot of tyre-kickers. And when he wasn’t on the phone, he was out visiting potential clients, doing quotes. AND spending at least an hour with each one, educating them about the industry, and why they’d be nuts to go with anyone except him.
And then, when he was back in the office, dealing with all the staff and client issues that popped up while he was out.
PLUS, doing all the extra stuff that he needed to do as the owner, after everyone else had knocked off for the day.
He reckoned he was working 20 hour days!
And he thought he needed a CRM to fix it.
(Spoiler alert - he didn’t. But it’s very hard to convince people otherwise when they think that’s what they need…)
I told him before he engaged me, that I couldn’t help him with a CRM until we’d defined exactly where and how he was going to use it. Who was going to use it? What for? What did he need out of it, what did he need it to do?
And because I KNOW that those are critical things that most small business owners haven’t thought about before. (And that will drive significant change, even BEFORE you put any systems in place…)
So I sat down with him and his team, and mapped out how his delivery process worked (because the CRM would need to feed into it). And we looked at his follow up process, after the job was finished (because it made sense that he’d use the CRM then too). And his enquiry and quote process (because that’s when the CRM would get a really big workout).
And he found (which I knew he would) that he actually couldn’t answer a lot of the questions I asked him.
And as he discussed it with his staff, he realised they were doing a lot of things that didn’t make sense, when you actually, really looked at them. Things that were making him and his staff work harder and longer than they needed to. And that didn’t stop his clients all asking the same questions, at the same point in their interactions with him and his staff.
So when we’d finished mapping everything out, and fixing it so it worked quicker and easier, he realised that he didn’t need to implement the CRM (even though it was all set up and ready to go). He got an even better result than he ever imagined, just by re-looking at how he was working, by seeing it all laid out in front of him, so that he and his staff could take a good, hard look at it, and make it better.
He’s gone from being busy, busy, busy, always trying to bail the water out of the boat, rather than fixing holes in the boat. Because he didn’t even know he HAD holes. And he wouldn’t have known how to fix them, even if he did.
Now he fixes the holes in the boat.
So he’s gone from working 20 hour days, to taking half days off.
From his staff feeling like they’re constantly running around like chooks with their heads cut off, to them making and implementing decisions, and feeling like they have a stake in the success of the company.
From trying to convince clients to work with him, to having his potential clients convince HIM to work with THEM.
And he’s working less, but his turnover’s higher.
All without the thing that he initially thought he needed.
