One of the Key Growth Assets we help our customers build is business automation. Let’s cover the 3 simple steps to Smart Business Automation for a small business owner.

There are multiple places where automation makes sense, and when you are putting together your business infrastructure, you will need to explore the different possibilities.

Here are 3 simple steps to Smart Business Automation

• know what’s the trigger, ie what gets the automation started
• know what’s the follow-up, ie what happens in the sequence
• know what is the drop-off trigger, ie what stops the automation and what happens then

Example: you have a design business, and you are generating leads with video. On the thank you page, your new lead can book a call (sales event). You also build a 2-week follow-up sequence that is continuing the discussion topics shared in the video and invites your new lead to book a call.

What’s crucial for an excellent client experience: the current automation needs to end when something happens, such as a client books a call.

Practical example:

If a person is in your introduction sequence, receive several invitations to book a discovery call with your firm. As soon as they book the call, they need to be removed from the automation, and often put into another automation that takes care of the next steps, such as onboarding into your services.

If a person has already purchased a product from your store or scheduled a call, you don’t want to keep sending them the same message to come and buy that said product. Instead, you need to make sure your systems automatically move the person to another automation.

This is why it’s called business automation, and it’s really crucial to get it right. A poor customer experience at the gate kills conversions and is a waste of effort.

How to make sure your automation is right?

You should not over-complicate your business infrastructure, but you should pay attention to the details of your automated business processes. Here are 3 steps:

1. have a clear strategy for what success looks like
2. map out each step on the buyer journey, which should translate into your signature client experience
3. use tools that talk to each other, i.e. have ready-made integrations. If you can’t find tools that are directly integrated with each other, then use an integration platform such as Make.com or Zapier.com to build your integrations.

Document everything

You need to document all your systems so you and your team members know how things work, and can easily troubleshoot in case things go haywire.

The best tool to document your automation is either Google Documents or Notion. I use Notion for basically everything in my businesses because it can both store documents and lots of other assets, and also create lists, calendars, workflows, and databases that keep my assets in order and easily found.