Systemize Your Business

Earlier this year we studied the sites of our clients - about 784 of them. About 80% lacked elements that SEO experts say are crucial for Google to rank pages correctly. These errors had been there since day one, hurting traffic and costing the owners money.

We’ve just completed a similar study on 310,000 sites to see how many of them have these issues. We wanted to know how many are missing Page Titles and/or Page Descriptions and/or have enough text to be useful. (Just the marketing aspect.)

The results are sobering. A third have broken page titles, about half have no page description at all, and a sixth had no text!

The full report is 6 pages long, in simple English designed for our small business community. The full report of site marketing defects is here.

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Amazon has a silky smooth returns process - it completely removes the anger at having paid for something that doesn’t work properly. I’ll tell you about it in a minute but before I do that lets take a look at how it should not be done.

I returned a faulty Garmin GPS to Argos. They made me suffer.

1. Dig out receipt from my filing cabinet
2. Drive to mall and find parking
3. Stand in queue at customer service desk
4. Explain what was wrong to vacant 16yr old behind counter
5. Explain what was wrong to equally vacant 50 something behind counter
6. Wait while they phone around trying to find out what to do
7. Hold for Garmin Europe call center
8. Explain to Garmin call center what is wrong
9. Get told I should just charge the unit
10. Explain that it’s fully charged
11. Get told to take it home and charge it for 24 hours
12. Explain that it’s fully charged
13. Get told again that to take it home and charge it for 24 hours
14. Give up and go home and charge it for 24 hours

The pain continues
The next day:-

15. Drive to mall and find parking
16. Stand in queue at customer service desk
17. Explain what was wrong to same vacant 16yr old behind counter
18. Explain what was wrong to same equally vacant 50 something behind counter
19. Wait while they phone around trying to find out what to do
20. Hold for Garmin Europe call center
21. Explain to Garmin call center what is wrong
22. Get told I should just charge the unit
23. Explain that it’s fully charged and that I have already charged it
24. Hand phone over to vacant 16 yr old behind counter
25. Wait while she gets instructions
26. Hand broken GPS in and ask when it will be ready (a recent immigrant really needs a GPS)
27. Wait while vacant 16 yr old phones Garmin Europe call center
28. Get told maybe 28 days

3 and a half weeks later I got a phone call saying unit is repaired

29. Drive to mall and find parking
30. Stand in queue at customer service desk
31. Explain that I want my GPS to vacant 16yr old behind counter
32. Explain that I want my GPS to equally vacant 50 something behind counter
33. Wait while they hunt for the GPS

Amazon was such a contrast.

1. Look up website
2. Click on returns center
3. Select item to be returned from a list of things I’ve bought that are still under warranty
4. Type in reason for returning the item
5. Print prepaid shipping label
6. Pack the goods
7. Drop off at post office
8. 2 days later an email arrives saying I’ve been refunded.

What a smooth system.

The reality is that we’re going to mess up sometime. It just makes sense to build a pain free returns or refunds system.

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I can just picture the headlines - “CRAZY SURFER FREEZES TO DEATH IN BELFAST” or perhaps “OPTIMISTIC IMMIGRANT DIES FROM EXPOSURE”.

When a South African moves from sub-tropical Durban to chillier climates it takes a few years for the optimism to fade and the reality that every sunny day is not hot to set in. I bought myself a sea-kayak three weeks ago - winter had gone on long enough and it was time for some outdoor fun.

It took two days of paddling in boardshorts for me to realize that the locals shaking their heads from the shore in thick jackets and scarves were the smart ones.

I ordered a £40 wetsuit from www.wetsuitoutlet.co.uk , great service, but I think they’re missing an opportunity to systemize their marketing.

Imagine if I’d got an email that looked something like this:

“Dear Pete, I’m just about to dispatch your wetsuit and wondered if you might like a pair of boots and gloves to go with it - it’s still pretty cold right now and for an extra £30 you’ll be able to get a much longer season on the water. If you’d like me to include these in your package click here - they’ll be with you by Friday.”

Instead, I got my wetsuit in the post and froze my toes off for a week before I got around to buying the boots, and it took another week to realize that you need gloves if you’re going to pretend that it’s summer.

It’s not rocket science to work out what accessories people could use and offer them in gentle and polite way at the right time.

I bought the boat from our local canoe shop. I also persuaded myself to pick up a pair of paddles, some life jackets and 2 clip on seats at the same time. Friendly enough people but they didn’t ask for my phone number, address or email address. Almost as if they are never going to invite me back to spend more money.

How hard can it be to sell someone something they want to buy?

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Disclaimer: If you make or sell stuff please ignore this message - it’s not really for you.

Most owners of small service businesses have a big problem.

Most of our marketing efforts are ineffective because:

• When we’re marketing we’re not cutting, massaging, servicing, designing, plumbing, repairing, healing, fixing or installing. And we don’t get paid for marketing.
• We actually know what we are doing when it comes to our “ing” (as opposed to marketing where most of us fumble about in the dark).
• There is a direct correlation between “inging” and our income. We get paid for doing something that we enjoy so we do our “ing” instead of marketing.

So this often happens (maybe you recognize it in your business?):

Too busy working to market
Too little work
Lots of marketing
Too busy working to market

And so the cycle goes on.

This workload fluctuation makes it hard for us to get a consistent income or grow the business.

In the perfect world our expertise and fantastic service would be enough to get people queuing at the door. The reality is that good skills and great service are not enough in today’s competitive world.

We’ve developed an automatic marketing system that significantly increases your chance of getting repeat business from your existing clients. It runs in the background leaving you free to focus on doing the work that actually brings in the loot.

Enough said - if the thought of increasing your sales without having to spend hours marketing is of interest please take a look at http://www.salesrepeater.co.uk/service/index.html

Kind regards

Pete Bowen

PS I’d love discus how it could work in your business. Please tell me a little more about what you do.

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What do you do when the washing machine breaks and you’ve got 6 small kids staying at your house? Panic! Being male it wasn’t too much of a problem for me but my good wife (mother of 4, aunt to the other 2) was flapping big time.

It took a day and a half to track “Jim’ll Fix-it” down. Really nice guy, great technical skills - it only took him 3 minutes to sort the problem out

I’ll definitely use him again - if I can find him.

You see, hopefully it’ll be a while before the washing machine breaks again, and by then I’ll have forgotten everything about him except for the fact that he was a nice guy and did a good job. So I’ll haul out the yellow pages and probably hire the first available guy.

I might get Jim because does advertise in the Yellow Pages and he’s going to spend £1297.20 on the same advert next year… But I probably won’t because he is number 26 out of 49 competitors and his advert doesn’t really stand out.

He could get a year’s supply of business card size stickers made up for less than £100. “When this breaks call Jim on xxx-xxx-xxx”. All that he has to do is to stick one of these stickers discretely on each of my appliances and he’s gone from 26th place to gold medal winner at less than a tenth of the price.

It’s simple systemized marketing that gets high returns.

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Get rid of as many humans as possible and hire machines! Science fiction or good business sense? You decide.

Let me tell you what brought me to this thought.

Gill’s (my wife) birthday is always a nerve-wracking time for me. What do you get a women who has everything? I’ve made some spectacular mistakes in the past (the lawnmower of 2003 comes to mind). I think I’ve only ever got it right once when I had an old jeweler make up a pair of bean shaped gold earrings to match her nickname - Gillybean. She loved them and still wears them.

What are the chances that I would be back if I got a message like this from him the next year?

“Dear Pete,

Mike Wilford”

I’d be willing to bet that at least half the people who got a note like this would head back to the shop.

This kind of personal attention is often the only competitive advantage that we small businesses have, but the conundrum is that the bigger you grow the more difficult it is to build a personal relationship with each customer.

Throw a few employees into the mix and chances are pretty good that someone is going to forget to treat your customer well.

Hence the need to remove some of the human element from this process.

I’ve spent the last while working on a very interesting project to do exactly this. It’s an easily operated software tool that will systemize the sending of reminders to your existing customers. I think it’s the only such tool on the market - certainly the simplest one around.

1. As you make the sale you ask “Would you like me to send you a reminder note next year (or next month or whatever)?”
2. You enter the customer’s details and the event that lead to the purchase (an anniversary, wedding, car service, birthday, holiday or any other reason for buying something).
3. Click a button and it creates the message and sticks it in the queue.
4. When the reminder date comes round the message is sent

You’ve got a machine to do a humans job. It never forgets, costs nothing to run (you pay for email anyway) and goes a long way to reminding your customers that you care.

Good business or science fiction?

You decide.

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Systemize your business for less than you’ll spend on Christmas lunch.

The easiest way to systemize your business is now faster and cheaper (well, cheaper for the next week only). Let me explain.

We’ve just released our systems building software in desktop format. This means that you no longer have to be connected to the internet to build a business that is independent of you.

It’s staggeringly fast and really easy to operate and the best thing is that because it’s the right tool for the job it makes building and implementing systems far easier than if you tried to do it with a spreadsheet or word processor.

There is no easier way to build a business that runs without your everyday work.

I’m in the process of setting up a sale page on Clickbank. When I’ve finished it the package will be sold for $197-00 (which is what we currently sell it for on our website) but by the time I’ve paid out all the listing fees and affiliate commissions I get out just less than $100 per sale.

Here’s how you make the savings

Buy the package directly from me and I’ll give it to you for $99 (less than a decent Christmas lunch with drinks). It’s a fair deal - you get a worthwhile saving and I earn what I would normally have anyway.

If you are planning on taking advantage of this offer please do it in the next week because the package will only be available at the regular price after I’ve completed the Clickbank setup.

It’s real easy to buy

1. By credit card. Head over to the purchase page and enter this coupon code 6CF4C5Z to get it at the reduced price.

2. If you’d prefer to do it a little more manually and use internet banking send me a note by replying to this email and we’ll set it up.

PS If you’re not sure if this is for you why don’t you play with the trial version for a while. You can get it at

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Being bald I don’t often get to a hairdresser. (The picture on the right shows the last of my best hair days) My wife on the other hand has gorgeous hair. She took a risk with it by volunteering as a model when my younger sister was doing some advanced hairdressing training.

I’m normally a bit sceptic about the arty type of guys who choose to become hairdressers. However sitting in the back of this class I watched a master at work. He had managed to overcome two of the biggest problems faced by people who provide a personal service such as hairdressers, doctors etc.

Sell other people’s time

Every year he went to the hairdressing College and hired the three best upcoming young girls as his apprentices. The apprentices would do the basic washing and cutting of the hair under his guidance.

Three girls doing three customers at the same the time. He’d hover around, swooping every now and again with an old-fashioned cutthroat razor in his flashing fingers and work on the masterpiece.

He scheduled three appointments at once and was successfully able to leverage other people’s time and still produce fantastic looking haircuts for happy customers who felt like they had his personal attention.

Selling a product when you are a service business

While he was teasing and shaping, crafting these incredible hairstyles should also be demonstrating the equally incredibly expensive salon-quality hair products. I don’t think anybody ever left with out armful of sprays, mousses waxes and gels that cost as much or more than his sky high fee.

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I’ve recently had a couple of people tell me it’s impossible to systemize a one-man (or woman) business. I’m not sure I believe them and think they’re probably finding reasons why they shouldn’t try.

If you’re a tradesman (plumber, electrician etc), a creative (beautician, artist, software developer etc) or a professional (lawyer, architect, doctor etc) you are essentially self-employed because you exchange your time for money. You also don’t generally earn money from your profession when you’re not working at your profession (or trade).

I don’t know if it’s everybody’s aim to earn more money but if you are self employed you’ve probably already made a list that looks something like this:

How to make more money:

• Sell more hours
• Sell your time at a higher rate
• Sell other people’s time
• Sell products

Systemizing can certainly help you do each one of these, and even if you’re running the systems yourself doing all the work in the business getting it done consistently makes a huge difference.

I’ll expand on each of these later.

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In the first part we looked at ways of identifying and categorizing risk. In this part will look at how to build systems that manage risk.

Most of the things that you can do to manage risk fall into one of the following four categories:

• Avoidance
• Mitigation
• Transfer
• Acceptance

Lets take look at how building a systems based business relates to each of these.

Systemizing to avoid risk

Avoiding risk might require that you change the way you do business. Two quick examples:

• If you’ve identified the risk of not getting paid as significant you might want to take a deposit upfront or not offer credit at all.
• You might also choose to get out of some markets if the risks associated with doing business there are too great.

Systemizing to mitigate risk

In the first part of the article I mentioned the example of how a cleaning and hygiene system reduced the risk of a customer getting sick from eating ice cream. Almost every time you implement another system it mitigates the risk:

• An inventory management system will have the means of identifying and purchasing from alternate vendors.
• The financial management system introduces controls to reduce the opportunity for employee theft or fraud.
• The customer retention system will soften the blow when your best salesman leaves to go and work for the opposition.
• The backup process - part of the IT Management System will save your hide when your computer catches fire.
• Following the disciplinary process in the Staff System gives you a better chance if an unhappy employee takes you to the Labour Court.
• The facilities management system includes a weekly check of the burglar alarm and closing procedures to make sure the office is safe even if you weren’t there to lock up.
• The marketing system brings a steady stream of new customers so that even if you lose a few when you pass a supplier’s increase on you can still pay the rent at the end of the month.
• The internal debt collecting process which is also part of the financial system makes sure that late payers don’t slip through the cracks and wreck your cash flow.

Systemizing to transfer risk

Transferring risk means that you pass it on to somebody else. The most common way of doing this is through insurance.

When we were developing the Asset Purchase Process and Asset Disposal Process (part of the pre-built systems we sell to make systemizing so much faster) we included a step to notify the insurer of the purchase or disposal of an asset. It’s not rocket science to add a task to a process, (especially if you’re using systems building software rather than messing about with a word processor or a spreadsheet), but something as simple as forgetting to notify your insurer might result in the you carrying that risk.

Systemizing to accept risk

There are many reasons why you might decide to accept certain risks. Sometimes the cost of transferring these is too expensive, sometimes there is not really anything that you can do to avoid or mitigate the risk.

If you’re concerned about managing some of the risks in your business send me a note and I’d be happy to discuss the fastest way to get a handle on those risks by systemizing.

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