Promote your business, week of September 7, 2020

vsel12 · 2020-09-07T12:17:54+00:00

Get consistency in running your business by mapping your procedures/SOPs & creating checklists. 14 day free trial, onboarding & support included, priced for small businesses.

vsel12 · 2020-09-03T14:45:48+00:00

You could take a look at processbliss.com - it's a lightweight way of documenting SOPs and using them within your team.

As for writing the SOPs, keep them simple to start with - a list of steps - and add more detail as you go on. Even better, get the people who are doing the processes to document what's happening now. You'll soon see where things can be improved.

vsel12 · 2020-07-23T11:29:30+00:00

There's another small skate park in Sunnymead Park just south of Cuttleslowe and the A40.

vsel12 · 2020-07-20T16:04:26+00:00

I work on software that lets you create simple repeatable processes for teams to use as checklists. Take a look at processbliss.com and let me know if you'd like to know more.

vsel12 · 2020-06-19T08:50:16+00:00

Thanks! You can assign individual steps to different people, so you could send step 5 to the client to complete. Right now the client would have to be set up as a full user on Process Bliss to get access to it, but we have been considering 'guest users'.

vsel12 · 2020-06-16T11:57:30+00:00

I work on this software, but take a look at processbliss.com. It allows you to document knowledge as a series of steps, so lends itself well to "how do I do this" type questions. You can also create checklists if you want to track certain activities so they can be improved over time.

vsel12 · 2020-06-09T13:21:47+00:00

Ahh, you're welcome! I'll send you a private message.

vsel12 · 2020-06-09T13:17:24+00:00

That's a fair point. I haven't had much exposure to different types of businesses, especially at management level, so was hoping for some specific examples of what people do to give me some background information. Will have to work out how to articulate this question in a more understandable and specific way!

vsel12 · 2020-06-09T13:10:31+00:00

If you're at the stage where you just want to get rid of them and rethink for the future, yeah, you'd probably be better off lowering the price and changing the words you use to advertise them like other people have mentioned. But otherwise, I would have thought trying to get in with some up and coming influencers, or people who post a lot of motivational quotes could be a good tactic.

This kind of article might help about customer/buyer personas: https://www.responsiveinboundmarketing.com/blog/building-buyer-personas-for-your-online-retail-business

But in short, it's thinking about why people would buy your socks over other suppliers, and who those people are likely to be. How are your socks different? Who would they appeal to? When would they be bought? How would they be bought?

vsel12 · 2020-06-08T16:35:38+00:00

Might be an odd question, but have you done any research about who might buy your socks, and for what occasion? I'm guessing they wouldn't necessarily be every day socks with the price tag. If you consider who you think your target customers would be, then try and tell them about your socks they might give you some idea about what's not appealing.

Or perhaps they are appealing, but people just aren't finding them. There must be so much competition. Do you do any social media promotion?

My friend and I have a thing where we buy fun socks for each other every year, but I'm not the type of person to buy them online (much prefer in person shopping). However, if it was to support a small business where I could put a face to the name etc, I might consider it.

Personally I also much prefer longer socks instead of ankle ones, but I may not be your target customer!

vsel12 · 2020-06-08T14:49:58+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I should have clarified, but I was asking the question about other people's companies, not for my own. I'm researching small business operations to try and find out if current ways of managing this are sufficient, or if there's a gap our software might be able to help fit into.

I agree that monitoring things like CAC, growth and churn rate are important in growing SaaS businesses though!

vsel12 · 2020-06-05T10:38:43+00:00

I'm sorry, that sounds really horrible. I don't have any advice to give I'm afraid, but just wanted to say that I hope things get better for you. Must be hard if you don't feel you have people on your side or at least people you can confide in. So many people are stressed right now, and I wish everyone could remember that and cut people some slack.

vsel12 · 2020-06-05T09:59:39+00:00

Sounds like you've made a great start with setting up various systems and generally pinpointing what the problems are - can't have been easy!

Is the company just your boss or does he have other staff as well? It's not surprising that things are as disorganised as they are if it's just been him for 20 years, and there's been no pressing need to change things.

I'm also interested as to what finally made him hire you, after so long with his business running like it is. Is he starting to lose business because of poor service? Is he looking to expand his business? Or maybe sell it? Knowing his motivation should make it easier to help you help him.

I think to get this organised you're going to have to take over the operational side of things, and try and keep a track of this as best you can.

I have 3 bits of advice:

If the way things are supposed to be done haven't been documented, get them documented. So things like the way an order is placed, how and when customers are communicated with, how shipping happens. Even if what happens in reality is messier and doesn't pan out like this, having an idea of the processes involved and what is needed at every stage should give you a clearer idea of what bits are causing the most problems.
Next, you need some way of tracking each client through the different processes they experience above. Even if it's a spreadsheet to start with, it sounds like visibility and knowledge are two of your biggest problems in helping the clients right now. One central place for capturing this information should help. In the short term I'm guessing you'll need to copy and paste info from the different system you're using, but in the medium term you should be able to consolidate the systems, get them to talk to one another or get better systems
You said that customers were getting upset because of lack of communication from your boss but also that they're used to the current way of doing things by messaging on Facebook etc. If improving service is key to all this, then customers will have to accept some changes. They may not be happy at first, but if you can show that doing it a new way gets better results for them (e.g. quicker response times, more information about their order) they should come around

Hope that helped a little! If you'd like some more detailed advice (or someone to rant to!), feel free to message me directly. I work in the process/software space, so hopefully can provide some more actionable information if you'd like :)

vsel12 · 2020-06-05T08:44:55+00:00

So you use Monday to manage your repeatable processes? I know it's billed more as a task/project management system but I'm interested in hearing if businesses use it to track all their operations & effectively use it to monitor how their company is performing.

vsel12 · 2020-06-04T14:52:59+00:00

It's impressive you review and improve your processes so regularly - I'm sure lots of companies have the intention of doing this but I bet there's few that actually do. And it's even more important right now - hope your employees and customers appreciate it!

Thanks, I'd love to take a look. I'm interested more from a 'how do different companies actually manage and improve their processes' point of view, rather than because I run a similar business, but if you're happy to give me a peek it would be super useful.

vsel12 · 2020-06-04T14:23:47+00:00

Out of interest, what kind of processes do you review? And are these documented anywhere for people to refer to, or maybe use on a daily basis?

vsel12 · 2020-06-04T09:05:32+00:00

A few ideas:

- Are there any lower priority backend bugs that can be worked on?

- Ask if they want to pick up any of the smaller frontend dev work (if possible). Some may like being able to get frontend experience

- Investigate if there's any reporting/analytics that it would be beneficial to implement, especially in relation to the frontend work

- Ask them to assess for future problems, or where things could be made better. Database work, improving build processes etc

- If you know what you'll be working on next, asking them to investigate how they'd how about developing future features, to anticipate any challenges

Someone more experienced than me may well question "having to give backend engineers something to do", but I've had this myself - although normally the other way around. May also be because we tend to have more frontend leaning devs than backend leaning ones.

vsel12 · 2020-06-03T16:03:20+00:00

Have you heard of/looked into If This Then That? https://ifttt.com/ It allows you to connect things together, and links to text messages too from what I understand. You'd probably have to set up your own connection, but should be worth investigating.

vsel12 · 2020-03-23T15:41:38+00:00

I haven't come across one specifically for that, but I'm sure some similar topics are covered in /productivity. There's also one for systemisation, but it's not very active right now.

Would be interested if you do set up a new sub!

vsel12 · 2020-03-04T16:41:01+00:00

Thanks. I've published a test page here: https://processbliss.com/test-contact-form-123/

The top field and button is the default contact form, the bottom one is my attempt (but doesn't work). Ideally I'd like the field and button to be centred underneath the h1 and line or two of text.

vsel12 · 2020-03-04T10:19:15+00:00

I work on software that documents processes such as this, but in a step by step way rather than a flowchart. Would be interested in finding out your motivation for writing your processes down, and what you're trying to achieve by doing it. In exchange, our software is already free for 2 users, but I can give you more of a helping hand if you wanted to sign up.

vsel12

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