Should you buy that new software to help with lead nurture?
Should you hire a virtual assistant (VA) to do your billing?
Should you replace yourself in the morning classes?
You can—but not yet. You must perfect performance of each task yourself, teach someone else to do each task at the exact same level, and improve the process so it’s optimal. Only then should you automate each task.
I’m a huge fan of putting the right people in the right seats. In the first post in this series, I told you about the first step to getting work off your plate: systemization. Write down exactly how you want things done, teach your staff how to do it that way, and hold them to the standard.
Today, I’m going to tell you how to make your staff better than you.
Optimize the System
Sticking with the salesperson example from the previous post:
After you do 20 No Sweat Intros (NSIs) yourself, write the process down step by step and teach it to your staff.
Drill your staff and hand over intro duties when their close rates are equal to yours—not before.
Then make them better than you are at sales: You can get them a sales coach, sign them up for Two-Brain Team Training so they can role play, record their NSIs and walk through the recordings with them, and so on.
You carefully change only one thing at a time so you can see the true effects of the change.
For example, you try handing a client a cold bottle of water at the No Sweat Intro. Don’t change any other element of the NSI. After 10 NSIs with the cold bottle of water, you measure: Did your close rate go up? If so, the water becomes part of your system. If there was no effect, you drop the “water welcome” and try something else.
This is how you optimize your system. Any system is better than no system. But before you hand over a system entirely, take the time to optimize it.
Don’t hand the care of your clients over to robots and strangers.
The only thing worse than doing something badly is doing it wrong.
It’s now common to “outsource” lead nurture, emails, direct messaging and other services to bots or software or virtual assistants. Those things can work (they’re better than nothing—until they’re worse). But they only work if you have a system in place for them to follow.
If you want to build a self-driving car, you have to write the algorithm and then test the algorithm before you put it out on the street.
Other Media in This Series
“How to Automate Your Gym, Part 1: DIY to Delegation”
“How to Automate Your Gym, Part 3: Avoid Abdication”
