Business Can be Scary: Stories About Not Being Paid and Tasks that Never End
Business Can be Scary: Stories About Not Being Paid and Tasks that Never End
Halloween is an incredible holiday, especially because it has scary movies. But if you can’t handle scary movies, I’ve got three terrifying tales about business moments gone wrong. They’re just as scary but without the monsters. Keep reading for some small business horror stories.
Not Getting PaidImagine your marketing efforts are successful and your leads want to become new clients. Great, right? Only one problem: they can’t pay! One woman’s small business scary was bad for everyone since they weren’t able to proceed.
The woman explains that the client management system she had been using wouldn’t allow people to pay, which meant that her clients became frustrated. She spent a long time going back and forth with their tech team and wasted a lot of time trying to take care of the problem.
She finally found a solution, though. She was able to use a proposal software to send an invoice and contract in one place after speaking to a potential client. After that, the process was simple; her clients would sign and pay. That was it! After the online invoices are paid, another email sequence is automatically sent to start the onboarding process.
Tasks That Never End and Making Clients Wait
Another scary story for business owners is growing so fast that we can’t keep up with our clients. One woman realized this was happening to her when she noticed she was getting caught up in simple administrative work, like sending confirmations and follow-ups.
The right tools can help your business grow while ensuring that you can handle it. You can streamline your processes to free up time and make your clients happy. For example, if someone wants to schedule a meeting with you, you can use an online meeting scheduler to do so efficiently. You can block out times in your calendar when you know you’ll have calls scheduled, and you can work your other business plans around the times that you’ve blocked off.
Tracking Everything ManuallyAnother woman found herself spending too much time on her business operations every day. She took manual notes by updating a Google Sheet with outstanding/received payments and noting the last communication she had with every client. The time she spent on this meant that she had less time for actual design work. Forget about her having enough time to strategize how to grow her business!
She was able to solve her problem by using a client workflow automation software to automatically follow up with all her inquiries. She no longer needs to send every email while not losing touch with her clients. Clients speak to her through email a few times before she ever actually communicates with them herself.
After she speaks with a potential client, she sends them a proposal and keeps track of everything in one place in a project workspace.
Solving the Scary Problems that Come Up in Business
This season, make sure your fear comes from horror movies and not from your business. While these stories can happen to the best of us, it’s easy to take care of them with a good CRM. You can create workflows that automatically respond to your leads, send proposals and get paid!