Systemize Your Success Podcast

🎙Is time tracking the right thing to do with your staff? Regardless of whether they are remote or local, what approach should be taken, if at all? Should you be tracking clicks, time, shifts or projects? Steve has tried a number of approaches to this problem and this episode will share with you his experience and successful solutions.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
💡Many feel that tracking a staff members time can result in a loss of trust and that the finished project and result is more important that counting hours worked.
💡If someone has a mixed job which requires them to shift roles often or perhaps even daily, tracking their time is going to be difficult. Non repetitive workload can be difficult to quantify. Also, tracking time means more work for you and extra software costs on top of your systems.
💡However, if you have good staff that are efficient they will not mind being tracked as they will want you to be aware of the amount of work they produce over the time allotted. This will only be of concern for those that feel they are not reaching the standard you require. Evidence to identify these people is to great advantage.
💡What you measure you can improve. With the data gathered you will be able to identify work blocks, misunderstandings or too heavy a workload. This is a way you can identify time consuming tasks to possibly automate or streamline.
💡If you ask your staff to keep a task board with all their regular tasks on it and keep you informed of how long it takes, you will have a good idea of their capacity and and spare time they have for extra work or projects.
💡When someone is absent a good record of their tasks and how long they can potentially take is essential for redistributing their work.
💡New staff can be assessed much more quickly with expected task times available to measure their progress.
💡You can install software to take screenshots of your employees working so you can keep track, or with sites like Upwork, actual key strokes can be recorded. Apps like Toggle and Harvest allow a clock in, clock out type arrangement. Asana, for instance, allows you to link directly to tasks and adds it into the staff's timesheets.
💡You could use a spreadsheet arrangement on which people log their tasks, start and finish, and then they can add notes on any problems they encountered. Most apps do not include a simple method for this and for troubleshooting this is a helpful factor.
BEST MOMENTS
1:56 - 💬 ‘There is a belief about not tracking people's time because you don’t want to lose a lot of trust.’
8.04 - 💬 ‘Our staff all have task boards and on their task boards is all their recurring work, whether its daily work, weekly, monthly or periodic. We ask them to, every month, have a look at the time it took them to complete all their tasks over the past month.’
12:32 - 💬 ‘You just get more feeling that you’re getting value from your team when you track what people do and you see the amount of work that they produce it makes me think I’ve got an awesome team.’
17:42 - 💬 ‘If you go through and present it in that way then you’re going to get so much buy in compared to if you just say ‘I’m going to start tracking your time’ because they’re going to think that you don’t actually trust them.’
19:30 - 💬 ‘You’ve got to be prepared to understand what they do and talk about it. It can create a lot of work. You could say to somebody; ‘What on earth have you done today, you’ve got no activity monitored yet you’ve charged me for six hours work?’ That can put huge amounts of distrust into that scenario.’
23:54 - 💬 ‘ If you do do this I believe you will have improved systems. You will have better ability to give feedback to your staff. You will be able to increase the efficiency of their work, their productivity. You will be able to actually congratulate them and reward them for working hard.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
Facebook Group: Facebook.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/
Website: www.SystemizeYourSuccess.com
LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/
YouTube: YouTube.com/DrSteveDay
ABOUT THE HOST
Steve used to be a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change how he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely. After totally nailing this concept, he spent his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve’s been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus...

🎙Avoid the nightmare of lost data by ensuring you backup your content, data and tasks effectively. Plan for all the disasters that can happen and put your mind at rest with unlimited zoom cloud storage for free! Steve gives you all you need to know to achieve this and provides some of his cautionary tales to incentivise you to start regular backups of your business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

💡 Save yourself the stress, and back up all your data, including all your task management data.

💡 Zoom allows you to back up your video, but this is the most significant amount of data and can add up to thousands of cloud storage fees.

💡 With Google Drive, you can sync all your desktop data to their cloud drive. Backing up your video data to the cloud will help save space and avoid clogging up your physical drives.

💡 Pro Backup can easily back up most task management apps. Many inexpensive options are also available to back up your task management apps completely. You can take double backups by utilising your Google Drive secondarily.

💡 When referring video files, images or files within Task Managers, rather than uploading the whole file, reference the link to your video cloud storage. This will save you money on data storage fees for your Task Manager app.

💡 Double down on your backups as much as you can. You can use tools like afi.ai, which offer a backup separate from the original data.

BEST MOMENTS

1:26 - 💬 ‘I’ve had a few disasters over the year regarding my files and folders, and these things you think will never happen until they do.’

03:58- 💬 ‘Back up the most critical apps in your business as cheaply as possible by trying to find cost-effective ways to get the best level of service or protection without breaking the bank in the process.’

4:47 - 💬 ‘We record a massive amount of video daily and have terabytes of stuff. If I use the zoom option, the cloud storage would cost thousands of pounds monthly.’

11:20 - 💬 ‘If you are uploading videos and images and files to something like Asana, it increases the amount of storage you’re using on their cloud storage, and when it comes to backing that up, you pay per gigabyte of storage.’

20:04 - 💬 ‘Just doing these simple steps of backing up your data will give you absolute peace of mind, which means you don't have to stress anymore.’

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Website: www.SystemizeYourSuccess.com

Facebook Group: Facebook.com/groups/systemsandoutsourcing/

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/company/systemsandoutsourcing/

Instagram: Instagram.com/systems_and_outsourcing/

YouTube: YouTube.com/@drsteveday42

ABOUT THE HOST

Steve was a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change how he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely. After totally nailing this concept, he spent his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve’s been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants.

Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don’t know how to create systems or get the right help.

Our systems and outsourcing Courses and coaching programme will help you automate your business and work effectively with affordable virtual assistants. That way, you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start making more money.

🎙 Discover the art of closing deals in this insightful conversation between Steve Day and Matthew Elwell, the director of the Elite Closing Academy.

Matt, a sales trainer and coach, shares his expertise in transforming the sales process and helping business owners achieve quick wins and growth.

The episode also discusses the importance of generating leads through marketing and converting them into sales-qualified leads through human interaction.

Overall, the episode provides valuable insights and practical strategies for improving sales processes and achieving business success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

💡 Focus on Generating Opportunities: Invest time and energy in generating opportunities through marketing. Then, follow up with human interaction to convert leads into sales-qualified leads.

💡 Start with the End in Mind: When engaging with potential clients, focus on understanding their desired results before diving into the details of your product or service.

💡 Utilize Written Proposals: Create written proposals to simplify complex information, stimulate conversation, and provide potential clients with a professional and structured experience.

💡 Professionalism and Consistency: Professional, consistent, and exceeding expectations in your sales process can significantly impact the buying experience and increase conversion rates.

💡 Define Success Across Multiple Areas: Success is not just about business achievements but also about being a loving individual, serving others, contributing to nature, teaching, and maintaining strong relationships with family.

BEST MOMENTS

09:08 - 💬 “A lead is a human being. A business is a person. Businesses have groups of people in it. And I think never lose sight of that because behind the lead is a person that has feelings that might be having a bad time in their life, in their business. And you're serving overcome that problem or challenge or pain.” - Matthew Elwell

32:37 - 💬 “Being confident, structured, focused, organised, all of these things should not be underestimated in professional salespeople.” - Matthew Elwell

36:20 - 💬 “You are meant to be easy to buy from. And I think for anybody listening to this, it's just worth asking yourself for a moment- if you were going to buy from yourself right now, what would the experience be like? And as it is now, what kind of process do you have in place? Because hope's not a strategy. Winging it is not a strategy.” - Matthew Elwell

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

00:00 Grateful for the book that changed my perspective.

07:16 Training session emphasised maximising client outreach efficiency.

10:09 Evaluate existing email recipients before seeking new opportunities.

11:59 Don't miss out on business opportunities.

16:51 Understand client vision before explaining complexities.

20:43 Written proposals are like a good restaurant.

22:34 Simplify complex bathroom design proposal for discussion.

31:45 Professional salespeople improve buyer communication and attractiveness.

34:33 Emphasizing professionalism, consistency, and exceeding expectations leads to success.

36:33 Be easy to buy from. Create processes.

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Website: https://www.systemizeyoursuccess.com

Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/systemsandoutsourcing/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/systemsandoutsourcing/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/systems_and_outsourcing/

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@drsteveday42

GUEST RESOURCES

Website: http://www.eliteclosingacademy.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/eliteclosingacademy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattelitecloser

Open With A Close - THE TWELVE POINT GUIDE TO CLOSING MORE SALES: https://eliteclosingac...

In this episode Steve is going to teach you how to avoid the annoying back and forth chaos that is scheduling a meeting with a busy client or employee. By using calendar scheduling apps you can eliminate the often time consuming e-mail cat-and-mouse game of allotting time and automate and simplify your appointment calendar.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Using these apps you can book calls and meetings of different types, charge clients at point of booking, set up group meetings and classes and manage subscriptions.
• The apps Steve has used are Calendly and Acuity and are quite similar and simple in operation. You can try these out for free for literally hours of time saved.
• You can sync your app with multiple calendars, so appointments booked over various calendars for different tasks, be them personal or business, are all cross referenced making it impossible for you to double book yourself.
• They provide the ability for people to reschedule or cancel their appointment without having to contact you. The app will remove that appointment for you and free up that time slot for more scheduled tasks or meetings.
• You can set up appointment reminders that not only act as memory joggers but can also inform and educate the client about your company or the nature of the upcoming meeting. Appointments can also be automated to start other tasks such as follow up emails or passing on a purchasing client to the next appropriate contact point.
• You can use these apps to make yourself look busy. By clicking a few settings, the app will remove a reasonable looking amount of calendars appointment slots while still offering the client a reasonable variety of dates and times to book.
• You can integrate apps so, for instance, schedule zoom meetings and include the zoom link in the communication with the client.
• When choosing which app to use, make sure to look at all your requirements, for example, its compatibility and integration with your current CRM or if it improves on the abilities of the calendar your CRM already provides.

BEST MOMENTS

‘I’ll also explain how to pick the right apps for your business because there are a few options out there, and I’ll hopefully guide you on some principles you can use when deciding which one to go for.’

‘It’s like having a personal secretary who is doing all your scheduling for you on your calendar without you having to worry about it or without paying a secretary to do it.’

‘If they cancel, you can even set it up so it will automatically send them an email saying ‘hey, you canceled your appointment, would you like to rebook? Here’s the link to rebook.’ Or just to follow up the way your business wants to follow up people who cancel.’

‘I always feel a bit dubious when I book in with a coach or want to speak to a sales guy about a product or service, and literally they’ve got every single appointment available for the next three weeks.’

‘For our podcast guests, we book people into our podcast by simply sending them a link. On that link there’s a form and it captures things like their bio, their social images, any links to things they want to promote on the podcast, and also asks them a bunch of questions about what they want to talk about. It takes all the work away from me.’

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/

Website: https://systemsandoutsourcing.com/welcome-1

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/drsteveday

The RIGHT Assistants For Your Business by Dr Steve Day http://bit.ly/sys-10

ABOUT THE HOST

Steve used to be a slave to his business but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change the way he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely and after totally nailing this concept he decided to spend his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve’s been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants.

Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don't know how to create systems or get the right help.

Our systems and outsourcing Courses and coaching programme will help you automate your business and work effectively with affordable virtual assistants. That way, you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start making more money.

🎙 In this episode of the Systemize Your Success Podcast, Dr Steve Day shares a valuable lesson from a recent mistake in his company. This was when a wrong document version was sent to a client. He emphasises the importance of creating a culture of continuous improvement in business and open communication within a team. He also highlights how mistakes can be transformed into opportunities for growth.

Steve discusses the root cause analysis process and the significance of having a well-documented Operations Manual. He also introduces the DIDACT framework for task documentation. He illustrates how businesses can implement effective systems by fostering an environment where team members feel empowered to admit errors. This is to prevent future mistakes and enhance overall efficiency.

Tune in to discover practical strategies for optimising your business processes and cultivating a proactive mindset among your staff.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

💡 Empowerment Through Mistakes: It is crucial to create a culture where staff feel empowered to admit mistakes. This approach fosters an environment of continuous improvement rather than fear of repercussions.

💡 Importance of Documentation: A well-documented Operations Manual is essential. It provides clear instructions and resources, reducing the likelihood of errors. It also ensures tasks can be completed correctly without constant supervision.

💡 Root Cause Analysis: When mistakes occur, it's vital to conduct a root cause analysis to identify what went wrong in the system. This helps understand the underlying issues and implement changes to prevent future occurrences.

💡 Implementing Checks and Balances: Incorporating checks into processes, such as verifying document versions before sending, can significantly reduce errors. This proactive approach ensures that staff have clear guidelines to follow.

💡 Continuous Improvement Process: Establishing a system for ongoing improvements is necessary. Encouraging team members to document any gaps or questions they encounter during tasks allows for real-time updates to processes, enhancing overall efficiency.

BEST MOMENTS

02:40 - 💬 “What happened in this particular case was we have an online document signing service... and this happens with all the new clients that come in.”

09:57 - 💬 “It's such an important part of systemisation. It is being able to document tasks quickly, effectively and efficiently, to be able to get stuff out of people's heads and down in a way that other people can do it from start to finish without their involvement first time and every time.”

11:13 - 💬 “The second part is showing the person and reminding the team that there is a process for making changes when things happen.”

13:57 - 💬 “We've got to action the admission of a mistake in a positive way and a meaningful way and a way that's going to make future behaviour better because that empowers people to own up to any mistakes they make in the future.”

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

00:00 Managing mistakes is crucial for staff confidence & improvement.

04:18 Proud of instance, it is important to have manuals.

09:53 Effectively documenting tasks for efficient delegation.

11:22 Document and improve processes when questions arise.

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Free access to our flagship DIDACT Framework

Website: https://www.systemizeyoursuccess.com

Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/systemsandoutsourcing/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/systemsandoutsourcing/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/systems_and_outsourcing/

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@drsteveday42

ABOUT THE HOST

Steve used to be a slave to his business, but moving to Sweden in 2015 forced him to change how he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely. After totally nailing this concept, he spent his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve has been investing in p...