Let’s talk about marketing funnels and sales pipelines.
Follow these three “Golden Rues” and you will be fine. Here’s some more detail to explain:
A small business has no business having a website if it doesn’t produce new business (sales). Yes, customers can go there to learn about you, but that is not the primary objective of a website. The primary objective is to sell. Design your website so that it is made up of “landing pages”, then, link those landing pages to take your customer on a journey down your funnel.
A Landing page is a webpage that has a defined action the user can take. The user is given no other choices. For example: “Click Here to book”. Webpages that let viewers click around and read are useless nowadays. Landing pages that are linked, ask customers questions and take information and feed them back to you are useful. This is called a “Marketing funnel”.
A small business must not rely on the crack-cocaine-like lead sources from the likes of Trust-a-trader, Bark or Check-a-trade. These companies are pernicious in the long run. Rather, a small business should have two to four of their own channels that will produce leads. Leads THEY OWN. Typical low-cost channels for lead creation are: Facebook groups, email lists, local, targeted, social media advertising, Google, word-of-mouth and SEO. Each of these lead sources should aim to take the prospect as quickly as possible through the funnel, out the other end, with an order in hand. The way this is best achieved is automation. You should not even need to see leads that are not ready to buy. Your funnel should do all that for you. This is done by linking a quality CRM to your funnel.
Nowadays it is easy to set up funnels that take leads from any source and automatically “treat” them. In this example, different sources of leads need to be treated in different ways. For example: A Word-of-mouth enquiry may not need to see additional details before being asked to “book in a free estimate visit” or whatever other actions you want them to take. Whereas an enquiry from a Facebook ad may need to see several pieces of information and go through a few funnel pages before they are ready to buy or book.
Your CRM will handle all your quotes, orders, stock purchasing and invoicing later. But right now, it MUST be part of these funnels. Gathering information and following the journey from suspect, to prospect, to client for you.
Zway CRM does all of the above. You can buy it for as little as £69 for a once-off perpetual license. No need to sign up for those ridiculous monthly SaaS plans offered by the cowboys of Silicon Valley.
How small businesses work
My friend recently started his own plumbing business after years of working for a bigger firm.
He was immediately surrounded by friends and family with enough work to get him started and busy for months. All without offering “Mates rates”.
So, getting enough work is not the problem these guys face. Yes, a few of them face difficulties maintaining a profitable flow of work, and that comes down to marketing over the longer term and providing a service that people value. I will cover that in my next post. But for now, let me mention the first thing my friend said to me, even before his first month of trading was finished.
“Dave, he said, the work is great, and I can even handle the bookings and projects, but it's the day-to-day admin that’s already killing me. I hate it”.
I wondered why he thinks it’s so hard, so I asked a few more questions. Turns out he decided to do his own bookkeeping and accounting using QUICKBOOKS.
And, so lies the problem. You have heard me go on and on about the evil villains at the large SaaS companies and how they force small businesses onto a never-ending payment for their pointless software. Here we go again.
Quickbooks is a tool for an Accountant, or even for a Bookkeeper. It’s not a tool for a Plumber. It will eat up your time and give you nothing in return. Then, at the end of the tax year, it will give you the basic tools to make your legal tax return digitally.
Let me be clear – Quickbooks or Xero are not suitable tools for small business Owners. They are tools for Accountants. An Accountant will give the business Owner advice on the best way to pay less tax. Quickbooks will not. An Accountant will ask questions when something appears to be wrong, Quickbooks will not. An Accountant will save you time, Quickbooks will not. An Accountant will save you more money than they cost. Quickbooks will not.
I told my friend, “Mate, let an Accountant use those tools. You just get on running your business and let your own easy to use systems send the information to your accountant”.
Zway is a CRM for small business that allows you to create a full products and services catalogue in less than an hour. Done once and forgotten.
Zway is a CRM that allows small businesses to create quotes and invoices for clients in seconds, using your product & Services catalogue.
Zway is a CRM that keeps records and produces reports to send to an accountant as you go. Without your input.
Zway is an Inventory and Stock Management tool that allows small businesses to buy whatever they want and keeps track of expenses and receipts as you go.
Then, at the end of the period (monthly or quarterly normally), it sends a file to your Accountant with everything they need to make your tax digital and keep you legal.
TLDR. Summary – Small business Owners should not be spending any time messing with accounting software.
