🌟 What would a 5 star system look like?

Systems are the most important thing in your business. Systems are what separates amateurs from successful entrepreneurs. I learned this the hard way running my own businesses.

Systems can sound scary, but they are actually much easier to build and maintain than people realise. As with everything, we just need to take it one step at a time.

Systems include: onboarding, client acquisition, invoicing, scheduling, project management, system review, customer support, training and development, referrals, reviews, and many more.

I was recently speaking with a client about his onboarding system - he said he didn’t have one. Unfortunately, he absolutely had one but it was just it was so unorganised that he didn’t recognise it as a system. If you have clients, you already have an onboarding system (but not necessarily a good one yet!).

Together we talked through the steps clients go through when they start working with him, and horror slowly dawned on his face.

He was offering a premium service, but his onboarding was trash. It didn’t match, and upon further inspection this mismatch had cost him multiple clients and tens of thousands of dollars.

So what did we do?

I asked him a simple question: what would a 5-star onboarding system look like?

This is a simple question, but a powerful one. It is something I learned about from AirBnB founder, Brian Chesky. You can hear him talk about it more on his Masters of Scale episode “Do things that don’t scale”, and a short written summary is here.

This simple prompt helped us outline what his system could look like. Within 10 minutes, we had a list of things we want the client to do, to feel, to experience - and we also had a step-by-step action of things we need to do to build out a 5-star system.

I helped him tweak his outline, and added a couple more points and ideas, but this prompt alone has helped him significantly improve his service.

We have implemented the changes one step at a time, improving a small part of the onboarding experience each week, and he is already receiving positive feedback from new clients.

Onboarding is a simple way you can show clients that they made the right decision. They often decide within the first 48 hours of working with you whether they have made the right decision or not. Just because you made the sale it doesn’t mean you’re going to keep it. Onboarding is the first step to retention, and retention is key.

ACTION: Consider, what would a 5 star system look like? (10 minutes)

Pick a system that you don’t yet have or you think needs improvement. Ask yourself, what would a 5 star x system look like?

Write it down.

Go wild - budget, time, effort, nothing is a constraint. You are in brainstorming mode. Write down what a 5 star system would be without considering the boundaries. You can make it realistic after.

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-march-13-2024

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