As my business is growing I’m implementing systems, structures and processes to support me and my clients. That’s a very unsexy sentence but hang in here for a minute. It’s all about showing my clients the love which is very sexy.
Creative people need structure to contain our ideas and energy.
If you’re a creative person you run your life and business with a certain amount of freedom. Some of the ways this looks like in my business:
I can’t stand to do the same thing day after day. A 9-5 office job is my idea of hell. My days have to be structured a little different from one to the next or I get bored and unmotivated quickly, so my days fall roughly into these categories:
- On site working with my clients.
- At home working remotely with my clients.
- Traveling for work.
- Recovering from traveling for work.
- Working on my business and all its color-coded parts.
Along with the freedom of ever-changing days I need some structure otherwise I’d have no focus. The goal of the systems is to liberate more time in my schedule to create. Because having creative time is the essential ingredient to making the stuff that makes the money.
Big radiant orange love.
Where I’m focusing with my systems is how well I am taking care of my clients as they travel through my business. Are they feeling loved and supported by Making Ideas Visible? Are they getting the white limo treatment?
So I (surprise, surprise) visually mapped the route(s) my clients take through my business, looking at all the touchpoints they encounter, seeing if there are any gaps where they might fall through the cracks. And making sure they feel the love. The big radiant orange love of Making Ideas Visible.
One size doesn’t fit all.
I essentially have three kinds of clients:
- The people within businesses and organizations who hire me and the facilitators I team with.
- The individuals who come to me for coaching/visioning/mapping.
- A looser group of people I’m networking with who are potential collaborators.
My friend, the brilliant Cairene, advised me to map out the system for one of these groups. Once that system was clear I could adapt and tweak it for the two other kinds of clients.
I started with my individual clients. On a giant piece of paper I mapped out what the relationship looked like now:
Where they are connecting with me. Where I reach out to them. And places where I could potentially connect.
Then I put myself in the shoes (or mouse) of a new client and listed the sequence of how they travel through my business starting with the Home page which currently has no way of welcoming them whatsoever.
I found places where I could add in support with follow-up communication. Show some love by sending a card to them in the mail after our session. And ways to stay in touch and even do some additional selling.
Once I identified the things that were missing or could be improved I came up with an action list. Several of the changes were easy to make. Others are bigger chunks that will take a little doing like creating a special hidden page and a beautiful card to be mailed.
Next I’ll plug my other two kinds of clients into this system and adjust it for them.
You can DIY.
I want you to see this so you could try it for your own clients. Do your own mindmap. It doesn’t have to be slick or beautiful to be effective. You’ll notice that I’ve got a bunch of arrows going all over the place because I kept thinking of things later and adding them in. It still works fine.
You can also do this by writing your steps on sticky notes which can be rearranged.
Oh and just a heads up, in mid-December I’m going to lead a teleclass that will use a mind mapping process to put closure on the year. A way of celebrating the successes and putting closure on the ideas and possibilities that didn’t happen so we’ll be ready to move forward into the new year. I’ll have the details up soon.