tinaforsyth.com

Let’s face it – you (and your team) have a mountain of stuff to do most days and it can be really hard to prioritize what needs to be done first, second, third, etc.

Here’s how we like to prioritize things in our business, and quite honestly if we don’t do these things first I get annoyed.

• Take care of clients - without clients, you don’t have a business, so make sure that you (and your team!) are always checking in with your clients each day however that makes sense for you and your business. It could mean responding to their emails, checking into your client forums, making a phone call to reach out to someone, etc.
• Take care of the money – anything that has to do with money needs to come next. That could be processing a payment, following up with a potential client who is ready to buy or following up with someone on an overdue payment.
• Send out broadcasts - communication is the heart of your business. This can include “external” communications to your list, such as sending a promotional email as part of a launch. This also includes “internal” emails, such as an email to your clients reminding them of a call tomorrow in the program they joined. I believe that most people don’t communicate enough (especially with existing clients!) and so we put a big focus on this.
• Check off completed tasks – we are big on using Central Desktop* to manage all the projects and tasks in our business, and it’s really important that everyone on the team is checking into CD to mark tasks as “complete” throughout the day (at least once a day). This gives us an accurate snapshot of where things are at and minimizes the need to “chase people down” for stuff.

This is what is important to me – your priorities might be a bit different. The thing is that you want to share this with your team so that they will focus on what is important to you as their first priorities each day.

Thoughts & comments?

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How many emails are in your inbox right now?

20? 50? 200? 500?
more?

Too many people are buried in their inboxes to the point where they are trapped, can no longer find anything, spend practically all day in there and pretty much get nothing done.

Ugh.

Cleaning up your inbox (and keeping it clean!) is a five step process in my Escape from Email Hell system. And I want to give you a copy of all 5 steps as my gift to you.

>> Grab your copy of my Escape from Email Hell System right here (no charge)

I created this system back in 2007 and still use it to this day.

Please share your email woes and/or favorite tips to manage your inbox, k?

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Have you ever booked a call for 30 minutes and found yourself still talking to the person an hour and a half later?

Yea, me too… it’s pretty common to find ourselves getting “stuck” on phone calls much longer than we intended to. And at the same time thinking “how do I get off this call?” or “how do I stop this from happening again?”

A few tips to help you have great conversations while still ending your calls on time:

1. Know your agenda and send it out ahead of time – do you know ahead of time why you are talking to the person and what the agenda is? ie: For a team call, what specifically do you need to cover on the call? For a call with a potential client, do you know your process/questions that you want to ask? If you don’t have clarity ahead of time re: what you need to talk about it is really easy to end up talking about everything and accomplishing nothing.
2. Give notice of time – this is as much for you as it is for the person on the other end of the line. When you start the call say “We have X minutes today to chat so let’s dive in shall we?” And as the call progresses don’t be shy in saying “Alright, we have 10 minutes left and we still need to cover A and B…” If you give a countdown of the time remaining it forces both of you to keep on track.
3. Book an additional call for new stuff – if other things pop up on a call don’t be afraid to say “Great, not sure we’ll have time to cover that today so how about we book another time?” Don’t feel like you have to talk about everything single thing at once, because that could really have no end.

Ultimately this is about knowing your boundaries and respecting your time and the time of the person you are talking to. As you “flex” your muscles re: this you will soon find that it’s rare that you go over time on calls.

Would love to hear from you – what is your favorite “get off the phone” tip?

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I love Infusionsoft* – and consider it to be one of the two key tools that all growing businesses need. However I also know that it can cause alot of annoyance or frustration for some… myself included. Here’s my #1 frustration with Infusionsoft.

And be sure to share you biggest frustrations, questions or challenges re: Infusionsoft.

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I don’t expect perfection from my team – but I do get annoyed when stuff gets sent out incorrectly in a broadcast. Especially if it happens more often than it should and could have been prevented.

I was just talking to a client of mine re: how to prevent mistakes in the work we are doing – ie: when sending a broadcast – and especially when we are moving at such a fast pace and getting stuff done quickly.

Like anything, the key is to have a system in place – in this case a pre-broadcast checklist. With a good checklist you don’t have to “guess” if something is correct, and it gives a simple process for you and/or your team so they are able to double check everything and hopefully prevent errors.

Here are the 3 things that you want to do before you send a broadcast:

1. Check the Template (Branding) – all of us have a certain way that we want our broadcasts to look. Do we want text or html? Do we have banners to include or not? What kind of font do we like? What colors? Line breaks? There are all sorts of things that come into play, and it’s important that you (a) establish a brand template and then (b) make sure all broadcasts follow that template.
2. Do a Date/Time/Title/Bridgeline/Link Check – when sending out information specific to a class or program, PLEASE make sure you double check these details. There is nothing worse than sending out a broadcast with something like the wrong bridgeline in it or a broken link… arg!
3. Send Yourself a Test Message – it is ALWAYS a good idea to send yourself a test message, even when you’ve sent the same message a hundred times before. You need to see what the email will look like in your inbox so you can check the details from Step #2 again and especially make sure the links are working. Don’t get lazy on this – the 3 minutes you save by not doing it are not worth it imo.

See, one of the things I love most about working online is that all things are fixable – we can always send out a follow-up “ooops!” email if need be. But I prefer to set a standard that we don’t have to – if you are sending out an “oooops” email more than once every few months then something is broken. (Usually the system isn’t clear or the person is not following it.)

Let’s take a stand for accuracy!

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