Episode #087 Automating Bookkeeping Sales Follow Ups – Step by Step Guide

This is the 5th episode in our series on Automations and Follow-ups. if you haven't listened to the previous few episodes check them out:

• #083 Why Bookkeepers Need a Website
• #084 Streamline Your Bookkeeping Business with the help of your Website
• #085 Why Bookkeepers Need a Follow Up Process
• #086 Creating Your Follow-Up Process

And if you want to hear more from Maia about automation check out her solo episode.

Keywords: workflow automation, automated emails for ecommerce, automated sales follow up, wordpress, wordpress automation tools

 

Creating a workflow automation for your sales follow up

 

Angie Martin  0:01 

Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode from the bookkeepers voice today, my name is Angie, and I'm going to be joining being being joined with Maya, and we make up part of the savvy team. Want to say hi?

 

Maia Coghlan  0:20 

Hey, yeah, we make up the big conference,

 

Angie Martin  0:23 

a big part of the savvy team. Yep. No, just a. Yeah, yeah, we make up a big part. And we absolutely love creating all the content for you guys. And just helping you make your businesses exactly what you've always dreamed of. So today, we're going to be talking about follow up still. So over the last little while, we've been talking about how you can create how you can use your website to actually automate it to make the sales process easier for you and overall communication easier for you. And then we went into sales follow ups why they're important. Last week, we discussed how you actually can create them. This week, I actually want to pick my brain on how you can actually set up the follow ups with automations. So this one is going to be a jam packed episode, I'm pretty sure of a lot of tech talks. So get ready for it, guys, we will always do it as usual in ways that normal people who aren't myopia understand. Mainly because she knows I don't understand the tech talk. So she doesn't usually do it. Which is great. But I thought we could first kind of have a chat and really break down what automation is. Because I know a lot of people don't actually know they know the word, but they don't actually know what automation is, and what it can actually do for your business. So do you want to have a little breakdown for us Maya on what automation actually is.

 

Automated sales follow up process for your business

 

Maia Coghlan  2:10 

Um, so automation is basically adding some software to do something for you. So you don't have to do it yourself. So it happens automatically.

 

Angie Martin  2:24 

Love it, that is such a good way of saying it so that everyone understands.

 

Maia Coghlan  2:30 

And to make it more appealing as well. You just say happens automatically. It's like, oh, cool, it happens automatically. But it happens automatically. So you don't have to do it yourself. It minimises your workload. That's the point of automation.

 

Angie Martin  2:44 

Yes. And it makes you focus, a lot of automation that you can get done is specifically through like admin tasks in specific in certain sales workflows, as well. Because there's a lot of admin tasks that we do as bookkeepers. You do it every single day or every single week. And it's just consistent. So having the automation, it's something that you don't have to do yourself, it can just automatically happen and save you a heap time, which is great. So before we get into, like, really, really crazy things

 

Maia Coghlan  3:25 

could get too crazy, just like awesome.

 

Angie Martin  3:27 

Yes, awesome things. Could you kind of do a bit, I have a definition for us for two words. I'm pretty sure we're going to say quite a bit during this episode. That is automation triggers, and autoresponders.

 

Maia Coghlan  3:45 

Ah, yeah, I thought what I was expecting, you know. So an automation trigger, is the description is kind of in the name, itself. It's a, what begins the automation. So the automation is set up, like it might have a number of steps. But the trigger is what causes it to begin, something has to happen. That sets off a domino effect of this automatic process that you've set up. And there's so many things that can be the trigger the trigger can be that someone purchased something on your website, or they filled out a form or they you added them to a list in your, your contacts. And there's so many things that's that's not even the trigger can be a date that

 

Angie Martin  4:48 

you're right off. I always forget about that one. Yes, the

 

Maia Coghlan  4:51 

song. So many things that can trigger but yeah, basically, you when you set up the automation, you choose the trigger. The first thing you do

 

Angie Martin  5:01 

Awesome, that's what I was hoping for you to say. So the triggers are like the first thing that needs to be done because it does everything else, it tells the software to do everything else, which is awesome. Next, what are autoresponders? Not so much autoresponders, as everyone thinks about in your email, if you're away, and you set an auto responder to say you're away from office, what are some autoresponders that can be directly related to automation?

 

Maia Coghlan  5:34 

Um, so you mean, like,

 

Angie Martin  5:38 

let's say someone purchased something on a website or anything like that.

 

Maia Coghlan  5:43 

So say your trigger, is that they purchase something on a website, one of the first steps in your automation would be sending an email. And that it's, it's a similar concept to what you said before about the autoresponders from your email, or where we're going homeowners leave? Yeah, um, but you can customise it, you can have a different one for every automation and for every trigger. So if they do this, then they get this automatic email. And if they do this, then they get this automatic email and you don't have to send it. You don't have to keep on track of who's done this. He's done that.

 

Angie Martin  6:29 

It's great. It saves us a lot of time. We both use it quite a bit, don't we?

 

Maia Coghlan  6:32 

Yeah.

 

Angie Martin  6:34 

And it's amazing, you know, and it doesn't have to be done in a way that it looks like an autoresponder, like you can still really, really personalise it, but it just saves you that three minutes of writing it. And, you know, every three minutes, I get it straightaway. Yes, exactly. And that's nice, because sometimes you don't want them to have to wait to understand what's happening, you want it to be just automatic. So these kind of automations I just kind of wanted to explain that these kind of automations that we're talking about are mainly ways of streamlining your process to take out tedious and time consuming tasks that you know, include admin data entry, that are good for sales reps, managers and leaders of businesses, aka all bookkeepers, bookkeepers, who are entrepreneurs, you guys classify for all three of those titles, your leaders of the business, you're your own sales reps, and do the managers. So basically, every bookkeeper can use these tools to help you to streamline your life. So just because I love the little like, did you know and stats to help make a point, I created some Digi no facts about automations that I thought would be really interesting for everyone to know, to help warm up to get into the real

 

Maia Coghlan  8:15 

tech chat

How do automated emails for ecommerce work?

 

Angie Martin  8:17 

for later in this episode. So number one, did you know that triggers and autoresponder emails such as welcome emails have a much higher client click through rate than normal run of the mill emails.

 

Maia Coghlan  8:35 

Now,

 

Angie Martin  8:36 

this is something that we actually tested out with savvy back when I started with the company, I wanted to streamline my work to make sure I could focus on you guys more. So I actually created welcome emails, a whole heap of them that I made Maya spend so much time setting up much time, so much time. Because I wanted, I knew this stuff, and I wanted to test it to see if it worked for our clients. And since doing it, we have had such a better response for client relationship and actually connecting with you guys more than what we had when I was actually physically sending the emails myself. And the reason for that is because I actually sat down and really planned what was in the emails to officially welcome you guys to savvy so that you guys could understand what we're all about, and really easy to digest emails, and it works really well. And this is why you know, the autoresponders and triggered emails are really successful for multiple types of businesses and are actually super successful for bookkeeping businesses, because I've said this multiple times, but a lot of people don't know what bookkeeping is. So if you actually include a welcome email for a new client of yours, they will be over the moon to learn a bit more about you, what you do and how you can help them. It will make your relationships so much stronger with your clients, and just really create that way of understanding that they can contact you and that you are here to support them. So that's my number one. Did you know number two Did you know is by creating follow up emails with automated triggers, your clients will actually receive the information they want without feeling pressured to buy anything before they're ready. This one is for anyone who is interested in using your services. This is usually good for clients who have just found you either on social media or your website, and they just want to learn a bit more. But they don't want you to do the hard sell. Because that is the worst thing when you think you need a bookkeeper, you're not sure and you also know you can't afford it yet. But you reckon in six months, you can. This is the point where you're getting feelers out to find someone who you'd be comfortable with. By having a lead, welcome email, you can again, let them know who you are, show them different ways they connect can connect with you on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn to get to know you a bit more, you can send them some free resources like their your blogs, or any lead magnets you've created to help them feel more comfortable with you. And also let them in on who you are as a business. This is a great way for creating a possible cold lead to a hot lead, who might end up going with you sooner than they expected. Because there's so much more comfortable with you.

 

Maia Coghlan  12:11 

Like we've we've said on numerous, numerous episodes now. The more trust you can build with someone like it's it's all about giving value if they see you. Like if you give them value, and they're not even paying for your services. They love it. And they're like, how much more awesome is it going to be when I actually pay for your services? Exactly. And that's layer they've already they already trust you they already use your knowledge. And they already know that you're a benefit to their business. And then when they're ready. I say go for this or even they might be come ready earlier than

 

Angie Martin  12:54 

some of the ones. And these ones are the ones that you once you set up emails like this, they actually become your full ideal clients. And this is something that's been happening with Savi. Since we've implemented these automated triggers and series, we have been able, we have been finding new clients that every single time we just are in love with the new clients we've been getting, because they're exactly who we want to work with. They have already been through all of our resources, have already started to work on things and know that when they do work with us, and they actually pay for what we do. They're already so invested in so excited that they are exactly who we like to work with. The same can happen with your clients, they will be so much more excited about having you help them further their business that they would be so much more willing, let's say they need to migrate to zero, or they need to migrate to using from using, you know, paper receipts to putting them in receipt bank. They'll be more responsive to doing things like that, because they can already see the value of working with you. It's awesome. And it gets me really excited. The big tip I wanted to chat about today though, and it kind of goes right into actually setting up the automations is as a bookkeeping sales rep, which again, anyone who owns her own bookkeeping business, you guys are sales reps, you have to get that into your head. You guys are your own sales reps. You guys are selling your knowledge in your services. To technically you should be like the best sales rep because you know exactly what you know. But anyway, that's a different discussion. You should never be trying to close a deal on the first call or email. We kind of discuss this last episode but I really wanted to breathe and Write it. Because once you set up these automations, if you do it properly, you can basically close the deal without talking to them. But if you try to do it at the first email, you're going to immediately turn people off.

 

Maia Coghlan  15:17 

unsubscribe,

 

Angie Martin  15:18 

yes, unsubscribe. And it's one of those things that I kind of did an analogy that I thought would be really funny for everyone. It's basically like asking someone to marry you on the first date. It's awkward, it's weird. And you don't know if you guys are actually gonna be right together. But you've just gone in, jumped in and then freaked out the other person. It's the exact same thing if you go in to win the deal on the first contact with a new client. It's freaky, and it scares them and immediately wants them to run. So it's the same concept.

 

Maia Coghlan  15:59 

Like, like we talked about, I think, was it last episode? Where most deals close on, like between the eighth to the 12th? contact point or some Yeah, like, yeah,

 

Angie Martin  16:13 

you need to get your feelers around to see if he tries to, right. It's just like dating. Like, if you think the same when you

 

Maia Coghlan  16:21 

go to purchase any other service as well. Like, I mean, maybe if you need your toilet fixed, you're just going to call the first plumber in the in the book. Did I just mention a fine book?

 

Angie Martin  16:38 

The podcast talking about automations?

 

Maia Coghlan  16:41 

Wow, I don't know where that came from. Uh, get back into the 21st century. Yeah, so like, maybe but if you're looking for, say, a business coach or something, you're not just gonna go and then purchase the first one that comes up online? Not in the phone book. Yeah, you're gonna do some research, you're gonna look at their blog posts, you can read their about a section, you can see like some client testimonials, you're gonna like, maybe get the newsletter for a little while and your email. Before you actually decide, yes, this is the one that I want to do. Especially if you're going to be forking out a lot of money. You want to make sure that it's the right, the right service for you. Yeah. And so you can take that experience yourself, flip it around, your clients are experiencing the exact same thing.

 

Angie Martin  17:36 

And it's a bit more personal with bookkeepers? Because yeah, it's financial information, that it's a very personal thing to share your financial information, especially with a lot of small businesses, because a lot of financial situation is directly linked to their personal financial information. So it's a whole other ball of wax with bookkeepers because you know, everything, even big businesses,

 

Maia Coghlan  18:08 

yeah, so most of them really will want to get to know you fast and have many touch points, boy, a mine.

 

Angie Martin  18:18 

And that's to be honest, like, I know, that sounds a bit tedious of having to do that. But it actually creates such a beautiful relationship built on trust, and actually showing that you both can work together, because it shows that they are legitimately interested in doing this, and that they are willing to listen to you for your expertise. And it shows them that you're willing to be there to support them.

 

Maia Coghlan  18:44 

Because you also don't necessarily want to work with people who just pick you randomly. You want to work with people that you know, it's a good has to be a good match for both sides.

 

Angie Martin  18:53 

Yeah, I've been saying to a couple of our clients lately, who have fantastic businesses, and they just want to refine things a bit more. And we've been talking about, you know, your target market. And the whole point of creating your own business is to make sure that you come to work every day and love what you do. If you have a client that makes you not want to come to work, you're defeating the purpose of having your own business. Yeah. So these follow ups can basically make sure that you want to work with them,

 

Maia Coghlan  19:24 

and that they want to work with you specifically.

 

Angie Martin  19:28 

Exactly. So it's just a really great way. So that's like, my biggest tip is don't try and sell them on the first call. That's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to build a relationship that they will immediately come to you when they are ready. instead of you having to chase them and waste your time chasing people.

 

Maia Coghlan  19:48 

You're teaching them to do like a free initial consult on suckling the first female like that's a really great thing. It's free for them. So It's like very low risk. Um, and it lets you both and get on the phone and talk to each other. I know bit more about how you gel.

 

Angie Martin  20:11 

Yeah, yeah. And there's some clients that because of COVID, and everything right now, I know a lot of people have been telling me that they usually do the initial consult in person, that's fine. If you usually do it in person, that's fine, just get a zoom account and do the initial consult Carl, call in zoom, it's still you still get to have that face to face kind of, you know, impression, you can't shake people's hands. But again, right now, you don't want to be shaking people. So you know, you can kind of do a virtual high five or something. But it's a great way of doing that relationship base. So let's go in and actually talk about now the creation of the follow up automations. So basically, simply put, you need to combine your automation with your CRM, client relationship manager, or some kind of software that you use to keep your contacts all together, and everything. So I've basically brokenit down to make it easy for everyone into three easy steps. Oh, yeah.

 

Maia Coghlan  21:24 

Because I like to, I would just ramble

 

Angie Martin  21:25 

this Oh, well, that sucks. Yeah, I was like, so you and I could talk about this for like three hours. So I just broke it down into three little steps to make it easier. So what I want to talk with the first about is creating the landing page or contact form on the website. Let's have a chat about connecting those call to actions basically like the landing page and the contact form, connecting it with your CRM or marketing software. How do you do that?

WordPress automation tools to streamline your workflow

 

Maia Coghlan  22:00 

So the easiest way to do that is, so a lot of people have their websites built on WordPress. And there's tonnes of free plugins for WordPress, or I think they might even have a basic one that's built into most themes, where you can make a form through WordPress to put it on your website. But I would strongly recommend not doing that. Um, if you have a CRM, you most of them will have a way to build the contact form, inside or any kind of form inside the CRM, and then, so you would just click like create form, they'll all be slightly different, but most of them will have this feature, if it doesn't have this feature, you should probably pick a different one. It's just a really standard feature of any CRM. So they'll have a create form, child go into it, you put whatever fields you want, they usually drag and drop, they're super easy to use most of the time. And then when you save, when you finished, it will give you an option of how you want to use the form. And one that you want is to embed it on a website, that will be one of the options. And so it will give you a block of really ugly looking text. And, and if you're comfortable doing it yourself, or if you have someone who manages your website for you, it seriously does not take very long, if somebody manages your website for you, they should be able to do this in five minutes. You just send them this block of ugly text. And they'll stick it on your website. And then guess Tom will show on your website and a lot of a lot of CRMs allow you to actually style the forms as well. Sometimes that's kind of clunky and annoying. Sometimes it's really easy. It really depends on the software, and how customised we want it to be. But generally, you can at least add your colours to it or something so it doesn't look too ugly on your website. You want to fit in. But yeah, that's like, I guess the next step, the like the more advanced version. Yes, pretty. But it's just set up the form itself and put it on your website. That's how easy it is. And then because you created it. I guess what's next? Yep, go. So

 

Angie Martin  24:53 

let's first before you go any further. So once it's created How do you monitor it? And make sure that you know what's happening with it for tracking? And how do you segment it. So you make sure that you're contacting the right people, and setting up the email templates that we created last episode. To go out to them, how do you do that, but

 

Maia Coghlan  25:19 

it's the next step, you've created your phone in the CRM, now you create your automation, because the trigger for your automation, is someone fills out this specific form. So you can't make the automation if you haven't made the form, if you want the automation to be based on the form, the form has to come first. Yes. So then you create the automation, which is also done in your CRM. If you can make forms, you can send emails, you can make automations, it can all be done from if a CRM doesn't have that you don't want to be using maybe one that does like those, those basic things that most of them should have. Um, so you click that you want to create a new automation, sometimes it will be called a workflow.

 

Angie Martin  26:12 

Oh, yeah, there's so many different terms

 

Maia Coghlan  26:14 

at the main to the idea automation and workflow series. Some people call it like Sequences series, oh, a sequence? Yeah, you should be able to figure out like, it's something that allows you to set a trigger and then send some emails and allocate leads to lists, lead the basic functions of it. So you figure out what your, what your software calls it, and sees you start one of those create new. You set your trigger to when someone fills out this form? Then you can answer that whole step.

 

Angie Martin  26:54 

Yes, that was great. Then once you do that, how do you do the segmentation of the leads? So how in your contacts, can you know, like, let's say you have a lead magnet that people are downloading in the form, they're signing up for the lead magnet to get it? How can you make sure that only those people are getting those emails that you've created? You don't want your whole list to get it? But you want just that one? segmentation? How do you set that up?

 

Maia Coghlan  27:27 

So because the trigger is set, as people who fill out the contact form, only people who fill out the contact form will be enrolled in that automation? Yes. So if you The first thing is the trigger, and it's going to be the contact form, or whatever kind of form the next thing? Well, okay, so the next thing will be send an email, um, and so the person will go to your website, fill out the form, and then their details come to your CRM. And the CRM goes, Oh, this person filled out this form, because it's magic, it knows things like that. This person fill out the form here, their contact details, or you have this automation based on this form. So we're going to put them in there. Oh, okay. So the next thing is that they're going to send this email. Awesome. That's nobody else will ever receive that email, unless they filled out that form, because that is the process.

 

Angie Martin  28:34 

Yeah, it's kind of like when you think about it. For those of you who are in our savvy membership, you will actually just would have seen Maya, with her hand kind of tracing through things. We both do it all the time. It's kind of like, if you see a really big, manmade waterfall that goes from like, a big pond into like a little waterfall, and then a pond and then two waterfalls. It's kind of like it just goes down that process.

 

Maia Coghlan  29:05 

Like the water at the bottom in the pool is never going to go over the small waterfall. Yes. Like goes over the big one first.

 

Angie Martin  29:12 

Yes. So it kind of goes down like that. So you know, just to help get a visual of it.

 

Maia Coghlan  29:20 

That doesn't mean like if you already have a contact in your CRM, and they then fill out the form, they'll go in through the automation, it won't create a new contact when they create when they fill out the form. And so it can be completely new contacts that come in that way or it can be old contacts that also gets sent this information. Anybody who fills out the form that most of them have. I mean, most people will not go back and fill out the same form the second time, but it can happen

 

Angie Martin  29:58 

most frequently. happens after people forget or lose? Whatever. Yeah, exactly.

 

Maia Coghlan  30:04 

If they want the lead magnet, again that kind of they've deleted the email or something. Um, yeah. So you can set it up. In at least I know in what we use for HubSpot, you can, there's an option whether you want people to be able to re enrol in the automation or not. And that's something.

 

Angie Martin  30:26 

Yeah, usually I know MailChimp has a, I think benchmark has it. I'm not sure about active campaigns, most of them have it. So it's you can't reenroll but if people do, they wouldn't be doing it unless they want to. Because they have to manually enrol themselves. You're not doing it. Yeah, itself. So it should be fine. If they want to get it again. Yeah,

 

Maia Coghlan  30:49 

if they fill out the same form to get the same lead magnet again, it's not such a big deal if they get the same email again.

 

Angie Martin  30:54 

Yep. And that

 

Maia Coghlan  30:57 

is how that happens. That's how you make sure that

 

Angie Martin  30:59 

love it. Yeah, that was awesome. So once, let's say, once you've, they've been enrolled in that sequence, they've gone through the email sequence, let's have a chat now about what the next step is, to, let's say, getting a task, a follow up task for you to either call them to check to make sure that they received the lead magnet or to follow up how it's actually going. So how would you then do that? So you can do

 

Maia Coghlan  31:33  

that within the automation as well. So it's amazing, they fill out the contact form, they get sent to the automation, they get sent an email. And then the next thing you would put is some form of notification, either to yourself or one of your staff members. To follow up in whatever way you want to follow up, if you want to do a call, if you want to just check in with your staff member to see if they've booked in the initial consult or, you know, whatever. Yeah, whatever task you want to be notified about. And it depends, again, which platform you're using. But, um, so you can either have it, a really common one, like it should be able to do this is a send you an email, or send an email to whoever, and you'll be able to put in what you want the email to say. And you'll put it as in, like, you'll be able to get the contact information and have like a token so that it, it automatically puts in the name of the person into the email each time. So when you get the email, it just says

 

Angie Martin  32:55 

yeah, with savvy, it's some, let's say some

 

Maia Coghlan  32:57 

first name, last name. Yeah, just this, do this.

 

Angie Martin  33:02 

Yeah, follow up to see how it's gone. if they have any questions, or anything like that. And that way, it makes it really easy for me to them this is so all of this has been neither of us doing anything. So as soon as someone has contacted, and they've gone into a follow up sequence, neither of us have had to do anything, I only start doing something once I get the notification that they've been through the series. Now. Now it's time to check in to see how you're going. And this is usually like a month afterwards

 

Maia Coghlan  33:38 

to get like maybe three emails or three weeks, depending on what it is. Some may ask a specific question, probably be more direct, a lot sooner. But if it's a purchase of all like a download of a lead magnet, then usually they'll get about three emails one week apart. And then another week after the last email, then there's a notification. So it's not quite as basic as they send an email and then you set the notification. That's the order that it is in automation, but you can set time delays. So you can say that you want this email to be sent. And then you should probably send a follow up email, like three days to a week later to say, Hey, did you get this information? And I hope it's really useful. If not like, if you haven't seen it yet, then maybe you can check this out or whatever,

 

Angie Martin  34:40 

whatever you do. But yeah, we checked, we did chat for anyone who wants to learn more about that with the like time delays. We chatted about that last week. So make sure if you haven't listened to it, go back into the one last week because we really broke down like the time difference that you should do to make sure

 

Maia Coghlan  34:59 

you're not hounding People. Um, yeah. So once they go through the email series, so they go to the first they get sent the first email, then you put a time delay, which is, again, it's a basic feature, everyone should be able whichever platform you're using, it should have this. So they'll just kind of sit there. And it might say, three contacts waiting or something, if you've got three people waiting in this week on time delay, and then it just knows, because it's just magic, that, that this one then moves on to the next step. And the automation, after the time delay has finished for that person, and the other person will stay there because their time delay doesn't finish until the next day. Yeah, whenever, um, so that's cool. So then they go through each step, and they wait. And then they go through the next step. And then they wait, although they don't know that they're waiting. They're just there magically waiting your details away. And then they get the last email, and then you, you don't want to follow up with them straight away after sending the last email. And you also don't want to receive the notification on that day, to follow up with them in a week. Because I guess, because yeah, I forget. So you set another time delay, and you send yourself the notification when you want to actually do. Yes,

 

Angie Martin  36:32 

and this is a really great way of doing things to a save you time. But B it also creates a higher chance of having serious leads actually coming through to you. So in each of these welcome emails, you can have it begin to do the initial console booking to do the initial console booking to do the initial consult. So they can actually book in with you and you don't actually have to call them to set up a time. It just saves you but automates the process a bit more.

 

Maia Coghlan  37:04 

And then if they don't, then that's when

 

Angie Martin  37:07 

Yes, and it just gives them time. You know, like we said before, a lot of people who you're going to be dealing with are busy. There's a reason why they need bookkeepers, the business has grown to the point that they can't do it themselves. So they'll look at your email, and then they'll forget. And then they'll look at your other email and then forget, look at your third email be like oh, yeah, I just have to click this button, and they'll go with you. It gives them time to just get around to it.

 

Maia Coghlan  37:33 

Exactly. Just because they haven't done it doesn't mean they don't want to.

 

Angie Martin  37:37 

Yes, yes, I think this is like an amazing lead away

 

Maia Coghlan  37:40 

push. Yeah, this is maybe it's like we all have a to do list that we haven't gotten to yet. Maybe it's just on their to do list that they haven't

 

Angie Martin  37:48 

most famous to do list and ours are really getting long at Safi right now. So the next step I want to talk about is, you know, we've been taught the next step basically guys is doing your automations like creating your marketing automations. So we've already chatted about actually creating it and setting up the time delays and everything. Now what I want to talk about is going back to the first step, where you know, you're creating the contact form and creating the landing page, what you need to be able to do now is actually being able to track your leads interactions with you, it's really important to be able to know, are they downloading multiple resources? Are they going in and doing different things on your website, it's really important to know so you can understand their sales process and their sales journey that they're going through with you. It's something that we definitely do with savvy because what happens is the savviest piece, we have such amazing free rep like resources. And we do this on purpose. So you guys can go through and learn as much as you possibly can without ever having to actually pay for anything. We can actually see you going through that journey. And so I won't call you for maybe three months, because I can see that you're going from one resource to the next resource to the next resource. And I just want you to be able to do you without interrupting your own journey, because you're going through it I obviously your own pace. You can do the same thing with potential clients. By linking your CRM to your processes. You can also tell how many opens they've done of your emails, which is also really important. So how do you go about Maya actually doing that and reviewing that?

 

Maia Coghlan  39:55 

Well, having the information saved a lot of It is actually done automatically by the software itself. So if you click on so your person has your new lead is filled in contact form gone through automation and received this email a week later they receive this email. And then by the time you get the notification three weeks, four weeks later to follow up with them, you go into the CRM, you click on their name, and it will bring up their contact profile. And it will show you right there that they have received this email on this day the same on this day, I assume like I know HubSpot does I assume that other ones do as well say what they clicked on, whether they opened the email or not all, that kind of thing. So all of that information, and the fact that they fill out the form in the first place will all be there all automatically saved, just click on the Contact name to open it up. And then you can see all of the details. Yeah,

 

Angie Martin  41:05 

and it's really important if you are looking at getting a CRM and again, you don't have to use HubSpot, because that is a much larger platform, a bit more intense. For a lot of people there are simplified CRMs out there that are much more affordable as well. But when you're looking at them, and trying to see which one works best for you, these are really important things to look at to see if they can create contact forms and landing pages, if they can be connected with email, like marketing automation, channels, like again, MailChimp, or something like that, or if they have their own built in. And also to check to make sure that you can actually see the reporting of each contact. That is super important, because I know that there are some CRMs, who don't offer a lot of tracking with these contacts. But as for a bookkeeper, you do want to know what they're clicking on and what they're actually reviewing. Because it will help you better understand what they're needing.

 

Maia Coghlan  42:12 

So what information they're interested in.

 

Angie Martin  42:14 

Yeah, and that's something that we do with the savvy bookkeeper a lot, because anytime I call you, I want to be actually able to give you some value information on the call. So it's really important to be able to know that and it's the same with you guys, if you guys are calling potential lead, you want to be able to already, I'm going to say the word creep the business online and creep to see what they might possibly need. Because then you can kind of prepare yourself to give that value added information on the phone before they pay for anything. So it's super, super important.

 

Maia Coghlan  42:55 

Yeah. Some of them will also have a, like a little bit of code that you can add to your website so that it wants the contact is created in a new CRM, it will track what pages of your website they click on,

 

Angie Martin  43:19 

which is super handy. If your CRM has that, I would highly suggest for you to do that. Because again, it just helps you understand a bit more about what they're needing. Again, it's

 

Maia Coghlan  43:33 

something if if you have someone who manages your website, it's really easy to do it so quick. Just stick it in, and then it will track it for you. Yeah,

 

Angie Martin  43:41 

and it's especially really good for, I find it's really good for larger base clients. Because let's say you're a bookkeeper and you only deal with really, really large clients. They are the ones that are quite complex. And they actually need a lot of services combined into one. So if you can better understand what the contact is actually looking at on your website, you can be able to service them on the phone right away. A bit better in No. Okay, so this person is looking at, you know, job keeper. So how about I give them my free lead magnet that is telling them and educating them about job keeper one on I just kind of send that to them the next time I chat with them. Again, this is before they're even your clients, but it helps you understand what they're needing to serve this sort of better, basically. So I just want to do a little bit of a recap because we were chatting a lot about automation today. So basically setting up automations for sales follow ups are as easy as 123 it's one you create the landing page or the contact form on the website to you actually create the marketing automation that is then put in with the triggers put in with everything you need to do the landing page first, so the rest of the waterfall can continue. And then at the final after everything's been put in place, you then need to actually link everything together, make sure everything, everything should be linked together before that, and basically in the first step, but you want to go through and actually track to see what's happening with this lead. So you actually, it's kind of the same as setting up social media, you have to set it up, you have to create the content. And then you have to actually look at the analytics. Zack Same for follow ups, you create the contact form, you create the marketing content, and then you track to see how they're going.

 

Maia Coghlan  45:52 

I don't necessarily have to do anything extra to be able to get you just look. And it should

 

Angie Martin  45:58 

happen. I have done. Yep. And it's just it really helps. In next episode, we're going to be actually going through and chatting a bit more about some tips that I have to actually help you win the deals that you have. So you know, just some tips I've learned over the years of actually winning the deals. But basically this process, if you have a really refined and streamlined process for this, you are going to be able to track things so much better, and have a higher percentage of deal closure with qualified really good leads. Once this is done. So I kinda want to do a bit of a thing. For anyone who wants to chat a bit more about lead magnets setting up automations, anything like that, please feel free to email me at Angie at the savvy bookkeeper. COMM to au, we are in the midst of trying to figure out some resources we can create for you guys for actually doing like workflow templates to show you exactly what we've been talking about today. actually going through and creating that workflow of how to do the first follow up how to do you know different kinds of follow ups. Maya's already kind of created it to you've done? Yes, yes to shoot, we haven't actually launched it yet. So don't go and looking in the shop to find it. We're in the midst of doing it to help you guys learn the process a bit more, because it's really easy to miss one of those waterfall steps. So if you do have questions, and you are in the process of setting things up like this, please feel free to let me know what you're in the midst of doing. And we can kind of create content for you for the shop, or we can have you have a chat with Maya. Just to make sure because this is a really tricky thing that I think a lot of people, not everyone has your mind where you can automatically see the different steps. I know with me, I know that the third steps, but sometimes I just kind of get excited and go, this is what I want to do. And then I get excited about creating the content and like the end result. And then you kind of go Whoa, stop. I need to do this.

 

Maia Coghlan  48:27 

Is it actually going to work?

 

Angie Martin  48:29 

Yes. And how is it going to work. So let us know what you're working on. And we can see if we can create just a template for you for it. Or if it's going to be a bit more intense we can have you work with Maya on creating it, just because it is something a bit more complex than just like writing an email. But we'd love to be able to help and create more resources for you to be able to do it. And yeah, just make sure that you can continually create those follow up systems to make sure you're supporting your clients. Awesome. Do you have any other words of wisdom for automations.

 

Maia Coghlan  49:14 

Stay safe, stay sane and stay savvy!?

 

Angie Martin  49:17 

Love it guys. Have a great rest of your day and we will chat to you next week. See ya