One of the primary tools of the client intake process is the intake form.
In this post, I talk about how to set up tools like your client intake forms to help make your client intake processes as simple and efficient as they need to be.
Category: Processes & Productivity
The Client Intake Process
Are you sabotaging your business by making it too easy to work with you?
So much of today’s business rhetoric is about “removing barriers.”
But you’re introducing barriers if your client intake processes and intake forms are not, at every step of the way, helping you make meaningful progress towards a successful outcome.
How to tackle a huge project | A SOP Story
TL;DR? There are four things you can do to make a huge project not only seem manageable but be manageable, even as you keep saying to yourself, “What was I thinking taking this on?!?” (1) Know what you’re trying to do and break it down into manageable steps as soon as possible. (2) Track your progress in a way that fosters momentum. (3) Be realistic about your energy levels. (4) Plan for implementation in a way that, as much as possible, lets you be mindful but thoughtless (i.e., well-considered but requiring no real decision-making when it comes time for application).
Turning live, virtual events into high-quality on-demand content | A SOP Story
TL;DR? Pairing OBS Studio with Zoom can give you a lightweight way to both conduct a live, virtual event (like a training) and give you the recording you need to create high-quality, on-demand content for asynchronous viewers later on. It’s an even lighter lift if the event you’re holding involves content that doesn’t need to shift as much as it does with synchronous to asynchronous training.
Auditing your process improvement process | A SOP Story
TL;DR? Schedule some time to review the end results of the processes you’ve “improved,” and revise your current-day SOPs to incorporate back in anything you might have inadvertently “incrementally improved” out of your process along the way. Then again, you might just have an opportunity to pat yourself on the back for actually improving, and continue on! As a case study in this article, I draw from my own video production experience.
I’m a big believer in making incremental improvements, but sometimes an incremental change is actually an incremental deterioration.
Using big data to generate content ideas | A SOP Story
TL;DR? Big data knows what questions people have, and you can capitalize on that to generate an endless list of answer-focused content ideas that draw from and showcase your experience, knowledge, and expertise. Scroll down to the section titled ‘Bringing it together’ for a quick list of the steps. Scroll back up for the nuance.
There’s nothing new under the sun, so what could you possibly have to offer the world that hasn’t been addressed before?
I’m always a big advocate of asking people for help when I get stuck, and, as it turns out, people are telling you what they want you to talk to them about all of the time. If you’re systematic about how you listen, you’ll build up quite a data store to flip through the next time you’re missing your muse and staring down a blank page and a deadline.
Content packaging tips for click-worthy YouTube videos | A SOP Story
TL;DR? You can grow your YouTube channel without falling prey to cheap clickbait tricks and other “dark side” habits; the secret is providing value with your content and being strategic with your content-packaging SOPs. Scroll down to the Video Packaging Essentials Checklist for some content packaging points for your own YouTube upload checklist.
How I adapted my in-person presentation SOPs for a virtual world | A SOP Story
This is a story about how I pulled together my historical data and my company’s philosophy and mission statements to adapt and generate virtual presentation SOPs for the pandemic and beyond.
Improve data integrity, data quality, and business insights with standard operating procedures (SOPs)
Is your data worth tracking? This is a question about the quality and integrity of your data – its accuracy, completeness, and fit with your use cases. And it’s an important question to consider, because low quality data can mean that your business insights are ill-informed. I’ve covered some of these points in my posts on clean data and data classification. In this post, I’m going to focus on how standard operating procedures, or SOPs for short, can help you improve the quality and integrity of both your data and your business insights.
Vision to Action: Turning ideas into actionable and measurable steps
It can be hard to figure out how to turn big picture ideas and goals into actionable and trackable steps. For many things, the “figuring out” lies in a mixture of clarity, and then reframing and rephrasing. Here we take a monetary target and some other information from a business model, and turn it into something that’s doable, measurable, and actionable. If you’re stuck at this part of the process, this post might help.