Not sure about you, but 2016 was a big one for us!
We continued working closely with a small number of clients and were delighted to be part of their journey in watching them grow this last year.
Whether it was doubling their sales, growing their databases, getting more bums on seats at events, savings hours of time automating processes, helping business owners move out of the day to day operations, recovering thousands of dollars in lost revenue and the list goes on…
I’m incredibly grateful for the switched on, action taking businesses that we have the pleasure of working with.
But it wasn’t all rosy of course.
I wanted to share our big highlights and takeaways for 2016.
Digital Marketing Is Always Changing…
As much as we focus on Infusionsoft, it’s important for us to have a knowledge of digital marketing.
Not just a knowledge, but be constantly learning about digital marketing – what’s working and what’s not.
As this is changing – all the time!
Early in 2016, I completed two certifications with Digital Marketer to help us serve our clients better.
What dawned on me from completing these, is that we weren’t practicing what we preached to our clients.
Practice What We Preach
We had several lead magnets on our website since 2014.
However, our follow-up and nurture were bad.
Well, in most cases it wasn’t really existent 🙁
I would send an email out every now and then, but it was about every 3 months to our list if that.
We were very focused on delivering for our clients.
Consequently, we were neglecting those that had been in touch with us and wanted to know more about how they could also grow their businesses.
In 2016 we sent well over 200% more emails than the previous year.
I love what we do and genuinely want to help more businesses succeed.
Of course, we’re here if and when people are ready and want some help from us.
But we can still offer little tips/lessons along the way to help our contacts journey with their businesses.
Listen To Your Clients
We had been asked several times if we run group training on Infusionsoft.
We never felt like we had a strong enough demand to host a workshop, nor was I sure I had enough to talk about (ha ha ha! What a joke that the last one is if you know me!).
In July after being asked again by a client, I had an idea.
How can we validate the workshop before we go ahead and create it?
We shared the approach we took to confirm the idea before we built out anything.
If you missed this article, check it out the fastest way to launch a product.
This leads me onto our next big takeaway for 2016…
Lean Launching
What’s the least amount of actions you can take to launch something FAST?!
We really started to embrace this concept this last year.
I know what it’s like to write copy for a bunch of emails, landing pages, thank you pages, record videos and develop content for a new event (as we help automate this for many of our clients).
This was not something I was keen to do if there was no take-up.
So…
We embraced the concept of lean launching.
We validated that we had the interest, now we looked at how can we get this workshop up and running with the least amount of actions.
Check out our very own case study on lean launching.
This approach led us to run two workshops in the second half of 2016.
These workshops The Campaign Campus LIVE! were focused on teaching Infusionsoft’s Campaign Builder and helping attendees build out a specific campaign for their individual business.
For our first event, we were overwhelmed by the response and incredibly grateful for the feedback that we received.
In fact, the last workshop we ran, of all the participants surveyed, 10 out of 10 of them would recommend a family/friend to attend as well.
We were very happy with these result and saved heaps time and money by validating the idea first and then focusing on lean launching.
You Can’t Be Everything To Everyone…
I might be the last one to the table on this one.
But this was a big lesson for me personally to get in 2016.
As much as I want to help everyone succeed, you just can’t.
We have worked with heaps of clients over the last few years.
Many of which we have made a positive impact on their business.
But, if I’m truly honest, not all 🙁
And this comes back to sometimes people aren’t the right fit for us and we’re not the right fit for them.
And that’s ok.
We probably turned away more work in 2016 than what we took on.
Probably not the smartest financial move, however, this was the best decision.
We streamlined our own service packages so that we didn’t offer as many.
This allowed us to improve on what we did and focus on helping serviced-based businesses who are committed and want to take action to automate and grow their businesses.
Can I just say, that being comfortable in saying no, has been a massive relief for me?
I care about what we do so much!
By taking on clients that are hard work or in a new industry that we haven’t had exposure to, created a lot of stress for me.
I believe we do a better job saying no to prospects that aren’t quite a fit because we can at least point them in the right direction of other reputable partners or solutions that we know and trust.
At the end of the day, the prospect wins.
And so do we.
So what’s the plan for 2017….
Over the last few months, I’ve been doing some soul searching of where we want to take Streamline For Success.
As any service based businesses would know, it can be hard to scale when you do custom work.
So in 2017 we are looking at ways to continue working with a small number of clients, but also help more businesses succeed by scaling and growing.
We’re not quite ready to share our mission.
However, what I will say, is that I am very scared!
In a good way of course!
If I get myself out of the way and truly think about what I’m on this earth to do.
It’s about helping others live a balanced life, connect with the people that they love and make a lasting impact on the world.
In order to do this, we do need to up our game!
As to what that looks like right now….?
I have no idea!
Well, that’s a lie…
I have some idea and we’ll be working out the details over the coming months.
Thank You!
As 2016 is becoming a fast-fading memory as 2017 raps up.
May you take the lessons of 2016 and apply those this year.
Thank you for being part of this journey with us.
Thank you for the sacrifices you make to do what you do.
Thank you for the big dreams that you have.
Let’s make this year our best year yet!
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