Top 5 Tools You Need To Automate Your Small Business

by Chloe Tan

As a small business owner, it can be difficult to manage your day to day tasks in such a short time frame. You want to be able to attract and communicate with thousands of leads each day, just to be able to receive a handful of potential clients that could help build your business empire one step at a time.

However, you only have a handful of employees on your side to help you and your business to serve your clients, and they are also bombarded with redundant tasks every single day!

Luckily for you, technology has become more advanced as well, making your daily tasks automated. This helps you focus on your actual work and ignore the repetitive tasks that can leave you exhausted.

Here are just some of the tools that you can start with that you’ll need to help you automate your daily business activities:

Rescue Time

To start things off, you may want to know which automation tool will be most useful to your time and business as you investigate different automation software.

For you and your employees, Rescue Time can deliver these insights. It will provide you with a weekly summary of your activity as well as a breakdown of the time you spend on various sites and projects.

Rescue Time provides thorough information on how you spend your time each day, allowing you to see where automation is most needed. Rescue Time also allows you to set daily goals in order to keep track of and enhance your productivity.

Calendly

Meetings are an important element of acquiring new clients and maintaining an ongoing business. When a client is unsure whether your services are exactly what they seek in the beginning, a quick first encounter might seal the deal. Meetings, later on, are an excellent method to clear up misunderstandings and match expectations.

Planning meetings, on the other hand, can be a time-consuming task. Making sure everyone is available at the same time, especially if they are in different time zones, can lead to unending emails back-and-forth. Calendly is one of the best meeting scheduling software available out there, trusted by many businesses out there.

The free version allows you to share your availability without making your personal schedule public by integrating with your Google Calendar or other popular calendars.

Simply send your Calendly link to anybody you’d like to meet, and they’ll choose from the times you’ve selected as available, which will be displayed in their local time zone. After then, the event will be added to everyone’s calendar.

The software works with online conferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, saving you time by eliminating the need to create a link for each meeting. It also sends out reminder emails ahead of time to ensure that everyone shows up on time. You can also link to your website from there.

Mentions

When it comes to marketing your products/services and finding new clients, social media is crucial. There are a variety of tools available to assist you to schedule your social media postings, including those that can automatically repost or curate content from other sources.

However, before you begin scheduling your social media posts, you must first choose what you should post in order to attract new customers. The most effective approach to do so is to use a social media listening tool that allows you to research both your business expertise and your competitors.

Mention’s free version allows you to create one alert that tracks news sites, blogs, forums, and social media. This alert can look for specific terms relating to your business, track mentions for your brand, or look at your competitors.

You can learn about what’s trending in your industry sector all in one place, rather than signing up for multiple newsletters and constantly scanning the web.

Zoho Invoice 

While some small businesses like to keep track of their expenses on an Excel spreadsheet and utilize a standard invoice template, there are a number of invoicing applications that make getting paid much easier and more organized.

Our pick is Zoho Invoice, which offers many features in its free plan that you might never need to subscribe to its paid plan.

You can make an invoice template with all of your bank details, terms and conditions that you can use with any client.

When you’re ready to submit the invoice, the software also comes with an email template that you can customize if needed. When you link Zoho to an online payment system (such as PayPal), the invoice status is updated and a thank-you note is sent when payment is received. This way, you’ll know which clients are required to follow up on.

However, Zoho makes it much easier to follow up because you can set up a number of automatic reminders for outstanding invoices, saving you the time and effort of chasing your clients down. You can also use the software to track time for clients who are charged by the hour and then generate an invoice from that information. For fixed-price projects, you can even set up recurring bills.

HelloSign

Finding a legally-binding automation tool for legal documents and contracts can be time-consuming and expensive. So, if you’re like many small businesses, you might be sending and receiving contracts in PDF format. 

This is a manageable issue, but it is not scalable.

Where do you keep all of your signed contracts? How can you make the process more automated? Is it possible to store a template? Isn’t it convenient to have all of your contracts in one place? 

HelloSign provides excellent solutions to all of these questions.

HelloSign takes care of the whole contract-signing process for you. If you require numerous people to look at anything, you can email it to just yourself, yourself plus others, or a full group.

And the best thing is this: Every step along the journey, you’ll be notified. One of the most exciting aspects of running a small business is getting a contract signed. Because each new deal signifies that your company is expanding. Every time a contract is sent, opened, or signed, HelloSign sends you an alert.

Each night, you’ll receive a breakdown of how many are still waiting for signatures and how many have been finished for the day.

HelloSign also keeps track of all of your contracts, so you won’t have to sift through hundreds of emails to get the final, signed version. It’s all in one place and organized.

The Bottom Line

These are just some of the tools that can help you put your focus and energy where they should be – your actual work!

Having these automation tools in your arsenal gives you the jumpstart you need to continually expand your business, satisfy your clients, and meet deadlines much sooner than expected. This will not only help retain your clients but also get even more clients through referrals.

Now that you have more time on your hands, you can use this extra time to satisfy a couple more clients with your business and continue to grow your business much faster.

Maybe, you can spend extra time with your family while these automation tools do your work 24/7.

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