Hi Reader,

Earlier this year, I was working with a client whose business was starting to get some really good traction. People were finding her, inquiries were coming in, and there was real interest in what she was offering.

But almost every inquiry created another round of decisions.

What information did she need? What should she send them? When should she follow up?

She was carrying a lot of this in her head and figuring out what to do each time something came in. And the more we talked, the clearer it became that the inquiries weren't really the problem.

The Weekly Edge

Sometimes the thing making your business feel complicated isn't the work itself. It's having to decide how the work should happen every single time.

That's what was happening with this client. At one point during our session, I told her:

“I don't think the stress is coming from the work itself. I think it's coming from having to decide everything in real time.”

So we started looking at where we could make some of those decisions ahead of time.

What information did she actually need when an inquiry came in? What responses was she writing repeatedly? When should someone expect to hear from her again?

We created a simple way to track inquiries and started turning pieces of her emails into reusable blocks. Nothing particularly complicated. The goal was to stop reinventing the process every time someone reached out.

And you may have places in your business where you're doing the same thing.

Someone fills out your contact form and you stop to decide what to send. A prospect says yes and you have to remember what happens next. A client finishes working with you and you're not quite sure when or how to follow up.

Each one seems small. But when you're making those decisions over and over again, they add up. And eventually, some of that uncertainty can make its way to the person on the other side too.

A couple of months after our session, this client told me that structuring her emails and responding more quickly seemed to be changing the way clients interacted with her. In her words, she could feel “a major shift in the clients' trust in me.”

She hadn't created the perfect process. She had simply stopped making as many of the same decisions over and over again.

That's what simplification can look like: deciding once what doesn't need to be decided every time.

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One Small Move

Think about one type of inquiry or request you get regularly where you still have to stop and think about what happens next.

Then write down the next three steps.

For example:

1. What information do I need?
2. What do I send or say next?
3. When do I follow up?

That's it.

You're not mapping your entire customer journey or building a new system. You're just deciding what should happen next so you don't have to figure it out again the next time.

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What I’m Paying Attention To

I came across an article from CMSWire about friction in the customer journey, and one point in particular caught my attention.

When we think about customer friction, we tend to think about the things a customer can see. A confusing website. Too many steps. A form that's a pain to fill out.

But sometimes the friction starts inside the business, with processes that aren't clear or consistent.

That made me think about my client. Her customers couldn't see all the decisions happening behind the scenes, but they could experience what those decisions created.

A slower response. A different answer. Not knowing when they'd hear back or what was supposed to happen next.

The clearer the path is for you, the easier it is to make the path clear for them.

That's something I'm going to keep paying attention to.

Read: What's Killing Your Customer Journey? Friction​

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A lot of business complexity doesn't arrive all at once. It builds one little decision at a time.

The good news is, you don't have to untangle all of it at once either. Start with one place where you're tired of figuring out what happens next.

Have a great week,

Lucy

P.S. Three next steps. That's all I'm asking you to figure out this week. Please don't turn this into a 17-step flowchart. 😉