So this isn’t strictly a marketing or communications tip, but i just have to share with you guys the one productivity secret that’s been an absolute GAME-CHANGER for my business.

Picture this situation: a client enquiry comes in on your website and you get an email. Yay! After doing a quick victory lap, you check the details of the message: this person wants to find out more about your services, and they’ve provided their name and email address.

Okay. You click on that email address, and respond to ask if they want to jump on a clarity call to find out whether you’re a great fit. They reply, and after some back and forth you’ve got a date settled. During the call, you take notes in a Word doc. And after that, when it’s time to send the contract and invoice, you create both, then send them via PDF. If they don’t respond (as is often the case) you send a follow up email.

You know what just happened? You just spent two completely unnecessary hours emailing and doing admin work. Multiply this by five, ten, twenty clients, and that’s a LOT of hours where you could be doing something else.

Now picture this.

A client enquiry comes in on your website. You check your email, but no need to do anything because the name, email address, and the service they want have already been keyed into your system automatically. Your system has also sent your client a tailored response based on what they picked and a scheduler for them to book a call without you having to do anything.

What the tailored response can look like from your client’s end. In my case, I send them a detailed pricing menu with the deliverables, timeline, and scheduler.

Five minutes later, another email comes in: they’ve booked a discovery call for Tuesday. Perfect. You check your calendar on your phone and it’s already in there. Close to Tuesday, they receive a reminder email with the Zoom link from your system, so all you need to do is show up.

The call goes well and they ask you for a contract and invoice. You check your system to make sure the items they want in the package are there, and press a single button to kickstart the onboarding process. The contract gets sent. They sign the contract. Your system sends back a thank-you and the invoice email. They pay. Your system sends back another thank-you and the questionnaire to kickstart the process, plus activates their personal client portal and sends them the details so they can log in. All this happens while you’re asleep, or on holiday, or spending time with family.

What did you just do in this scenario? Showed up for the clarity call and booked a client. That’s it. Your system took care of everything else for you.

It was this very system that helped me book some of my biggest clients. I actually had one client who told me that the moment she saw my system, she knew I was the one to book!

So what’s this magic system?

This system is called Dubsado, a client management system, and to date — after three years and two businesses — it’s the best investment I’ve ever made in my life.

Here’s three reasons why you need Dubsado if you’re a business owner.

1. You literally don’t have to do anything to book a client other than show up.

That scenario above is just the tip of the iceberg. I was able to wake up and check my emails in bed with half-closed eyes, then go right back to sleep knowing that all my correspondence and scheduling was being taken care of by the system. Then I’d wake up again and there would be an appointment in my calendar.

What my scheduler looks like — it’s very similar to Calendly, but without having to pay extra. It’s all included in Dubsado.

You can also create a workflow to automatically screen your leads. My system would change the lead status based on whether they responded to my initial email — if they did, the lead would remain marked as Warm; if they didn’t respond, the lead would be marked as Neutral and a reminder email would be sent three days later; if they still didn’t respond, the system would send a final email and mark them as Cold. If there was still no response to the final email after five days, the system would automatically archive them. There was no need for me to do anything.

2. You’ll look absolutely professional even on days you don’t feel like it.

The beauty of Dubsado is that you only have to write your emails and design your forms once. Just once. Then when it’s time to send those emails to a client — say, to get them to sign a contract or send a proof — you simply bring up that email template and send.

But can’t you do that with Gmail’s canned responses? I hear you ask. Of course you can. BUT Gmail can’t auto-populate your links, invoice items, contract dates, and client’s first name for you. Dubsado can. Also, Dubsado lets you use your brand colours.

The name and link are auto-populated, and you can even have your brand colour for the button. The little green button you see there is the Dubsado chat which I can use to reach out for support whenever I need it (the client doesn’t see it). Also, did I mention you can actually see when the client has viewed your email?

Another feature I love is the client portal. If your client has too many emails to manage, the correspondence with you can get lost. Dubsado offers your client a beautiful, password-protected portal where they can see all their project documents, emails, invoices, and contracts with you — which gives you an extra professional edge.

What my client portal looks like. You can customise the colours and the banner on top.

The best part? Your client never even knows you use Dubsado. With other systems, they may see the URL or different email address, but not with Dubsado. Everything gets sent from your own email address, and you can even have the client portal white-labelled with your own domain, so the URL reads something like dashboard.freshpages.co instead of hello.dubsado.com.

3. They have amazing support and service.

In the three years I’ve used Dubsado, the sales and support team has been nothing short of spectacular. They have a chat button within the dashboard, and respond really quickly, so you’ll be able to address all your concerns on the spot.

There’s also a wonderful community of Dubsado users on Facebook, and they regularly share tips, updates, and advice there. It’s through there that I’ve learned some of the best practices for creating my workflows and beautiful forms.

Give it a shot!

If Dubsado sounds like something you’d like to try, click here to try it out. Their trial doesn’t limit your time in there, it just gives you three free clients — so you can spend time checking out the dashboard, building your forms and workflows, and testing it out to see if it’ll be as much of a game-changer for you as it was for me.

For 20% off your first month or year of Dubsado, use the code FRESHPAGESCO!

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