“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”
– Elizabeth King
Methodologies and systems. I talk about them a lot.
Methodology is the way you approach your client work. It’s your magic formula and checklist, ensuring no stone gets unturned with every engagement.
Systems, on the other hand, are the things you teach your clients to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.
It becomes their methodology.
The point of having systems in a business is to reduce the need to think. To make it easy to know at all times what to do next, and to iterate on the system until it consistently gets the desired results.
As an advisor, your job is to create the necessary direction and infrastructure needed to get results.
But before you call it a day, you also want to leave your clients with a system they can operate after you go.
Otherwise, your good work will start to fall apart the minute you’re no longer overseeing things.
The idea of a system is that it stores all the ongoing tasks and reminders they need to run their marketing program. It also stores ad hoc ideas, too.
If you have a small project that can get results, for example, you want them to be reminded every so often to either re-run it or post-pone it.
The choice is theirs, but at least they’re reminded to consider it.
I put all this stuff into Trello, but you can use any tool to store these ideas and reminders.
When you don’t have a system, the easy thing to do is to default to how people feel. And usually, people don’t feel like putting in the work needed to succeed.
That’s why a formal system matters so much. It reminds you of what you agreed to do, and what needs to be done in order to create repeatable results.
If you haven’t already, check out Mindshare to learn more about how to building your own methodology and systems for your marketing advisory practice.