You can tell as soon as you pick up the phone before the
other person has even said anything. That little silence,
the clattering in the background, tells you that it's a
telemarketer on the other end of the line, and there is
nothing they have to say that is worth your precious time.
The business that hired the telemarketing firm is trying to
achieve their goals using systems. Many of the systems
large companies use that we come into contact with like
automated 'help' lines, telemarketing firms, spam-like
mortgage offerings that feel completely devoid of heart and
personality.
With those experiences, it's easy to have strong opinions
about using systems, and to avoid them like the plague in
your own business.
Don't let a world full of bad apples keep you from the
sweetness, and support, that is possible with systems.
Systems help you stand up. The word 'system' comes from two
Latin words: 'syn' and 'histanai' meaning to cause to
stand. Merriam-Webster ( www.m-w.com ) defines system like
this: "a regularly interacting or interdependent group of
items forming a unified whole."
Kind of like your bones, muscles and brain all working
together to help you stand up. Or your heart, mind, and
soul working together to show your family how much you love
them.
If you have Thank You cards, address labels, and postage
sitting in your desk, and every time you write a card you
put it out for the post: that's a system. And whoever the
lucky person is who receives the card is grateful, whether
they know it's a system or not.
Like the body, systems have conscious and unconscious parts.
Chances are you don't think much about breathing. You
breathe in, you breathe out. Your heart pumps, and the
blood and oxygen go 'round and 'round, keeping you alive
moment to moment.
Thankfully, you don't have to pay conscious attention to
that system: "Okay, right and left atriums: pump! Right and
left-ventricles: pump! Okay, diaphragm: tighten and
flatten!" Try directing all of this, dozens of times a
minute.
Wouldn't leave a lot of room to get much else done, would
it?
Are you thinking about every breath your business takes?
I'm betting that there are plenty of places in your
business that could use a system to help you stand up. How
about getting bills paid? How about keeping your office
stocked with business supplies?
A system can be as simple as having a stack of blank
inventory lists of what your office needs to operate
smoothly, a monthly alarm in your calendar that reminds you
to take ten minutes and check your inventory, filling out
your inventory list of what's needed, and scheduling a trip
to Office Depot, or ordering what you need online.
Voila! A system has just handled your office needs, and now
you won't ever be stuck at 10pm at night before a big
deadline with empty printer ink cartridges.
That's fine for office inventory, but what about the
telemarketing call we received in the beginning of this
article?
A 'heart-less' system is a zombie.
Systems are, by nature, repetitive. By handling the
repetitious aspects of your business, they can leave you
time and energy for truly enriching, heart-centered
interactions.
The telemarketing company unfortunately thought everything
about the call is repetitive, and doesn't allow for real
human interaction. As a result, there is no space left for
us to engage with the telemarketer as a person- they become
a zombie. And who wouldn't hang up on a zombie?
'Zombie' refers to a corpse that has been re-animated by
evil powers. If you are going to systematize your
marketing, which I highly recommend, you'll want to
identify which actions are repetitive, and which are
creative and unique. But, to avoid creating a zombie,
you'll want to do more than just systematize the
repetitive. You'll also want to bring your presence to the
unique, and put your heart into both.
Everything in this world has a spiritual presence to it,
which means that no system, engine, or machine need truly
be 'cold and heartless,' as one client put it. Your veins
and arteries aren't just tubes, but they are imbued with
life. The same could be said of your autoresponder,
accounting software, or email.
Take a moment now in your heart and ask to be shown the
presence and life within some part of your business that
you consider to be zombie-like: 'cold and heartless.' Once
you recognize the life that is present within your business
systems, they will function more effectively for you. And
your customers may enjoy them more as well.
Sounds simple, but it may not be obvious. For how to get a
start on your own system, plus an example of how we do it,
read:
Keys to Heart-Centered Systems
• Pick one thing you'd like to happen more often and more
easily.
Taking a moment to breathe and check in with your heart,
identify some place in your business that you know it would
be really helpful if it happened more often or more easily.
You may have several ;), but for now, just pick one.
• What are all the bite-sized pieces to it?
Even if it's a list of 20 things, break it down into little
bite-sized tasks. For each task, identify if it's a
repetitive task without much creativity or personal touch
needed (applying postage, for instance), a task that needs
creativity once, but then can be repetitive (a welcome
letter you mail out, that can be copied), or a task that
needs creativity every time (responding to a personal
request for help from someone).
If it needs creativity every time, you can't systematize
it. But, the rest you can put into a system that delivers,
does, or reminds you to do the task in question.
• A Heart of Business Example.
We decided, for several reasons that have to do with both
supporting people and supporting the business, that we
wanted people to actually read and use the free workbook we
give away: Getting to the Core of Your Business. We also
knew that many people would download it, but forget about
it.
There is no way that I could possibly follow up with each
subscriber personally to remind them to check out the free
download. However, what I did do was go in my heart, and
ask for what was one bit in the free workbook that would be
very helpful to someone who was relatively new.
When my heart was clear with that, I wrote a -very- short
email, and put it in our email autoresponder system. After
someone has been subscribed for two weeks, the email goes
out automatically, reminding the new subscriber how to get
the download, and to look at a specific page, for a
specific bit of help.
We get thank you emails all the time from folks who have
received that email, and enjoyed what they read there.
Although the email goes out automatically, without me
thinking about it (heart- pump! diaphragm- breathe!), the
responses that come back fall into the category of needing
creativity every time.
So I respond to those emails personally, quite happily. If
I had had to think about every step until that point:
manually adding someone to the subscriber list, sending
them the free workbook, sending them the reminder email- I
would be exhausted, cranky, and unable to do much else in
my business.
But, because the rest of it is in a system, and Heart of
Business is off the respirator and breathing on its own,
then I do have spaciousness and creativity available to
respond with heart to those who do write to me.
Your next step: What is one heart-centered system you can
add to your business this month?
----------------------------------------------------
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your
Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your
Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line.
He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the
globe succeed in business without lousing their hearts. Get
three free chapters of the book online:
http://www.heartofbusiness.com
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