As I cook supper one snowy night and making up silly songs with my kiddo, my email dings with news that a potential client is ready to move forward with a new project. Five minutes later, I am back to cooking and singing while the contract, invoice, and client homework wings its way over to my new client. My client is delighted at how streamlined and professional the onboarding experience is, my kiddo is thrilled that the silly songs don’t have to stop, and I have supper on the table right on time. No, I don’t have a team of people working for me (yet!) and no, I am no where close to being super mom. However, I do have a secret on my side that I can’t wait to share with you.
A year ago, when someone contacted me about my services, I would spend hours going back and forth with emails asking what they were looking for and reviewing my packages with them, then going to three different sites to send them my invoice, contract, and client homework. I got the job done but it felt disjointed, less than the professional face I wanted to put forward, and frequently disrupted my day as I answered questions from my clients who were unsure how to do what I needed them to do on those sites. It could be frustrating on both ends and sometimes I ended up missing important things when clients decided to email changes to me instead of add it in with the homework.
So how did I go from the disjointed, frustrating, lengthy chain of emails and websites of a year ago to the seamless five-minute process I have now? One word, Dubsado.
Dubsado at its heart is a client relationship management system. It allows you to take control of your client interactions from the first time a lead contacts you all the way through the project and offboarding. Your client feels special and taken care of throughout the whole process, and you have time back in your day you didn’t even know you could!
Lead Capture
The process of connecting with a potential client is incredibly easy through the use of their lead capture forms combined with their new lead capture workflows! When someone contacts me about my services, the information they give me is automatically added to the Leads section of my Dubsado page and the potential client gets a quick FAQ sheet about the service they are asking about and a form to fill out about the details of their project. My lead immediately gets information (from general pricing to my process) about the service that they are asking about and when they fill out the project details form, I have everything I need to see if this project will be a good fit for me or if I could refer them to someone else. I can’t even tell you how much time this has saved me alone!
Jobs
Once the lead and I have decided we are a good fit and are ready for the project to begin, It is a 2 minute process to add that lead to a new job and get started! Dubsado houses all of my contracts, questionnaires, and form templates. It allows me to quickly create a job, input the specific details of the project and send everything on its way to the client. As the project unfolds, I can send logo and website proofs via forms and receive feedback and revision requests right there. I complete the revision process the same way.
All of this communication, from start to finish, is housed directly on a client portal belonging only to them. I (and my client) can see everything that I have sent them, what is open, what has been completed and what still needs to be reviewed.
Workflows
If all of this wasn’t enough to make me swoon, Dubsado lets me create job workflows for all of the different services I offer that allows me to automate almost everything about this process from sending out the contract and invoices before the project starts, to setting myself reminders to upload the logo proofs after the client homework has been completed, to sending out a wrap up and testimonial request email after the project has wrapped up.
Clearly I cannot say enough about Dubsado and how it has changed my business! I have never used another service that has benefited my business the way this has, and such amazing and responsive customer service on top of it.
If you would like to try it, they have a fully featured no-time-limit trial plan that allows you to use it to its fullest for 3 clients. When you are ready to upgrade, plans are only $35 monthly or $350 annually (use the code NEST to get 20% off your first month for monthly plans or your first year for annual plans!).*
Learn how @placetonest uses @dubsado to manage her creative business like a #momboss! http://aplacetonest.wpengine.com/how-i-use-dubsado-to-manage-my-creative-business/ Share on XHow would your business (and life in general!) improve if you could take back some of that time you spend doing tasks that could be automated with a service like Dubsado? What would you do with that time? Tell me in the comments below!
Howdy. Am I just blind? I don’t see a link to this service. I will just google it, but it would be awesome if I could just go there from this post. It is probably staring me right in the face and I don’t see it. 😉
Whoops! That’s what I get for hitting publish on my post before I have coffee 🙂 The links are in there now! Thanks for letting me know!
Can you help me set my design business up in dubsado? I’d love some hand holding to make sure I’m using it to its potential and I’m about to give birth to my first child in 3 weeks. So I’m excited to get dialed in before the . If so, how much would you charge? Could we do hourly?
Hey Kris!
I absolutely do this! I’m going to shoot you an email to talk about it more 🙂 Talk to you soon!