In today’s episode, we are joined by Stephanie Inghram. Stephanie is the owner of SAI Virtual Solutions, is a Certified Dubsado Specialist, and is a Client Experience Expert. Prior to becoming a Dubsado specialist, she was an award-winning senior certified wedding planner and International Director of The Bridal Society where she ran a six figure firm solo.
She took her frustrations from doing everything herself in the wedding world and used it to build the business she has today. Her mission is to help a variety of industries add next-level automation and client experience to their business so that they can book more, make more, and work less.
Tune in as we dive into all things Dubsado, client experience, and workflows.
In this episode, we discuss:
- [2:03] How Stephanie went from wedding planner to Certified Dubsado Specialist
- [3:52] What Dubsado is and who it is for
- [7:21] When should we implement a tool like Dubsado in our business
- [10:39] Most common workflows you should set up in Dubsado
- [20:20] The best place to start inside Dubsado as a newbie
- [31:06] How Dubsado can support your lead generation strategy
- [38:58] One thing Stephanie wish people knew about customer experience
- [40:39] Other tools you can use to uplevel your client experience
How Stephanie went from wedding planner to Certified Dubsado Specialist
Before becoming a mom, Stephanie worked as a wedding planner. Once she got pregnant, she left her career as a wedding planner to become a stay at home mom. After being a stay at home mom for a few months, she got a little stir crazy and knew she needed to find a solution.
She briefly considered going back to the wedding planning industry, but working 16 hour days wasn’t in alignment with what she wanted to do. One day she was scrolling through Facebook and stumbled upon the VA world and decided that was her next move. Once she announced it publicly, many of her previous contacts in the wedding industry reached out to work with her.
One of those clients ended up throwing Dubsado in her lap and at first Stephanie thought that the program was clunky and overwhelming. Overtime, she grew to love Dubsado and quickly pivoted her business from virtual assistance to Dubsado setups.
What Dubsado is and who it is for
Dubsado is an all in one client relationship management (CRM) solution. Simply put, it is a business management platform where you can keep track of all of your current and potential clients in one place. Dubsado handles everything from inquiry to onboarding. The main appeal of a platform like Dubsado is that it keeps everything in one place.
If you are a service provider, then Dubsado is a great option for you because it can help you streamline and automate your client experience.
When should we implement a tool like Dubsado in our business
Stephanie has noticed that when people need to implement a tool like Dubsado, there are two extremes. They are either spending way too much time on operations and not enough time on their client work, or they become inundated with clients but still need to make more money.
Most common workflows you should set up in Dubsado
An example of a common workflow you can set up in Dubsado is what happens when someone schedules a consultation call with you. Dubsado has a scheduler you can use to book appointments with your leads and then after they have selected the day and time that works best for them based on your availability, they automatically receive a confirmation email. Then, the day of the meeting they will receive a reminder email.
On your side, Dubsado will have automatically created a project with all of your potential client’s information in it so all you have to do is show up the day of the call.
Instead of using Dubsado’s scheduler, you can also set up a contact form and once they have filled it out, they receive an email with more information. If they don’t follow through on your call to action – whether it’s filling out a questionnaire or scheduling an appointment – Dubsado can keep track of that.
Once the consultation call has taken place, you can go into their specific project and enter them into a booking workflow. This will take your proposal and contract templates that you already have set up in Dubsado and make a copy specific to their project that you can customize to your liking.
Stephanie has had numerous people tell her that they cannot use Dubsado because they need everything to be customized. The good news is that it can be totally customized before your client gets the proposal, contract and invoice. Since the structure is already in place with the templates, it still cuts down your time significantly even with the customization.
With workflows, you can set up triggers to deliver certain things to your new clients. For example, once your client pays the invoice, then they automatically receive your welcome packet or what’s next email.
The best place to start inside Dubsado as a newbie
The first thing you need to do before even thinking about automations is to sit down with your offers and have a really good understanding of what you are offering so that you can map out your processes.
There are typically five stages in your business – inquiry, booking, onboarding, fulfillment, and offboarding. You will need to create processes for each stage. For example, if someone comes to your contact page and fills out your contact form, then what happens? They will likely receive an email with your pricing guide and then a call to action to schedule an appointment. What happens if they don’t end up scheduling an appointment? You are basically going to keep asking yourself, “and then what?” every step of the way until you reach the offboarding stage. This will need to be done for every single one of your offers.
Once you have created these processes, then it is time to start working on your workflows. All workflows do is take these actions you have already written down and make them happen automatically. If you try to jump into setting up workflows before you have laid the foundation then you will likely become frustrated and give up on setting them all up.
How Dubsado can support your lead generation strategy
If you have a lead magnet in your business, you can use your email marketing platform to deliver both the freebie and subsequent nurture emails. Inside of those nurture emails, make sure that you are adding a call to action that leads them to book a call or fill out an application to work with you.
One thing Stephanie wish people knew about customer experience
Stephanie finds that so many people skip over mapping out their processes and dive straight into the deliverables. While deliverables are very important, setting up an amazing customer experience is crucial too. This helps your clients feel valued from start to finish.
Other tools you can use to uplevel your client experience
A great complementary tool to Dubsado is Zapier. This allows you to further automate things in your business not just limited to Dubsado. Stephanie also recommends ClickUp for project management and Airtable for data tracking.
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