When businesses come to us wanting to automate, they often want to start with the most complex, exciting thing they can think of. We always push back. Start with what hurts most and has the clearest process. Here are the five we recommend every time.
1. Lead capture and qualification
Every service business has inbound leads sitting in a form somewhere, waiting for someone to manually follow up. This is the easiest automation win there is.
A simple workflow: form submitted → enrich the lead with company data → score it based on your criteria → route it to the right person → send a personalised acknowledgement → book a slot in your calendar.
The whole thing can run in under 60 seconds, 24 hours a day.
2. Proposal generation
If you’re writing proposals from scratch every time, you’re burning hours on something 80% templatable. An automation that pulls client info, populates your template, and sends a draft to your inbox for review can cut proposal time from 2 hours to 15 minutes.
3. Client onboarding
New client signed? There’s a checklist of things that need to happen — contracts sent, accounts created, intro emails fired, kickoff scheduled. Automating this means nothing falls through the cracks and your client’s first experience is seamless.
4. Reporting and updates
Weekly status reports, monthly performance summaries, invoicing reminders — all of these follow a pattern. That pattern can be automated. Your clients get consistent, on-time communication. You get your Friday afternoons back.
5. Follow-up sequences
Most deals are lost not because the client said no, but because someone forgot to follow up. An automated sequence that checks in at the right intervals — without being annoying — can recover a significant percentage of stalled deals.
Where to start
Pick the one that costs you the most time right now. Map out every step as if you were explaining it to a new employee. That map is your automation spec. Then call us.