Fellow creative, if you’re ready to learn how to utilize your clientflow in order to wow your clients, protect your time and energy and positively impact your bottom line, then today’s post is for you! I’m sharing how to use your clientflow to transform your service-based business for the better. And over the 11 years that I have been in business, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to create a client experience that makes my clients feel seen, heard and valued. I’ve also explored how to refine my workflows in order to better protect my time and energy And as a result, I’m sharing with you some strategies today that will help you not only serve your clients better and make better use of your precious time and energy, but will also make pursuing your revenue goals even easier!

If this is the kind of post that will serve you well then keep scrolling for the full scoop.

CLIENTFLOW DEFINED

Now, before we get too deep into today’s topic, it’s important for us to explore exactly what is your clientflow. My friends at Honeybook do such a great job of explaining this. If you look at two seemingly separate aspects of how you run your business, your workflow, and your client experience, you can find that there’s actually a lot of overlap between these two concepts. If we approached this instead by combining those two into clientflow, we could invite our clients into a more cohesive process from start to finish.

And when we look at client flow as a holistic experience versus a handful of fragmented steps, you’re able to not only better prioritize the client experience and how your clients will feel every step of the way, but you’re better able to eliminate areas of friction in your process. You’re better able to create pockets of time that you can reclaim and able to make this a more efficient process that’s more profitable for you as a result. So, now that we understand a little bit more about what your clientflow actually is, let’s take a look at how we can use this to serve your clients better and to better serve your business goals.

Using Clientflow to Reach Your Goals

When you choose to view your clientflow as a cohesive experience to guide your potential clients and newly booked clients through, you begin to open up a world of possibilities for how things can change. For example, instead of looking at your client experience as this independent piece of the puzzle, combine your client flow with your workflow and you’ll find that you’re putting your client experience at the center of everything you do. As a result, I believe we are better equipped to create compassionate people-first experiences that make our clients feel like a priority. Over the years, I have made it a commitment that my clients and anyone I work with always feels seen, heard, and valued. And because of that, I’m better equipped to point them towards solutions that will truly meet their needs.

And when I factor in my workflow into this, each step of my workflow is designed through that human-first lens. Of course, I want for my workflow to be as effective and as efficient as possible so that I am able to deliver a consistent kind of experience to my clients. But I’m also able to protect my time and energy as a chronically ill business owner. My energy is a absolutely finite resource, and maybe you can relate! But however your life looks, you don’t need a reason to want to protect your time. After all, we only have so much of it in our lifetimes. So if we look at the steps that we take through responding to a new inquiry, onboarding a new client, walking a client through your process, and then eventually off boarding them and gathering feedback, we can eliminate areas of friction or some bottlenecks that we might be experiencing. And once we do that, we’re better able to free up time that we can spend however we choose.

Wow-Worthy Clientflow

At this point, you’re probably are wondering, “Okay, Bonnie, what’s next? How do I start to put this into action?” When you start looking at how to design a wow-worthy client flow, I encourage you to get into the nitty gritty of things. It’s all well and good for us to sit here and talk about high level concepts, but how your clientflow will actually look and feel in action depends on your unique business.

When I am looking at making changes to my clientflow or infusing more intentionality into every step, I like to carve out time in my work week or my day to sit down and audit that process, giving myself a chance to review all of the steps as if I were a client so that I can test out each piece, make sure that things are working, make sure that things are still in alignment with my values and how I want my clients to feel.

And that gives me the chance to make any changes or update things along the way. So although we can look at some best practices of how your clientflow can do the most for you, there’s no one right way to design your client flow. I believe that if your clientflow is treating your clients like the incredible humans that they are, it is structured in a way that empowers you to do your best work and to do it consistently, then that is a great place to start. Of course, we also want to make sure that every step of your clientflow feels easy to use, feels clear, and it makes sense what comes next.

So if you are going through this audit process with yourself and you are running into any areas where you’re wondering, “Okay, how did we get from this step to this step?” Or you are looking at it and thinking that things feel a little bit disjointed, there’s a good chance that your clients might feel that when on the front end as well. Don’t be afraid to play around with things and to make changes that will ultimately end up serving you better.

Getting Started

Taking a step further friend, your clientflow has so much potential to not only help your business run more smoothly, but also for your clients to walk away having had the most incredible experience with you! And when our clients feel that way about working with us, that turns into the opportunity to generate more organic word of mouth referrals, which as service-based business owners, we all know is one of the highest compliments we can receive.

So where do you take it from here? If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend heading over to this blog post to learn more about what exactly a clientflow is.

And on top of that, Honeybook is the tool that I use to manage every aspect of my clientflow. I personally have used Honeybook for years as my clientflow tool, and I cannot recommend it enough. Not only does it make every step of my process easy as can be, I constantly receive compliments from my clients about how polished and professional it is to walk through on the client end!

You can actually get started with Honeybook completely for free using this referral link. And if you choose to sign up, you can save 35% off of your subscription using my special link!

When you start your free Honeybook trial, you might find these resources helpful, too:

• On the blog: Three ways to use Honeybook to supercharge your client experience
• On the blog: 5 reasons I use Honeybook in my design business
• On the Brand Strategy Podcast: How to use Honeybook to grow your business with Mac Hughes