As a creative business owner, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the ins and outs of work. It’s the pile-up of deadlines, constant client emails, and upcoming deliverables that have us tethered to our devices, heads down, laser-focused on our professional lives. We also get to pour so much of our creative souls into our business when we show up to events and sessions, where we flourish and thrive in that creative area, joy is sparked and you feel the full impact of why you do this. But where is the balance? Enter, the CRM solution of your dreams for productivity streamlining, Pixifi.
With Pixifi as your Customer Relationship Management (Photographer CRM) system, you can manage everything in your lead and client workflow journey. Managing your client relationship effectively is one of the biggest pillars of your business. But that doesn’t mean that all your time needs to be invested in fostering this client journey! Pixifi helps by automating so many of these tasks, emails, and bookings that we shouldn’t be manually doing.
No more second-guessing yourself: “Can I maybe squeeze that event in?” or “I was supposed to go to the cottage, but I could postpone it for that photoshoot.” Keep yourself accountable for your availability. Sure, we can always make concessions, but it should be the exception, not the rule. Set defined availability for yourself and staff through calendar syncing and booking pages.
Imagine the wow factor of your client opening their very own client portal all their event details are at their fingertips. This feature not only lets you create an exceptional client experience, it also gives your client ALL their event details in one easy-to-access overview. It reduces the back-and-forth of confirming event deliverables and deadlines.
The best way to help you stick to your word and boundaries is to use templates that you have prewritten, these can be automated into a workflow or sent as a one-off. Use the tokens to personalize the templates so {contact_1_first} and {contact_2_first} feel like their {evt_name} is the most important session in your calendar. At times, some of these emails can be awkward to send out, like late payment reminders, unavailability for their date, client missed the virtual consultation, etc but putting thought into these in advance takes out the awkward feeling when you hit send.
Clarity in your workload helps you avoid all last-minute rushes and lets you pre-emptively allocate resources, outsource, or delegate tasks if your plate is too full. On the flip side, it also helps you to recognize the upcoming free time, which opens up opportunities to fuel your creative side, take a workshop, go to a local market, enjoy a lazy Sunday, and some guilt-free downtime because you’re all caught up on your tasks.
One surefire way to keep accountable to boundaries is to know that your goals are being met and that you’re on target. (and to celebrate that feeling!) Pixifi has you covered with easily customizable dashboards to help you always keep focused on the big picture and enjoy yourself when you are off the clock.
It’s not always easy to separate ourselves from work, drawing boundaries with personal life and professional life can be tough. Using a robust CRM like Pixifi helps us create that balance with the large array of tools and features to automate the administrative side of the business we get to step back and enjoy the creative side.