How to Actually Utilize Your Team for Increased Productivity & Passion

Wondering how to utilize your team better? Dreaming of increased productivity, a team that engages in incredible time management, with more passion for what they do?

The answer is all about creating structure and utilizing your team in a way that makes sense to them so everyone understands WHO is doing WHAT by WHEN.

The most productive, profitable, and happiest teams are the ones that have good, clear structure. Effective teamwork takes planning and orchestration of team member strengths and team collaboration. It also needs effective team management and structure. All to often businesses spread out tasks but don’t actually utilize their team well.

Here are some tips on creating high-performing teams, to reduce employee turnover and create greater profitability, productivity, and greater passion.

#1: Get Clear on the Team Structure for Intake and Sales.

Vital to every business is the need to bring clients in the door and set the expectation in the client’s mind that they’re in the right place and that they’ve got the right team to help them. It is also a time to gather information such as: Do we want this client?

Orchestrating both the pre-conditioning and the pre-screening requires an atmosphere of trust where effective team management is crucial. Often you have a receptionist answering the phone for the initial touch, then you have a client intake who can engage in active listening to gather information and triage, is this something we can help with and is this the right type of client that we want?

In the meantime, this strong team must have exceptional customer service skills to coordinate the hand off to your Client Engagement Specialist. This is the person who will truly engage to ascertain the client’s needs, goals, and help them understand how our team can help them reach those goals.

All of these steps can happen fast so successful teamwork and effective collaboration is vital. This can all happen smoothly with good intake and sales systems to help the team have clarity on what they should do each step of the way.

#2: Get Clear on the Team Structure for Onboarding the Client.  

Orchestrating the Client Experience is vital and a lot of people don’t take into consideration the collaboration between team members. I love automations, and I love emails that automatically gather information and forms, but remember, this stage is all about building human to human relationships.

So we want to make sure that there is collaboration among team members and clarity on individual roles and action items. Again, by breaking down the systems into WHO shall do WHAT by WHEN for each step you create the efficient teams and organizational success.

• Administratively. What’s happening behind the scenes? IS there a file to be opened? What data needs to be obtained? Who is organizing the information.
• Financially: What payments need to be attained? Are there future payments? Invoices that need to be sent? Reconciliations that need to take place?
• Delivery of Services: What information needs to be conveyed through to your service delivery team? Is there a Client Liaison to keep the client informed as they are transferred over to the next team members?

Effective team leaders build trust by having clear organizational goals and individual tasks by role so the team structure is clear. This also goes a long way in how to fully utilize your team to their best.

#3: Get Clear on the Team Structure for Delivery of Services.

Next, we need to make sure that the services delivery team has clarity of WHO shall do WHAT by WHEN. This means a project manager of sorts needs to convey to them in real time what is the service that we have now promised to deliver? What did they pay for? What is the scope of the service that we’re doing for this person?

The conveying and the receiving of information is vital for effective teamwork. In my legal world, it was our legal assistant who then works with the associate and the paralegal to convey the scope of work. Whichever format you engage in, identify the key roles of everyone on the team. This allows clarity on how to best service the client. It also allows team members to work in their zones of genius. This is key for high-performing teams.

Another vital element in this phase is to insist on a team discussion of goals. Always, always, always have clarity on what are we trying to accomplish to help the client forward on a path to success.

So get clear on your team structure and the daily tasks for each person. I know on the legal team side, we had it all laid out for each position. What are the tasks that the attorney does? Which tasks are the paralegals domain? What does the legal assistant do? Break it all down so you have a workflow and a workload that’s going to help you there. (By the way, we have an amazing workflow and workloads boot camp for anyone that’s at that level and ready to dive in and streamline and create efficiencies for the entire business!)

#4: Get Clear on Getting Paid. 

Finally, craft a clear process related to money coming in the door. Who is making sure to run the credit card or get the money? Who steps in if the credit card or the money bounces or there’s insufficient funds? And who is reaching out to the client and making amends or figuring out what the next step is? Job satisfaction comes from having clarity of the consistent actions in the day-to-day operations so there is greater confidence and pleasure in doing a great job each and every day.

And don’t forget the customer satisfaction elements. Who is going to manage it if there’s a problem? Who is going to make sure that we’re going to communicate this to the client? Get it resolved. So again, you want to utilize your team with very specific elements and tasks. (This is why we love helping clients onboard Billing Clerks and Bookkeepers, helping them onboard, Marketing Assistants and Intake Specialists so that everyone that’s coming in knows exactly what their job is. They can step in, start being productive, and do a great job.)

So there you go. Whether you work with virtual teams and remote employees, or a physical team that can have an in-person team meetings build a positive team culture. Build a culture focused on effective communication . A culture which creates a sense of unity by laying out each person’s role. An environment where each team member’s strengths help increase productivity. This is a culture which creates happiness for everyone.

If you need help with building out your team, learning how to better utilize your team, crafting business processes, creating collaboration among team members, or learning to utilize each position to its fullest, let us know. We’d be happy to help. We have plenty of systems, packages, and coaches that can jump in, help you craft what works for you.