How many decisions do you think you've made today?
You decided how you started your day. You’ve decided what to eat and drink. You’ve decided what to wear. You’ve decided what to say, and how to say it. You've also decided to read this blog.
Seems like a lot of decisions when you really think about it, doesn’t it?
Overwhelmingly, the average person makes 35,000 decisions in just one day. Of course, these choices range from conscious to unconscious, and impactful to unimpactful. And each decision leads to a butterfly effect of even more decisions, creating a whole chain reaction of choices which dictate a whole range of potential outcomes. And these are the outcomes shape not only your day, but your life as a whole. No pressure.
Decisions, decisions...
35,000 decisions per day is a lot.
The human brain is constantly sprinting on a never-ending treadmill of both mundane and important decisions. We attach varying levels of importance to our decisions, but of course - the more we’re faced with, the more stressed we become due to the dreaded ‘decision fatigue.’
If you’re a business owner, it’s extremely likely that you’ve experienced decision fatigue before in your lifetime. After all, it’s literally your job to make decisions which dictate how your business is run. And the more pressure there is to make big decisions, the more stressful it can be
Decision fatigue looks like...
- Brain fog
- Lacking willpower
- Inability to make any decisions at all
And we all know how it ends up. We end up rolling around a vicious cycle of stress, burnout, and negative outcomes for your business. That’s because we stop caring about the outcome of our choices, because in the moment, it feels ten times easier to just decide something quickly, simply because we want to eliminate the pressure of deciding.
The outcomes of decision fatigue can be fatal. Carson College of Business puts it nicely as
‘Decision fatigue doesn’t just stop you from making decisions. It can cause you to make bad decisions.’
But luckily, there's a knight in shining armour to make our lives ten times easier. It's a powerful tool can help make our decisions for us, and lessen our heavy workloads.
Enter automation: Your knight in shining armour
Luckily, good old technology has come to our rescue once again. Like everything in the modern world, we’ve developed technology to make our lives easier, and take the pressure off from heavy, stress-inducing decision making.
Logically, the best way to solve decision fatigue is to simply make fewer decisions (Mint, 2019). Automation-integrated CRM systems completely take the pressure off by handling all the tedious (but necessary) little details and processes, which have the ability to efficiently...
- Send automated emails
- Qualify leads
- Update your contacts
- Create and edit audiences
Automation is powerful
The benefits of automation are endless. Think of automation as your most efficient, workaholic employee who never gets tired of making decisions. You can tweak your CRM so that it's completely malleable to the needs of your business too. Edit your tracking settings to prioritise data, communicate with your customers without lifting a finger, and easily manage your schedules. Ultimately, just allow your CRM to be your decision-making aid.
There's no denying, CRMs are cleverer than we are. They don't require coffee to make decisions, and they continue working off the clock. There's a lot of automation tools out there, but at Method, we're pretty huge fans of HubSpot.
Meet HubSpot, your new employee
HubSpot is a CRM which focuses directly on your customer's experience, and puts your audience at the heart of every decision it makes.
It allows you to make customisable email marketing templates for a whole different scenarios and segmented audience groups. This allows you to send automatic email responses, during both the lead up to a purchase, and after a purchase is complete - so the customer is recognised throughout their journey. Essentially, HubSpot cleverly juggles automation with your customers in mind as well as operation. This allows you to fully focus on all of your more important decision making.
CRMs are golden all rounders
To be honest, to fully explain the benefits of implementing a CRM for your business, we'd need as many words as there are digits in Pi. A CRM is just a golden all-rounder, which can carry out a whole range of tasks for your business. Even after you've closed all your tabs and switched off your notifications at the end of the working day, your CRM will continue working regardless.
CRMs don't just nurture your leads. They nurture your business, and your wellbeing. Automation is just one of those simple but extremely powerful features of your CRM. It's a stress-dissolving, 24-hour working, invaluable side kick whose function is to make your life (and you're employees' lives) a hell of a lot easier - so you can focus more specifically on the decisions that actually matter.
