We talked for years about how HoneyBook can change your business. Not only can you collect more leads with HoneyBook contact forms and questionnaires, but you can convert clients and customers faster, too.
We’ve shared tips on how to pull that off — but today, we want to give you an inside look into our HoneyBook client workflow. As a HoneyBook Pro, I (Kristi) have a lot of tips and tricks on how to optimize your automations, but it’s helpful to see what we’ve done to make HoneyBook work for us.
This way, you can see how we use this really robust tool to make our lives and our client’s lives easier.
While some of you may have various “lead collection” touchpoints, i.e. a lead magnet, a discovery call link, and a contact form, we have just one main touchpoint.
This allows us to optimize that lead collection touch point and make it really work the way we want. Enter the contact form on our website.
S
omeone interested in working with us would fill out this form and select an option from the “What type of project are you looking for?” dropdown.
Depending on what someone selects, it triggers an automation. Let’s say someone inquires about a HoneyBook Setup.
Once they submit the form, they’ll receive an automatic message that says:
This way, the person knows what to expect and they have an instant message in their inbox — no wondering if it went through or when we’ll be in touch. (This is huge in terms of client experience and winning someone over from the start.)
Plus, as a business, it takes the pressure off us to constantly be monitoring leads and replying. (We all know our inboxes are a hot mess as is, this is one great way to reduce that.)
This is where we deviate from many HoneyBook workflows. Instead of automatically sending our HoneyBook build brochure to this person, we actually have a step where we review the form responses and look into their business a bit.
We get notified that someone has inquired, and we’ve set up simple trigger that says “wait for my approval.”
Once we approve the form, the automation rolls on.
Of course, you can always set your HoneyBook automation up to send the information right away — this is what many people do, including photographers and service providers.
When we send the brochure, it comes with an email like this:
We love a good personal touch, and we love to use language from their inquiry form to make it really clear that we read their form and we are listening.
Of course, you can always create your template to be somewhat general based on your packages. Not everything needs to be personalized.
After that initial “Send Brochure” email, we have a series of three follow-up emails, two designed to get them to schedule a call.
Our last follow-up looks like this, and basically acknowledges that the HoneyBook build might not be right for them, but we do have other offers.
I have ALL of these marked as “Approve before sending” so they won’t automatically go out to the client. This way, you’re not bombarding anyone if they’ve replied to your messages and you’ve still got that personal touch.
As mentioned above, we have a series of follow-up emails after someone inquires. We used to stop it there — but now we’ve added 3- and 6-month follow-up messages. And friends… this is a game-changer!
Instead of archiving leads, we put them into an automation that creates tasks for 3- and 6-month check-ins.
If they don’t reply or book from here, they get moved to our archived leads. If they do decide to book a call, though, with our HoneyBook Scheduler we then move them to the stage "Booked Call".
This has re-engaged so many “lost” leads — and is such an easy step for us. We don’t have to manually track who inquired when. HoneyBook does it all, and the 3- and 6-month follow-ups help cold leads feel cared for.
It’s a win-win.
Let’s say someone inquired about our HoneyBook build. We went through their form and felt that it was a good fit, so we sent them an email to book a call. They booked it and we got on the call.
We hit it off and we decide to move forward. What’s next? This is where HoneyBook also shines — we can send a proposal in about 30 seconds (for real) after a discovery call.
All we have to do is go to the lead’s project, hit “Create New,” and go to proposals.
We have a selection of proposals pre-built into HoneyBook and we select the one relevant to them (in this case, that’s our HoneyBook build proposal).
Once they accept the proposal, it automatically sends them to sign the contract and pay the invoice. We have this automation “stacked” so everything goes out as soon as one step is completed.
Once they pay their invoice, we send them a welcome email that lets them know what to expect next.
Sometimes, leads need time to think about the proposal and costs. Instead of chewing your nails and waiting for them to say they’re ready, there’s an automation for this!
You can create proposal follow-ups inside HoneyBook that remind people (gently) that they need to accept their proposal to move forward!
For DaSilva Life, we have three reminders.
If they don’t accept the proposal after a week, we then finally archive them.
P.S. by archiving a project, it also deactivates all of the client files so they no longer have access to them.
Congrats, your lead turned into a paying client. Hurrah! Now what?
For us, this is where Zapier takes over! Zapier is a non-negotiable tool in our client booking workflow. I don’t know what we’d do without it.
Zapier creates everything we need inside our other systems — like Google Drive, ClickUp, etc. Below is our actual Zapier “triggers.”
While we could have task templates to do this inside ClickUp, having Zapier do it automatically means that nobody has to create these files or documents themselves.
From here, we move from client booking to client delivery — which is a whole other can of worms! Check out our resources on client management inside ClickUp to see what happens next.
While everything we’ve just shared seems like it’s perfectly organized and aligned with how our clients want to work with us, it did take a while for us to find this flow!
Your own client booking workflow will not be the same one you have in a few months or a few years down the road. There is trial and error involved! Your clients’ needs will change, you may grow a team, or industry standards may change. It’s OK to change things inside this workflow to make them fit for you and your clients.
The key is to familiarize yourself with how HoneyBook works so you can make those updates as seamless as possible in the future.
HoneyBook makes so much possible — including attracting more leads and turning them into paying clients and customers. Once you’ve set HoneyBook up, it can do the work for you.
Of course, you might be thinking: That’s a lot of steps and automations. That’s true, but it’s not complicated. HoneyBook makes it really easy to start doing this.
If you really want to optimize your HoneyBook with less learning curve, we can help you with that. Inside Systems School, we have our HoneyBook Course for those who want to learn how to do it themselves.
Inside the HoneyBook Course, you get:
GRAB OUR HONEYBOOK COURSE FOR JUST $497
We also have custom HoneyBook builds (we just walked you through our workflow!), where we can take your workflows and build them for you. We’ll create everything from your inquiry form to your proposals, follow-up sequences, and more.
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