Choosing the Best Tools for your Business

I know how it happens…How you get sucked in every.single.time that person you admire/follow on socials mentions a new tool. You get sucked into the recommendation, thinking that this could possibly be that unicorn tool that you’ve been secretly hoping for. Only to sign up and you realize it’s either expensive, meeting none of your current business needs or a huge time-suck!

Choosing the right tools for your business is critical for the longevity of your systems and automations. When choosing your systems avoid making your choice based on what is popular and, most importantly, avoid choosing your systems on what seems to be working for “everyone else”.

Don’t get me wrong, other business owners' tool recommendations can be gold! It’s practically impossible to try everything there is available out there yourself. But my advice to you? Only follow tool recommendations to evaluate if it meets your needs according to the below points.

You’re going to want to choose systems based on the answers to these three important questions:

1: What is my budget?

2: What are the tools' features?

3: How can this tool help me to reach my business goals?

Time is your most precious resource - so to avoid wasting it, this will help you streamline which tools to try on and which to pass.

Let's dive a little deeper into these three questions.

What is your budget?

The amount that you spend on tools monthly can add up really FAST! A great practice is to list out all your current tools in a spreadsheet and next to each of them state the amount that you spend on it monthly/annually. For alot of the entrepreneurs I’ve worked with, this was a sobering exercise as they underestimated what was being spent.

Having your current tool expenditure in perspective will help you more easily be able to see whether the new tool is affordable. The last thing you want to do is waste time and resources (i.e. money + team members’ time) building out the new tool, only to realise that it’s unaffordable in the long-term.

What are its features

The features in each tool you use is exceptionally important. It's common practice that on the website of a tool you’ll see the pricing, features and some even have a handy demo walkthrough of what to expect. My favorite way to test a new tool is to sign up for a free account that allows me to poke around and gage the suitability [even if it is only for 7 - 14 days].

Let’s say for example I’m shopping around for a new ESP (email service provider). If I was just starting out I most likely wouldn’t have a big list of contacts and a simple, free tool would meet my needs. The features I would most likely be researching are contact limits, email broadcast limits, email automation availability, and customer support. Also consider if the ESP has got any templates for you to use as well as ease of use.

Keep in the back of your mind as you research whether you currently have any tools that offers those same features.

How can this tool help me to reach my business goals?

This is a point that I dare to say many business owners do not consider when choosing new tools. It’s important that a tool not just meet current business needs, but also match where you envision the business to be in the future, and support you on your journey to getting there.

To expand on our previous example, if you are choosing an ESP and are hoping to add to your team in the next few months, you might prefer many of the notifications to link to or automate to your team slack channel. You would also consider the pricing of the tool as your email list starts to grow so you can predict future expenses.

Ultimately a tool switch requires a bit of research. I would highly recommend that you sign up for the free version if the tool offers this option, but if not and you’re dying to try it, sign up for a month, set a task/calendar reminder to re-evaluate after 3 weeks so you can cancel the subscription without being repeat billed.

A caveat, if your tools/systems are working for you i.e. they’re streamlined, bringing in revenue, meet your current and future business needs - then I would encourage you to not tamper with what is working.

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