I hate email.

Who really likes answering emails? You get into work, switch everything on, and right off the bat there’s an inbox full of company memos, check-ins from your line manager, updates from colleagues, reminders for meeting after meeting after meeting…

It’s not a great way to start the day, amiright?

Well – and I am totally going to gloat about this – that’s just not how we roll at Process Street. If you’ve hung around us for five minutes, you’re probably aware that we are Slack superfans here on the Street. All of our company communication happens through Slack, and it’s been life-changing.

I’m not just saying this to stir up envy, though. Being such Slack aficionados, we’ve figured out how to use Slack features to increase productivity, improve collaboration, and just plain make our day-to-day easier.

I’ve broken them down into three easy sections, so no matter your level, you can jump straight to the tips you need – and hey, no one’s gonna judge if you want a little refresher!

• How to use Slack 101: Back to basics
• Taking it to the next level: Slack tips for the already initiated
• Expert tips for the Slack-savvy

Ready to dive in?
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For sales professionals today, only 34% of their time is spent selling.

This begs the question, what are they doing for the remaining 66% of the time?

Sales teams struggling to keep up with data entry, quote generation, and other tasks drag sales reps away from potential leads. As such, 54% are expected to miss their quotas every year.

What you need are optimized sales processes that outline the best sale practices drawing from up-to-date research and findings.

This is where Process Street comes to save the day.

In this article, you’ll find 20 structured sales processes based on industry best practices which you can access for free. Simply click Edit Checklist to add any process to your Process Street account, so you can start supercharging your sales process today!

For a quick taster, check out our MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template below:

Click here to get our MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template!

You can click on the relevant link below to jump to your template of choice.

• The MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template
• Sales Training Process Checklist
• Weekly Sales Prospecting Checklist
• Cold Calling Checklist
• BANT Sales Qualification Call Process
• Sales Presentation Template
• Sales Pitch Planning Checklist
• Closing The Sale Checklist
• Order Processing Checklist
• Monthly Sales Report
• Churn Prevention Checklist
• Cold Email Checklist for Sales
• Company Research Checklist
• High Touch Client Onboarding for SaaS Companies
• Investor Pitch
• Sales Competitive Analysis Checklist
• Sales Forecasting Checklist
• Sales Onboarding Checklist
• Sales Service Handoff Process
• Upselling Process for SaaS Companies

Click on the subheader below to jump to the relevant section, alternatively scroll down to find out all we have to say and perfect your sales processes.

• Sales processes: What they are and why it is important to have established sales processes
• Our top 20 free sales processes
• A quick tour of Process Street and the benefits of using our sales processes

With that said, let’s get started!
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Design is one of those tricky areas of business which some people seem innately good at and others are terrible.

But effective design is crucial to business success.

Here are two key statistics from Adobe which demonstrate how vital design is for your business:

• Design-driven companies have outperformed the S&P Index by 219% over 10 years
• Companies that foster creativity enjoy 1.5x greater market share

In the modern digital arena, customers and users expect excellent design and usability more than ever. Poorly designed websites will put customers off or fail to convert those customers who see past the poor layout. Design thinking is business thinking.

For instance, think of any marketing campaign you’ve run. The choice of the images, the font, the location of your call to action are all defined by thinking in terms of design.

For this reason, in this Process Street article, we give you free access to our top 11 design processes and checklists. Simply click on the links below and be directed to your template of choice.

• Web Design Process
• UX Design Process
• Brand Identity Design
• Header Design
• Engineering Design Process
• Graphic Design Process
• Logo Design Process
• Animation Design Process
• Blog Image Design Process
• Graphic Design Approval Checklist
• Social Media Image Design

Even websites which appear on the surface to be poorly designed, like Craigslist or Reddit, work because the user experience they provide is one that resonates with the user. A solid design creates more than just conversions, it can create brand loyalty too – keeping your customers coming back for more.

Click on the subheader below to navigate to the relevant section in this article. Alternatively, scroll down for a thorough overview of our top 11 design checklists.

• Our top 11 design checklists covering design’s vital areas
• How to create your design processes and checklists using Process Street

Let’s jump to it!
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Understanding quality and seeking to improve it is arguably the core purpose behind undertaking process improvements.

But where did this philosophy of process improvement come from?

One key person is William Edwards Deming – sometimes referred to as Edward W. Deming. He’s principally a statistician, but one could even call him a philosopher of science.

Deming’s goal was to reapply the scientific method to business processes, and has left us with two main variants of his thinking: PDSA and PDCA.

In this article we’ll outline:

• What the Deming cycle is, with its history
• How to apply the Deming cycle to improve your business processes
• The important distinction between PDSA and PDCA
• How PDSA is employed in the medical field

Deming’s approach is not just about improving processes, but about improving a whole business.

In a recent meta-study from the British Medical Journal, researchers found only 2 out of 73 studies had applied PDSA in a way which fully met criteria. Commenting:

To progress the development of the science of improvement, a greater understanding of the use of improvement methods, including PDSA, is essential to draw reliable conclusions about their effectiveness.

And that’s why we’re writing this article!

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🟢✅ Bonus material: SOP Structure Template to help you write perfect procedures

Whether you’re starting a business or trying to improve an existing one, you have to understand how things are going to get done.

What tasks do you need to do? Who needs to do them? What are the best ways to approach these tasks?

Working out how these questions can be answered is the first step toward systemizing your business. The creation of processes and workflows will define the way in which your day to day activities function.

One popular approach to this is the creation of standard operating procedures. The simple definition provided by IBM for standard operating procedures is:

…a set of instructions that describes all the relevant steps and activities of a process or procedure.

Simple.

But how do we create these SOPs? What we need are standard operating procedures for creating standard operating procedures – and some standard operating procedure software. And that’s what we’re going to give you.

We’ll look at:

• How to create a set of standard operating procedures
• Some advanced techniques for improving your SOPs
• Why Process Street is a useful tool for both mapping and following your standard operating procedures

Read through these sections to get clued up:

• Use Process Street to manage your standard operating procedures
• Writing standard operating procedures: a quick how-to guide
• Step 1: Understand how you are going to present your SOPs
• Step 2: Gather the relevant stakeholders
• Step 3: Work out your purpose
• Step 4: Determine the structure of your SOP
• Step 5: Prepare the scope of the procedure
• Step 6: Use a consistent style
• Step 7: Use correct notation, if applicable
• Step 8: Work out all the necessary steps of the process
• Step 9: Try to assess potential problems in the process
• Step 10: Determine metrics against which the SOPs can be judged
• Step 11: Test the process
• Step 12: Send the process to superiors
• Step 13: Clarify the method of optimizing the process
• Step 14: Run a risk assessment on your process
• Step 15: Consider creating a flow diagram
• Step 16: Finalize and implement the SOPs
• Examples of Process Street’s fully-written and usable SOPs
• Ensure your SOPs adhere to ISO standards

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🟢✅ Bonus material: The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Automation

Writing standard operating procedures is a cumbersome task but a serious requirement for businesses the world over.

In many industries it is important to have documentation which shows you have been adhering to ISO guidelines. This can help you clinch major clients and demonstrate your professionalism.

However, when you’re starting out with your first SOPs it can be difficult to know where to begin.

That’s why we’ve pulled together a range of the best free SOP templates for you to work from.

Simply go through the available SOPs below and pick out the one best suited to your needs. We’ve included Microsoft Word templates and Process Street ones too. You’ll also find a guide for writing SOPs to help you get started.

Given that it can be intimidating writing standard operating procedures, we have provided a number of industry-specific examples plus suggestions for how you can pull together basic SOPs even if they’re not documented according to ISO standards.

Read through the following sections to get completely clued up:

• Use Process Street to manage your standard operating procedures
• Our Process Street SOP template for creating procedures
• Writing standard operating procedures in 16 steps
• Using Process Street for your SOPs
• Process Street SOP templates for every industry and sector
• Use one of these Word templates to build your SOPs from
• More NHS standard operating procedure templates
• Risk assessment templates to review your procedures
• Pick the right template and get started

Let’s dive in.

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This is a guest article by Alexa Lemzy – customer support manager and blog author at TextMagic, a bulk SMS solution for business. She helps businesses take advantage of mobile and spends hours reading tons of content about customer retention and business workflows.

Modern consumers are used to having the option to contact businesses on social media and other public forums as well as traditional contact methods. What’s more, customers are sharing their opinions and interactions across the internet and social media more than ever. Today, customer service is a major part of your brand image.

This has blurred the lines between marketing and customer service. Consumers want your business to be consistent from marketing and sales to customer support.

Great customer service is also an effective form of marketing, keeping existing users loyal and attracting new leads.

Strengthening the relationship between marketing and customer service can have a big impact on customer satisfaction. By creating processes for collaboration and feedback, you can increase retention while attracting new clients.

In this article for Process Street, we’re going to look at a series of factors which you have to get right to provide a unified marketing and customer service strategy:

• Customer service reps act as brand ambassadors
• Bring customer support into your social media strategy
• Gain product marketing insights from customer service integration
• Excellent customer service is an underrated marketing channel
• Holistic approaches to customer interactions means consistent communication
• Keep customer service in the loop with marketing promotions
• Better inform your audience personas
• Get content ideas and inspiration direct from customer needs
• Understand whether you’re setting the right expectations
• Improve your customer service strategy with Process Street

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This is a guest post from Diane H. Wong; a web developer who specialises in marketing and enjoys sharing her knowledge with others. She has her own column at Do My Writing.

The primary goal of every business is revenue. It’s therefore reasonable to say that the goal of every website is more conversions, leads, sales, or whatever action you want your visitors to take.

To get more action from your visitors, you need to make frequent changes aimed at increasing the effectiveness of your website and all its elements. You may consider using a website builder because you can continuously change and improve the design and functionality of your site.

It’s normal to be wary of making changes so you don’t switch the wrong button and hurt your website more instead.

Good news is, there are proven ways to play safe and still grow. Conversion optimization has its safe playing too that is, those practices that have been tested and proven to work generally.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at:

• Our free conversion rate and website optimization process template
• Actionable ways to optimize your website for increased conversion rate
• Basic conversion rate optimization mistakes to avoid
• 2 bonus marketing strategies to increase your conversion rate
• Increase your conversion rate with Process Street

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This is a guest post from Mile Živković, a content writer and work-life balance expert at Chanty – a simple and AI-powered Slack alternative. When Mile isn’t busy writing epic posts on productivity, work-life balance and time management for Chanty blog, he’s probably driving somewhere. His hobbies include cars (huge fan of Alfa Romeo), photography and collecting pocket knives. You can catch him on LinkedIn.

What do you do when there’s work to be done, email communication simply doesn’t cut it anymore and tapping your colleagues on the shoulder is not the ideal solution for communicating in the office?

You use a chat app to collaborate with your team.

With email becoming clunky and outdated and the need for rapid, instant communication at work, the market for team chat apps is ever-growing.

However, with so many options out there, making the right choice can seem impossible. Pricing, the number of users, integrations, searchable history, these are all elements to consider when making a choice for your team.

To make the process a bit easier, we’ve singled out some of the best team chat apps out there with our honest feedback. These are some of the best workplace chat apps out there and we hope we’ll make it easier on you to make a good choice. Let’s dig in!

Team chat apps: The quicklinks!

• Slack
• Chanty
• Typetalk
• Flock
• Fleep
• Microsoft Teams
• Ryver
• Glip
• Process Street

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Process Street is a 100% remote company. We have been from day one.

But our CEO Vinay Patankar has been remote longer than that. Process Street is Vinay’s third remote company, meaning 10 years of running companies remotely.

At the time of writing, we have around 50 employees across multiple continents and it’s working so well for us that we’ve just sealed our Series A funding round from Accel, Atlassian, and Salesforce Ventures.

We thought now would be a good time to do a deep dive into Vinay’s thoughts on remote work and why his experience of it has kept him remote.

For this Process Street article, we sat down with Vinay to ask him 4 key questions, which we’ve provided links to below:

• Were you distributed from day one?
• How many employees do you have and in how many countries?
• What are the biggest challenges of having a distributed team?
• What are the biggest advantages?

Vinay has also produced a short video series of key things to learn when working in or running a remote team. You can check these videos out in the section below: Continue Reading