In this episode, Susan Fennema, CEO of Beyond the Chaos, joins Chynna Morgan of Vidlo to share practical insights on project closure and client testimonial strategies. They discuss how to wrap up projects smoothly, reinforce value for clients, and collect impactful testimonials that build credibility and fuel future growth.
Please find the full video transcript below…
Introductions
Chynna Morgan: I am super excited to have you join us today because I’m ready to talk about things, all operations, how to close a project, and also how to capture a video testimonial once that project is complete. Hi, you guys. My name is Chynna Morgan. I’m the founder of Vidlo, and I want to introduce Susan. If you’re able to give us some background about yourself, that would be amazing.
Susan Fennema: Sure. I’m Susan Fennema. I am the chaos-eradicating officer, that’s CEO, of Beyond the Chaos. We help small business owners get out of the day-to-day of their business operations to help them actually get that freedom back, maybe take a vacation, or be able to sit back and scale and grow their business too, because they can focus on the important things instead of the day-to-day ups, which I know we’re going to talk about here in a second.
Operations: Definition and Utilization
Chynna: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you know what? The reason why I was so excited is because I think a lot of people don’t realize how important operations is to their business, what that looks like, or what that even is. So if you can explain that, what is operations, and how does a business utilize that to streamline everything?
Susan: Sure. So the operations of a business is what you do to make things happen. So it is how you execute. It includes people, it includes process, it includes software, it includes the way you deliver things to your client, and the way information and a product moves through your company. And that product could be a physical thing, or it could be some sort of a project that is more of a service delivery.
Chynna: Okay. Okay. So operations, how does that kind of sync with a project closure? So when we talk about a project closure, what is that, and how does operations even sink into all of that?
Susan: So I think one of the things that we find a lot when we get in with our clients is that they have projects that never end because they haven’t been clear on what is the final deliverable, what is the final step in the process. And then when you reach that, how do you actually off-board a client or maybe even pull them back in to get more work out of them? Or if you’re a one-and-done type, you sold a product, how do you get a review? How do you get a video testimonial? How do you get something that helps with your marketing for future clients? So it can either be to help repeat a client, it can be to help find a new client. How you end the project is important.
Other thing to remember is that if you’re not somehow ending your project, your client’s not getting the value. So if you’re not delivering what they expected you to deliver on time, on budget, within scope, then your project can go on forever. You won’t have money. They’ll be mad. That can go on and on. So, how you build that process and structure to make sure you finish on time and on budget, that’s when a project manager gets involved and is helping to facilitate the flow of that work.
Chynna: Got it. So let me back up a little bit. Because when you first started, you said a lot of times, brands they don’t come in with the idea of what is a project culture, right?
Susan: Yeah.
Chynna: So they’re not even setting themselves up for success. Would you say that’s correct?
Susan: Right. So knowing the outcome, what the deliverable is, and the date it’s due is the very first part. We find some clients write proposals that are somewhat vague.
Chynna: Okay.
Project Management
Susan: So if you’re starting a project with a vague proposal, that isn’t clear on that, it’s going to be very hard to finish it, because even in a well-defined project, things come up, and people change their mind and people want to do something different because they’ve seen part of the outcome and maybe it didn’t look like what they expected. So as things go along, they’re constantly looking at scope and timing and money in a project to decide, “Okay, client, you’re changing your mind. Now, if you do this, it’s going to cost X dollars and take X more time. Is that what you want to do?” That’s good project management. Right?
Chynna: Right.
Susan: Bad project management is when those questions aren’t asked, and all of it becomes a surprise that it takes an extra three months and costs an extra 10 grand. Those are all things that should be being communicated as you’re going along, but if you don’t have that clear deliverable and that clear deadline when you start, there’s nothing to measure that against. So it’s all just this vague, “Okay, when everybody’s happy,” which is probably going to be nobody’s happy.
Chynna: And then you have customers, your team’s unhappy because you’re not getting paid the way you should. It’s just everything turns into a mess. So with that being said, what are some tips that brands can implement in the beginning? How should the beginning look like when you’re getting on a project? How should you streamline how that project closure should be? What are some tips that people can adopt into their strategy?
Susan: So knowing the outcome of what your company wants is important. So if I’m a company delivering the product or the project, what do I want in the end? Do I need a piece of art or a new ad for my portfolio? Do I need a great Yelp review so that people come back to my restaurant? That’s also a project, by the way, right?
Chynna: Oh, is it?
Susan: Serving someone in your restaurant could be defined as a project if you have some clear process to make a start, a beginning, and an end. You also want to know, “Okay, well, we want to be financially profitable.” Right? So what had to go into that? Is it the hours of the people that are working on it? Is it materials that you have to acquire? What are the things involved in the project that you need to cover costs for in order for you to make a profit? So, two things right off the bat that the company wants, but then also you want to deliver value to the customer that’s coming in. So, what are you doing to delight them along the way so that you can get that final outcome that loops back to marketing to get you more clients?
Chynna: And that’s what it’s all about, right?
Susan: Right. That’s totally what it’s all about, is knowing what you want at the beginning, and then you want to plot through how to get there. So every project, every product, process of getting to the final deliverable is going to be different based on the company, based on are you delivering a custom software product? Or are you serving someone in a restaurant? Or are you printing something and shipping it to them? All of those are going to have very different steps, very different people involved.
Chynna: Got it.
Susan: For that part of it, I suggest get a good project management tool, get a good project manager, build your process so that it’s repeatable.
Streamlining Your Business
Chynna: One other thing I want to touch on is I think people think it’s so hard, operations. The easy part is when you have it, when you streamline, it makes everything so simple and easy, and you’ll be so thankful that you hired a project manager and that you streamline this whole process.
Susan: Yeah, I think you’re dead on right, because it’s very, very hard when it is not set up properly and when it is not being run. When operations is working, you don’t even know it’s there.
Chynna: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Susan: It’s just how things go. It just works.
Project Closure
Chynna: It just works. It’s magic. It’s like, what’s going on? I wanted to touch on, we went to streamline the operations, and you kind of streamlined the project closures, how it’s going to happen. Give me some successful stories with it. What is the ROI of streamlining project closures?
Susan: Sure. So one is, you end the project so that your team and the client team knows it’s over. That’s an important thing to note.
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: Hey, we’re done. Which also say you’re doing something like, say, you’re writing, you’re a copywriter, and you’ve written a piece for this client. Maybe you’ve made a couple of revisions. At some point, ending it tells them, “Okay, now if you want more revisions, you’re going to have to pay for it,” kind of thing. So one is making sure all parties involved know it’s over. That is your client, and that’s your internal staff, too, so that they’re not devoting time to something that shouldn’t be ongoing.
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: The other is all of those things that you have to do when something ends.
- You need to close the project in your project management tool.
- You need to maybe make sure that you have information, specific information on your client in your database.
- You might need to, in your CRM, change them from being called a client to a former client, or however your lists…
If you have lists that you’re marketing with, you want to make sure that everybody is classified properly. You probably want to make sure that you’re running numbers on the project. Was it profitable? Are you doing, we call it an AAR, an after-action review? Are you doing that as part of the process so that the whole team gets together, talks about what went right, what went wrong, anything we learned that we could do in the future to be better or to prevent a problem? Sometimes it’s preventing a problem. Sometimes it’s saying, “That worked. Let’s make sure we do it.”
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: Evaluating how that might affect your process. Are we going to change the way that we do business because wow, if only we had asked this question three months ago, we would’ve prevented all these problems. Okay, can we add that question into our process so that it never comes up again? If you’re being paid on a retainer where it’s a recurring charge, who’s canceling that so they don’t automatically get charged again? All of those steps are involved, and there’s many more, in closing out a client and/or a client’s project. So those could be two separate things, too. Right?
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: But then also, what are you doing to get your marketing material that you need? Are you:
- Asking for a referral to another client?
- Asking for a testimonial that you could print somewhere?
- Asking them to do a video testimonial? Because we have these tools now that let you do that.
The Importance of Feedback
Chynna: I was getting super excited as you were talking because I think it all comes back to feedback. Right?
Susan: Mm-hmm.
Chynna: You want feedback, whether it’s internal feedback or feedback from your client, on how it went, what would you do better, what else would they like to see. Once you get that testimonial, that’s something you can amplify once the project is successful. Now, I do want to ask the audience a question is have you guys captured video testimonials before from a project? Maybe a project was ending, maybe you still have a client, and you wanted to capture testimonials. You guys can do your mic and let me know. Let me know if you guys are currently capturing testimonials for your brand.
Chris: So, the projects that we work on are mostly internal within a large organization. So we’re not necessarily capturing video testimonials, but we do a lessons learned and conduct an executive review and publish. Here’s what the project definition was, here’s the goal, here’s what we set out to do, and here’s what we got, here’s the actions we took, et cetera. We don’t necessarily record a video of that, but we try to define what we got out of it and celebrate the success in every case.
Chynna: Awesome.
Susan: I would suggest, too, Chris, in that process, you do have internal clients, right?
Chris: Yep.
Susan: You are doing projects to satisfy people in other departments or that kind of thing. So asking for their feedback somehow would be an important part of that. Could there have been better communication? Did they get what they were expecting? Did it work the way they were expecting? That could very much help your team, too. Even though you already have some of those steps in place, that could be an added benefit.
Chris: Yeah, no, that’s a great idea.
Chynna: That’s a good point, Susan. I also think that capturing testimonials or even video testimonials internally, seeing the real reactions of feedback, of emotions of what happened, I think, is beneficial to any team. So it doesn’t always have to be for marketing and social media, and your website. A lot of times, it’s great just for your internal feedback in your team as well. It’s asking those specific questions around what was happening.
Vidlo & What It Can Do
But I guess I’ll give you a little feedback, a little background about what we do, and then I want to ask Susan a couple more questions about how to streamline that. So my company is called Vidlo, and what we do is we work with brands to capture video testimonials internally or for your clients and your customers.
So you create a campaign and you send it out, and you send it out because you really want to get the feedback that you can use to sharpen up your operations, to capture feedback, but also, how can we use this video to amplify your marketing and get you more customers? Everyone wants more sales, right? So how do we get your employees talking? How do we get your clients talking about how much they love your brand in a way that gets other people aware of what you do, and they want to acquire your brand for your skills as well?
The Benefits of Video Testimonials
Chynna: So I have another question for Susan. When a project is closing, we’re done with the project, we streamlined the operations for a project, how beneficial do you think video testimonials are at the end of a project?
Susan: If you’re serving outside clients, I definitely think that it is a huge thing. I mean, one of the things we want is a case study on all of our clients. One of the things that we offer is, “Okay, we meet on the Zoom. It’s just like this. I ask you a lot of questions, we record it.” Then we’ll write from it. We’ll pull snippets out and all of that.
But some people don’t want to invest that time. They’re very willing to be an evangelist for you, but that’s just a lot. Or they don’t know the right words to say. How do I say it right? Sometimes, if you just give them this easy way of making a quick little video of what they want to say, it gets you almost more truthful information, and it is more likely to get you the information. I believe, Chynna, tell me if this is right or not, you also can do audio-only on Vidlo, right?
Chynna: No. So we don’t do audio. That’s a feature that’s coming.
Susan: You don’t? Okay.
Chynna: We don’t do audio. So it’s all video-based.
Susan: Okay. But they can turn off their video if they want?
Chynna: They can turn off their video.
Susan: If they’re all nervous about how they look or something, right? If that’s the stopper.
Streamlining Client Feedback
Chynna: Yeah. But you know what? As it goes to operations, it is how do you streamline it? How do you streamline that? It’s asking them very thoughtful questions. So they don’t really have to do all of the thinking, they know exactly how they’re going to answer, and there’s not a lot of time for them to be thinking about “How do I say this? How should I say that?” I think that’s how you streamline it, is by giving them a link, giving them a direct question, and having them answer that question that syncs to you automatically, right?
Susan: Absolutely. If you’re finding that people are still hesitant because maybe they don’t want to be put on the spot, put as part of your process that you will send the questions via email in advance, so they know what to expect. That’s part of your closeout process, right? Ask them to do it. Here are the questions. Hey, next week I’m going to send you a link.
Chynna: Got it. That was going to be my next question for you is how do brands, what does that look like when they want it? They have a successful project, and now they want to capture reviews, feedback, or video testimonials around that project. You already gave us one example, is sending an email at the end. What are some other ways that they can leverage a successful project closure?
Susan: So if part of your process is that you meet with your client at the end to close out the process, you can point-blank ask them, straight up ask. I mean, stop being afraid, y’all. If you’re doing a good job of delivering, most people are very happy to want to talk about it. They might not know the level of effort. So telling them it’s simple, telling them it’s easy, that’s important. Also, communicate with them the way that you’ve been communicating the whole time. So if your company texts everybody, then text them the information, don’t email it to them.
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: So, all of those in the process of closing out your project need to be steps in a template because no one can remember all this. Right?
Chynna: Okay.
Breaking Down The Steps
Susan: If you want to ask for the video first and send the questions, then that needs to be a step that then has five days later, that you send them the link and ask again. And then maybe you have another step a week or two weeks later to say, “Hey, have you had time to do this yet?” Or even a better question, “What do you think about doing this?” See if you can get an objection from them so that you can say, “Oh no, it’s so easy. Did you try it?” And give them a little coaxing. If you hear silence, it’s also probably, “Okay, let’s just close it out.” Maybe they weren’t that happy, or maybe they’re just done and moving on. You also don’t want to beat them over the head with it. Right?
Chynna: Yeah, yeah.
Susan: So, a reasonable amount of following up is not bad, but not asking at all guarantees you don’t get it
Chynna: You don’t get the gems, right?
Susan: Right.
Chynna: You don’t get the gems. You can supercharge your marketing.
How To Leverage Client Testimonials For Marketing
Chynna: So we ended the project, we’re asking a client about testimonials, so we can get some feedback. So how does the brand leverage that video testimonial once you’ve received it? How do we use it for client acquisition? How do we use it to increase our sales and our brand awareness?
Susan: So now we have a new project, it’s a new internal project that’s about using this testimonial, and you’re going to break it up based on how your team communicates to the world. How are you marketing? Do you have a whole sales team? If you have a whole sales team, maybe sharing the best ones with them that they can push out to their prospects, that is a great way to use it. Put it on your website. You want those on your website, a client success page, or something like that, that you can drive people to and that your sales department also knows.
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: So part of getting that information back to you is, of course, communicating with sales and with marketing to make sure that they both know what you have. And then with marketing, where are we going to put it? Are we going to put it on social media? Do we have a YouTube page? Does it need to go there? Does it go into a series of testimonials that now we need to add this new one onto the end? There are a bunch of different ways to use them.
The other is too, do we want to clip it out? Is there a sentence or a paragraph worth of information that was so right dead on of the message that we’re trying to send out that we want to do that? The other also is making sure you’re asking permission if you’re using it in all these ways. Make sure you’re asking permission of your client to use their image and their words that way.
Chynna: You guys, there’s a way to streamline that, is by using a tool, like a tool that we’ve built, it streamlines that automatically. So as soon as they create the content, they’re giving you permission to use for marketing.
Susan: That’s a nice kind of process.
Chynna: That’s all operations, right?
Susan: Right.
Chynna: That’s all operations.
How To Leverage Client Testimonials Internally
Chynna: Now, another question to that is, if I have a brand and we wanted to use it for internal feedback, the testimonial, what does that look like for a team as well?
Susan: So that could be used internally to make your case if you’re a department that needs funding from someone and you’re able to say, “Hey, look, we’re serving people well. This is what they say. We need more money because we need to do more of that. Allocate us more.” That’s one way. The other is if you are struggling with a specific department. I know departments in big companies always are challenged in communication between other departments. It becomes an us-and-them kind of thing instead of a we.
Chynna: Okay.
Susan: So if you’re able to say, “Look, we are helping these people. Look what they’re saying. I hear you saying it’s not making you happy. So how do we align these things? What do we need to do differently when we’re working with the finance department than we do when we’re working with the creative department?” I would tell you that those two would be very dramatically different, how you’re interacting with them. So you might get very different feedback from those two departments. One might love how you’re talking to them, and the other might say, “You’re not giving me anything of value because you’re not listening the right way.” So taking that information and pulling it into your process of how you’re communicating helps too. And that helps everybody, and the big we helps everyone deliver overall better.
Chynna: What I loved about the conversation is that I feel like when you are streamlining operations, it’s all about feedback. Whether you’re getting testimonials, whether you’re getting written feedback, because it’s all kind of like A/B testing to make sure to streamline what works the best. So I think if anyone can take that away, is that whether or not you’re getting testimonials from your clients. Operations is feedback. It’s a big testimonial, right? And it’s kind of-
Susan: Yeah, it’s constant. So whether it’s from your internal staff, whether it’s from the external client, the information that you’re getting shapes how you do the work. So you’re updating a process or you’re updating a checklist based on that information. And if you’re not getting it, you’re just losing that opportunity.
Chynna: Yeah. What else are you losing? You’re losing marketing, you’re losing client equity. Because if you can’t close a project, how do you expect to acquire the customers and close them? You’re never going to get the ROI out of it. Do you guys have any questions so far for Susan? Anyone want to chime in? Any questions? Not yet.
Chris: Not at the moment. I’ve got to drop off here in a minute, but thank you guys for your time. I appreciate it.
Chynna: No problem. No problem.
Susan: Thanks, Chris.
Streamlining Operations Solo
Chynna: One last question I have for Susan is, if I’m a small business and I don’t have the marketing or the budget to hire a project manager, what are three ways that I could streamline operations myself?
Susan: All right. One, if you are small, project management should be one of the first things that you want off your plate because the details of that very much take away from your ability to focus on growing your business. That is a busy, reactive job. So look for potentially a fractional person. You don’t have to hire full-time to come help you do that.
The other thing is, start documenting what’s in your head. Many small businesses are taxed by the information being in the owner’s head, and it doesn’t get out. So the owner starts thinking, “Why can’t anyone do their job right?” And everybody’s thinking, “I don’t know what you want. I don’t know how to give you… I don’t know how to meet your expectation. I’m trying.” So it ends up being a battle instead of just something that could be smooth. So document your processes.
Efficiency Amplified: Driving Business Value
Susan: You want to know how? I wrote a book about it.
Chynna: Yes. Yes. Terrific book. Please tell us about the book.
Susan: Let me see if I can focus that.
Chynna: There we go. Right there.
Susan: Efficiency Amplified: Driving Business Value is a walk for a small business owner of how to set up your business so that you are process-driven, that you have your processes documented. So that can help you if you’re trying to do it yourself. The third thing I would say is make sure you have a project management tool. Don’t try to be doing your projects through email or Slack, or text. You need a project management tool so that you can build schedules, hold people accountable, and make sure that you’re meeting your end goals.
Susan’s Favorite Tools
Chynna: So, if you could leave us with a gem, what would be some of your favorite tools that we should sign up for today that would help us and change our lives right away?
Susan: Favorite tools. I can tell you a bank of tools that, if you use them together, they will probably make your business sing.
Chynna: Okay.
HubSpot
Susan: Every business should have a CRM. I recommend HubSpot. Some people think, “Oh, it’s so expensive,” but actually, there are free versions of it. So you can use it for free until you grow enough to want to buy in.
Chynna: Okay.
Teamwork.com
Susan: My favorite software program for project management is Teamwork.com. It does task management, budget management, workload management. If you’re an internal team and you don’t need budgets, you might look at ClickUp because you can set that one up, and it has more free options. But if you’re serving outside clients, Teamwork.com.
Slack
And then make sure you have a communication tool. I am a huge fan of Slack. Especially running a virtual business like I do, if I didn’t have Slack, I don’t even know how we would make this go.
Chynna: Survive?
Susan: Yeah.
Chynna: Yeah, yeah.
Susan: So those would be the three main areas and my three favorite tools.
Why Operations Are Crucial For Success
Chynna: Got it. If you had to leave the audience with something today about why operations is so crucial to the success of their company, what would you leave us with?
Susan: I am not going to leave you with one. I’m going to leave you with two. There are two reasons. It is hugely important.
1. One, if you are the owner of a small business and you do not have a solid operational process and setup, you are going to do all of that all the time. It is going to prevent you being able to go on vacation. It’s going to prevent you being able to scale your business. You become the bottleneck to everything, and it’s only how much you can do. It can’t ever grow exponentially
2. The second part of that is you can’t sell your business. If the owner is doing everything, your business doesn’t have any value because it’s just you. Nobody wants to buy your job. They want to buy a business that runs. So two things coming out of my mind.
Chynna: I think we have to say that again. I think we have to say that one again. The last part, I think, rings for every door, right? Because a lot of the times we’re doing it ourselves, and we think that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Susan: Right.
Chynna: The smart thing is building systems that run themselves so you don’t have to do much of anything.
Susan: Right.
Chynna: We get confused with what hard work is, and sometimes working hard is working less, right?
Susan: Work smart, not hard.
Chynna: Or harder.
Susan: Or work hard at working smart. That’s okay too.
Chynna: I like it. I like it. We’re going to pin that. We’re going to pin that.
Questions and Comments
Chynna: Well, Susan, thank you so much for sharing all the things, just all things operations, why you think testimonials is a great way to close a project, that also brings you in more clients, more sales. Before we end, does anyone have any ending questions? Anything you want to ask Susan?
Susan: You can ask me anything.
Chynna: Anything about ending a project? Yes, Lori?
Lori: No, not from me, but I was just going to say this is great. So thank you guys.
Chynna: Oh, thank you.
Susan: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Where To Find Us
Chynna: Susan, how can we find you? Give us your website, your books, all the things, so when we need to streamline our operations, we know where to find you at.
Susan: Well, you do. I will tell you, even when I first started my business and I was on my own, I was already starting to write processes for things that I’m like, “I’m only going to do this every six months. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.” Right? So start now. Efficiency Amplified, you can find on Amazon, and you can find us at beyondthechaos.biz. Go there. There’s a contact form. You fill that out, and we can help you get there, too.
Chynna: Awesome. Well, Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to share all the gems. I know I’ve learned so much, and I’m sure everyone else has as well. So I appreciate you.
Susan: Well, thanks for having me. This is great.
Chynna: Awesome. You guys, thank you for coming, you guys, and we’ll let you know about our next webinar.