Tech tools that drive business growth
Matthew J. Watts is an operations consultant based in Tunbridge Wells. With 25 years’ experience in sales, marketing, and operations, he helps service-based business owners stop being the infrastructure that their business depends on. Read on to discover the tech tools he believes a growing business actually needs…
Every week, a new app promises to transform your business. Most of them won’t. But a handful will, and if you’re not using them, then running your business is harder than it needs to be.
Here are the tools that consistently make the biggest difference to growing service businesses:
AI Tools
AI is here and integrating it into your business will give you an advantage. Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini are no longer experiments, they’re essential tools. Used daily, they function like a highly capable thinking partner, helping you draft content, prepare for difficult conversations, research competitors, and work through problems you’d normally spend hours on alone. Pick one. Learn it properly. The return on that investment will surprise you.
Your Website
Your website isn’t a brochure. It’s where your business lives. The way that people buy is changing but a website remains an important asset. Sales, marketing, social proof, authority building, and more all happen there. Tools like WordPress and Squarespace have removed every excuse for not having one. If yours isn’t working as hard as you are, that’s the first thing to fix.
CRM
If you’re managing leads and client relationships in your head or across a collection of spreadsheets and sticky notes, you’re losing business you don’t even know about. A CRM like GoHighLevel or HubSpot keeps every contact, conversation, and follow-up in one place. The leads that fall through the cracks are rarely gone. They’re just unmanaged.
Accounting and Finance
Knowing your numbers isn’t optional. Xero and QuickBooks connect directly to your bank, can be securely accessed by your accounting/finance team, even automating the admin. The best part is they provide real time reporting on how your business is performing, no waiting for your accountant to tell you.
Email Marketing
Not everyone who needs you is ready to buy today. Email keeps you in front of the right people until they are, through your knowledge, your personality, and consistent presence. Mailchimp, GHL and Kit make it straightforward to build a list, stay in front of the right people, and drive traffic back to your website consistently. Your email list is the only audience you actually own.
Scheduling and Booking
Every time a lead or a client has to exchange three emails to book a meeting, you lose momentum. Sometimes you lose the client. Calendly and Acuity remove that friction entirely. Share a link, they pick a time, it lands in both calendars with automated reminders. Simple, professional, and it makes you look like you have your act together.
Social Media Scheduling
Having a presence on social media is a critical part of every business’s strategy, but it’s time consuming. This makes a tool like Buffer or Later, that allows you to batch your content, schedule it in advance, and analyse the results, a must have. Show up consistently without it consuming your week.
A final thought on all of the above. The best tool is the one you enjoy using. If something feels like a chore every time you log in, you’ll avoid it, or work around it. Experiment with a few tools to find the one that fits how you actually work. No feature list makes up for a tool you won’t use.
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