Despite the temptation to do everything yourself as a business owner, knowing how to focus and divide your time is key to running a successful business.
But with so many areas of your business demanding your time, how exactly do you determine which tasks are best delegated and outsourced to reduce the overwhelming tide of work?
In this blog, we’ve laid out the 5 areas critical to running a successful business and provide a range of options to help you maximise both your output and your impact.
Critical area of business #1: Marketing
Running a successful business requires effective marketing. And look, there’s no shame in doing your own marketing. All over the world, business owners are managing their own social media pages, email campaigns, and paid adverts – to varying degrees of success.
Whilst every business is different, all successful marketing outputs have one thing in common: consistency. Even if you must start small, it’s important to map your marketing campaigns out in advance and stick to them.
Consistently uploading one post a week on social media is much better than not posting at all, or worse, sporadic posting. Similarly, one email newsletter a month shouldn’t take up too much of your time but should be enough to remind your audience of your presence.
It’s all about trial and error. Find out what works and use it to your advantage. As you grow, so will your marketing – and eventually, you might be ready to hand over the responsibility.
Hiring an in-house marketing expert isn’t feasible for many businesses, which is why outsourcing has become commonplace. Handing the marketing reins over to an agency (especially one that specialises in your industry) can help lift a considerable weight off your shoulders and gives you back the time to focus on other areas of your business.
Overall, it’s money well spent.
Critical area of business number #2: Sales
For most business owners, sales is their true joy – their deep breath in.
Knowing you’ve got a growing number of sales coming in is a huge stress-reliever, but it can add a considerable amount to your workload and mean less time spent with each customer too.
Not only that, but your sales process needs to be trackable so you can measure results and calculate which of your sales and marketing efforts are bringing in the biggest return on investment. It involves a lot of time-consuming data analysis which many business owners simply do not have the time for.
If you’re looking for a way to streamline your sales process, from customer enquiries to end-step sales, CRM systems are here to help. Instead of personally tracking prospects as they (hopefully) move along the sales funnel, let software do it for you. Before long, you’ll see how those few minutes saved here and there begin to add up.
Better yet, CRM systems can also help with your marketing communications by distributing emails on your behalf and helping you to transform social media data into digestible results.
Having software in place will save you time without negotiating on quality. Your prospective leads will get automatic responses that still align with your brand voice and can be personalised to suit the enquiry.
Critical area of business #3 – Operations
Whilst “operations” is a relatively large umbrella term, it’s the best way to sum up the ins and outs of your everyday business. Research and development, supply chain management, manufacturing, customer service, delivery – the list can go on and on (and on).
Ideally, business owners would have a team working behind the scenes and not be responsible for every checkbox themselves, but this isn’t always the case.
If you are a solo service provider, the likelihood is: you’re responsible for everything. It can be hard to admit you need help as your business grows – but there are various options that can offer you support without relinquishing control (or hiring a costly second employee):
- Virtual Assistants: They can help lift some of the heavy workload without requiring long running contracts, and can be brought in whenever you need help.
- Outsourcing: Fulfilment centres are great for product-based businesses that are struggling to keep up with order processing.
- Business Coaching: If you feel stressed, overwhelmed, and unable to find time (or motivation) to do what needs to be done, a business coach can give you expert insight and improve the relationship between your working and home life. For more information on how a business coach can significantly impact your livelihood, why not take advantage of my 1-hour complimentary coaching sessions?
Critical area of business #4 – Finance analysis
We’ve touched a little bit on the importance of data analysis, but finance analysis (accounting in particular) is a critical area of business that eats up a lot of time for those who aren’t number-savvy.
Finance is a difficult area of business to outsource due to the sensitive nature of the data, and trusting someone else can be difficult. That’s where reliable accounting apps (such as Xero), CRM invoicing systems, and data analysis software are extremely useful.
Yes, you’ll still be responsible for processing and recording the AI’s output, but you can rest easy knowing complex data analysis has been taken out of your hands, without putting the confidential numbers into anyone else’s.
Critical area of business #5 – Your team and other stakeholders
Once you’ve established yourself in an industry, more and more people will become impacted by the successes and failures of your business. Employees, of course, are direct stakeholders that need to be trained, looked after, and invested in to ensure they are providing maximum output.
Creating a culture that cares is key to business success – after all, everyone likes knowing they are supporting an ethical business. If one is sticking to its morals, employees are likely to be happier, healthier and go the extra mile for you.
In case of emergency, they will be willing to respond and help, rather than leaving you to manage things independently. This can significantly impact crisis management and can help you to save time when it really matters.
All business owners should be held directly responsible for communicating with their team and ensuring they’ve created a safe place to work for their employees.
Are you running a successful business?
Delegating and outsourcing tasks is something a lot of new business owners hesitate to do.
How do I know that my business is financially stable enough to take on my first employee?
How do I know when it’s the right time to outsource?
If you’ve been asking yourself questions like this, it sounds like you’ve been struggling to find the time to manage all critical areas of your business.
Remember – there are solutions that don’t involve a full-time employee, such as number-crunching software and support from pre-established agencies. These options give you room to breathe without the heavy burden of an additional salary.
If you feel like you need help with your business and are unsure which way to go next, my 1-2-1 coaching sessions can help guide you in the right direction.
