If you've dreamed of owning a business, you probably have always envisioned yourself as the head of a big team of employees. While your business will hopefully grow enough to hire a large staff, in your early days, your budget is tight for staffing. Here are five ways to outsource your tasks, consolidate your work time, and increase efficiency so that you don't need to hire so many people.
1. Invest In A Virtual Assistant
You don't have enough funds to hire a receptionist to sit behind a desk and answer your phones all day. However, you also can't afford to miss calls from current and potential clients. To balance these needs, invest in answering service software. With a live answering service, you connect your phone system to the provider's account, and when your phone rings, someone at the other company answers it. You provide a script and set your business hours so that your customers can't even tell that your receptionist is in a different location. Then, your virtual assistant handles call forwarding and voicemail services and lets you know if you need to take a call.
2. Set Email-Answering Hours
You receive lots of important communication through your email, including bids from clients, updates from vendors, and notifications from your employees. However, email quickly becomes a time suck; it's easy to devote so many hours to answering and checking your email that you don't accomplish much actual work. Also, if you're constantly checking for an email or thinking about the one you need to send, you don't focus and your work becomes inefficient. To avoid this phenomenon, set regular email-answering hours, ideally right when you get to work and again about an hour before you close. Ask clients and vendors to call you if they have an urgent request, and you're all set.
3. Reduce Meeting Times
Meetings are also crucial for your business's success because they allow you to check in with your employees and customers. They're more efficient for communication than emails, and they allow you to pick up on tone of voice and body language. However, meetings are also opportunities for major time-wasting. Never start a meeting without an agenda, and don't allow people to deviate from the plan unless they bring up serious issues. Always have and honor end times for your meetings, and make sure that everyone who's present needs to be there. For example, at your follow-up with a new client, do you need your whole staff present, or can they work while you handle the meeting?
4. Hire A Freelance Agency
Every business produces a lot of writing, from search engine optimization blog posts to ad copies. If writing isn't your skill, though, you spend way too much time trying to figure out keyword placement, hyperlinks, and backlinks. Rather than wasting hours on the perfect copy or blog post, outsource your work to a professional freelance agency. Depending on what plan you sign up for, you usually have control over what kind of content your agency produces and how many links are involved. Most charge per piece, not per hour, so you only need to pay for writing when you need it. Not only do you save money, but you also increase your company's online visibility, resulting in more sales and leads.
5. Encourage Self-Sufficiency
You're a strong leader; that's why you make a good entrepreneur. However, if you want your business to expand so that you don't need to worry about consolidation as much, you must promote self-sufficiency. Encourage your employees to take ownership of their positions and to show initiative. As soon as you trust an employee's work, reduce the amount of oversight you conduct. Listen to your staff's ideas for new products, consolidation, and expansion, and ask for their input before making major decisions. The more that your employees feel as if they are important members of your team, the more efficiently they work.
Smart Staff Savings
Making your budget work is one of the most challenging tasks in your business's early years. Outsource instead of hiring as many employees at first if needed. Focus on the quality of work your team puts out rather than the number of employees you have. Once you've built a solid team and made a profit, you're ready to expand to a bigger workforce.
