As a company grows, it can often experience growing pains. This is particularly true for small businesses that go through exponential growth in a short amount of time. Often, what was once manageable for a smaller business team becomes more difficult as volume increases.
Hurdles may exist that need to be addressed to keep the business operating at its highest level. For example, if your business has too many unanswered phone calls, it may benefit from hiring a phone answering service. Problems in keeping up with demand might require you to hire more employees. Many of these hurdles can be overcome by asking yourself some questions to help identify services that may be worth investing in.
Are You Managing Your Time Effectively?
Effective time management is a skill that may need to be developed as the business grows. With more business obligations come more items that require attention and before long, you could find yourself pulled in 10 different directions without having really accomplished much. Luckily, there are many different software products and apps available to help you make a plan for keeping track of and organizing time spent on business needs.
Do You Get Too Many Phone Calls?
Most small businesses and large corporations alike can agree that customer service is key to keeping customers happy. It can either keep them coming back year after year or drive them away before you even know what hit you. In this age of virtual communication, having an efficient way of communicating over the phone is essential. Whether your business is a doctor's office, a retail business, or anything in between, a phone answering service can be your best friend in keeping phone-in clients happy. These answering services are often available all day as well as all night so that no business is ever lost due to a missed phone call.
How Can You Account for All Your Business Expenses?
Maybe even more important than time tracking might be expense tracking. Not many things can tank a growing business faster than untracked or unmanaged expenses. It is difficult for a business to flourish if no one is quite sure what money is available to pay for legitimate business expenses. Expense tracking services can be worth their weight in gold when used correctly and can help cut down on unnecessary spending as well as time spent organizing receipts.
Finding the one that works best for you might require some research and the utilization of free trials, which many of these services offer. A few helpful features to be on the lookout for might include the ability to track receipts digitally, categorize spending, manage incoming funds, and quickly approve any expenses that might be sent by an employee. When it comes down to it, time is money, and being able to quickly and efficiently track any business expenses is going to be a big load off the owner's shoulders when taxes or payroll is due.
Can You Ensure Quality Employees?
Perhaps the most essential aspect of keeping your small business running up to par is your employees. Will they uphold the values you have based your business on? Does their work ethic align with what is expected in the work environment? Keeping your employees happy and focused on continuing to grow the business can affect future success.
As the number of employees goes up, so does the margin for error, and hiring the right employees to keep mistakes to a minimum is definitely worth spending some time and money on. Using a quality recruiting service for your business can eliminate many applicants that are not qualified or do not have the proper experience to add value to your company. Recruitment agencies are also able to target potential employees more quickly to help you avoid any shortages in staff. If you are senior level employees or c-suite are having issues with time management as mentioned above, you may even want to look into a personal assistant recruiting firm to find a quality assistant that can take away some of the time-sinking responsibilities like scheduling, communications, lunch, etc.
Overcome Obstacles
As your small business grows, so does the need for evolution to ensure continued success. Depending on the needs of your startup business, investing in a few helpful services is a great way to stay on top of an ever-changing atmosphere and remove a bit of the burden off your shoulders. Getting this type of help can make sure the basic needs of your business are met while allowing you to continue growing and changing your small business.
