There has never been simpler ways make your small business more efficient than now
So, you’ve spent another night in the office when you really wanted to be at home having dinner with your family. You knew running a small business would be hard work, but you’re sure there must have a better ways than this. There must be a way that you can get all of your vital work done faster and more efficiently, right?
There absolutely is. In fact, thanks to modern technology, it has never been simpler to make your small business at least a little more efficient and ensure that you get to spend some quality time with your kids.
Here’s how to make your small business more efficient starting now.Click To Tweet
Here’s how to make your small business more efficient right now:
Customer Relationship Management Software
If you run a B2C company, then one of the best things you could ever do for yourself and your business is to invest in good customer relationship management software. Such tools enable you to handle customer communications much more efficiently. Letting you know exactly who you should be contacting at any given time. The software can do everything from working out which of your customers are most loyal to working out which of your products would go well together, so you can concentrate on selling the right things to the right people at the right times. If you do this, you will make more sales for less effort, and that’s a sure-fire way to future business success.
Internet Banking
If you haven’t already set up internet banking for your company, now is the time to do it. Internet banking makes it so much easier to check your finances and move money, In fact, you can do so at the touch of a button, rather than having to visit the bank in person, or even worse give them a call where you’ll surely be put on hold for a t least 45 minutes. Who has time for that? If you’re a small business owner, you certainly shouldn’t.
Cut Down on Email Use
If you and your employees find that you’re spending more time sending and replying to emails each day than you are talking to customers, writing sales copy or meeting with clients, it might be time to curb your email use. Tell staff that they should only send email internally when it’s absolutely vital to do so. This might seem like a step backward, but actually, most of the time, calling or speaking to colleagues face to face is a faster way to get the information you need, than typing, proofing, sending and waiting for a reply when you’re emailing.
Accounts Payable Automation
If dealing with invoices is taking up too much of your, or your employees’ time, it might be time to think about giving accounts payable automation a try. Such software will streamline your payment processing and increase your accounts accuracy y without using a single scrap of paper. You can find out more info from DataServ if this sounds like something your company could benefit from right now.
Automate or Outsource
If you want your company to be as efficient as it is possible to be, in an ideal world, you should try to automate every process that can be automated. Sure, this might take some work upfront, and you’ll certainly have to invest a bit of cash in software and perhaps a programmer, but once you have automated process in place, you’ll save a huge amount of time, and money, and you’ll be able to spend more time at home with your kids. Not only that, but your staff, instead of having to waste time on data input and other menial tasks, will be able to concentrate on doing the jobs that help to make your business bigger and better.
If you can’t automate tasks, it might be worth looking at outsourcing them instead, especially if they are simple tasks like replying to emails or inputting data into a spreadsheet. Freelancers tend to charge less for these kinds of services than you’d have to pay a member of staff, and so by hiring them, you’ll increase efficiency, save money, and use your staff for more important matters.
Fire Your ‘Tough’ Clients
It might seem counterintuitive when you’re running a small business to get rid of clients, but anyone who’s been in business for a while will know only too well that some customers are much more trouble than they’re worth. If you have customers who always want more than they’re willing to pay for, who you always have to chase up for payment and who never answer your calls when you need to contact them, they are wasting your valuable time, and you’d do much better to get rid of them and. Instead of concentrating your efforts on running after them and trying to solve their problems, spend your time looking after good customers, creating new products and services and growing your business.
Obviously, you shouldn’t go too far with this, and start getting rid of any customer who causes you a minor irritation, but those people who are constantly demanding your attention in a negative way – get rid of them – they just aren’t worth your precious time.
Invest in a High-Speed Internet Connection
Today, pretty much all small businesses need to be online, and if that applies to you, then you should consider investing in the fastest broadband you can afford right now. I’m sure you’ll agree that life’s too short to spend waiting for a page to load, and it certainly won’t help you to run your business efficiently if you’re forever waiting to establish a connection, so spend a bit more on your internet connection and I’m sure it will save you time and money in the long-term.
Give Your Staff More Autonomy
When you run a small business and money is tight, it can be tempting to start micromanaging your staff, ensuring that you’re in control of every move they make. But, more often than not, this isn’t the best way to increase efficiency at all. If instead, you give your staff more autonomy and you trust them to do their work the way they think’s best, you might be surprised by just how quickly they get things done.
You see, although you’re the boss, you don’t always know what’s best when it comes to other roles in your business and when staff have more responsibility, and they feel more trusted, they tend to step up to the plate and do some of their best work. Give it a try; you might be very surprised by what you find.
Say Goodbye to Meetings
Meetings. Pretty much everyone who’s ever worked a corporate job hates them, but we almost all accept them as a vital part of business life. We’re all wrong. Although some meetings are necessary for the effective running of a company. Most of them are not and we’d all benefit by having far fewer if any meetings at all. Most of the things that are discussed in meetings could easily be sorted out with a quick email or two, which would enable us to stop wasting time and get more work done. So, before you schedule a meeting, think carefully if there’s a better, more efficient way to handle its subject, and if there is, do that instead. You’ll get home earlier more often if you do and you’ll all be able to knuckle down and spend your working day completing important tasks rather than wasting time discussing meaningless trivialities for two hours every week.
Delegate
As a small business owner, you might be tempted to do it all yourself. You might think that it’s your company, and you know best, or you might think that if a job’s worth doing right, it’s worth doing it yourself, but you need to be realistic. There is only so much you can do yourself, and anyway delegating some of your work to your staff might just surprise you. Often, your employees are capable of doing much more than you credit them for and by letting them do more, you actually increase your company’s efficiency. You don’t get burnt out, and that means that you’re in a better frame of mind to run your company right.
Learn to Prioritize
Of course, if you want to get out of the office and be able to have dinner with your family more often, probably the best thing you can do is learn to prioritize your work. For the average small company, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, so it would be pointless to even try. Instead, write up a list of everything you hope to achieve each day and then order it by priority. If you can just get the tasks with the highest priority levels done, then you will be doing well, and you won’t have to worry about not doing enough to keep your company in business.
Do you run your own small business? Have you been able to increase its efficiency? How did you do it?
