Small Business Growth Strategies - Outsourcing Your Way to More Time and Profit
As a small business owner, especially one who operates out of your home, you’ll have to wear many hats. Entrepreneurs have a tendency to do that, sometimes to their detriment. Part of the reason many people have a home based business is for the freedom and independence it provides. Some business owners feel that having employees opens a can of worms they’d rather not eat at this time, so they go it completely alone.
The difficulty with going it alone is that you end up trying to do everything for your business. The problem here is that you’re probably not the best person to be entrusted with every task necessary to make your operation function at peak efficiency. Blow to your ego though it may be, you’ve got to admit there are certain things in your business that other people can do better than you. Maybe advertising, writing copy, and graphic design aren’t your strengths. Perhaps it’s cold calling prospects that you abhor. The point is that we all have certain skill sets. By definition there things a set includes and those it does not.
You should focus on these things you are good at and leave the other tasks to those who can do it more effectively, efficiently, and possibly cheaper as well. That will free up more time to do those things that more positively impact your bottom line. For example, should you spend your time washing company vehicles or prospecting for new business? In most cases the washing of vehicles would be best left to someone who’s not as well compensated.
How about working on your website design vs. writing a sales letter? That would depend upon where your talents lie. If you are great at design but not the most convincing writer, outsource the sales letter to a proven copywriter. You may pay a bit more up front, but end up with a sales letter that has a better conversion ratio, and a nicer looking web site as well.
Analyze all business functions from an ROI perspective. Do you get a better ROI by performing those functions yourself, or outsourcing them? You may love to write, but not be especially fast or effective at doing so. In that case, you may outsource much of your website’s content creation to writers. That would also hold true if you have an article marketing campaign. Can you write effective, keyword rich articles that other site, e-zine and newsletter owners want to publish? Can you do this fairly rapidly? If the answer is ‘no’, then your time would probably be better spent working on sales, strategy, or other operational tasks instead of writing and submitting articles.
Another popular task that can be perfect for outsourcing is customer service. If you’re selling products online using a drop shipper, part of the attraction is that you need no staff for warehousing and fulfillment. You’ll still receive phone calls for a variety of customer service issues however. People will get the wrong order, a product will be defective, or they’ll simply have a question.
Developing a good, long term relationship with your customers is absolutely essential to the long term viability and growth of your business. As your business grows however, the volume of such calls may become overwhelming and detract from other essential business tasks. You have three choices; lose customers (not a good choice), hire someone to take the calls and handle the CS issues, or outsource all or part of your customer service to an individual or firm that specializes in such things. In many cases the best fit for a home based business is to outsource some or all of the customer service function to others, leaving you, as the business owner, free to handle other important tasks (or just play golf and go fishing with your kids).
Outsourcing has been in the news for the past few years, usually in connection with how many American jobs it costs large businesses. There is a whole other side to outsourcing, and it’s one you, as a home based business owner should investigate. You can outsource tasks to those in other countries, such as India, China, or Russia, and many business owners do just that. However, you don’t have to outsource work only to developing countries. You can also outsource to firms or individuals next door, or across town. It all depends on what provides the most benefit to your business in the long term.
Remember, you will lose a certain amount of control when you outsource, rather than performing those tasks yourself or hiring employees to do them. The question is weather or not that loss of control is justified from a business standpoint.
It all comes down to this; you only have so much time, and it should be spent doing those things at which you’re best, while leaving the other tasks to a third party. You will have a larger, more profitable business, and you’ll get to spend more time doing things outside of work.
