Outsource and delegate
No one person can do it all. While it may be difficult to transfer some of your business tasks to others, it may be necessary to maintain and retain your customer base. The good news is that you can still maintain full control while letting others do some of the tasks you don’t have time for. You may need to make an assessment of all the responsibilities involved in running your business and then go from there to decide which ones to delegate to others. Delegating is a smart time management skill that successful marketers use every day.
How to decide which tasks to delegate
Which tasks you should delegate to others and which you should handle yourself will depend on a number of factors. Unless you already have someone you trust implicitly, you may want to handle the finances yourself, or you could find someone who does; just be very careful. You don’t want to give out your PayPal or credit card information to just anyone.
Still, there are plenty of tasks you could pay others to do that would leave you with more time to grow your business. For example, if you buy content to use in your business, you could hire someone to do it for you. That person could hire the writers and graphic designers to produce the content they need and then send you the billing information so that all you have to do is pay the content producers. You may want to take care of everything yourself at first, but remember that effective time management means you can let go of some of the problems so you can handle the bigger ones.
Hire someone for customer service
If your business relies heavily on customer service, you may find it useful to hire someone to take care of that for you so you can spend more time on product development, marketing, and advertising. If you take phone orders, you can hire someone to answer your phone or if your customers need email responses, you can hire someone to take care of that for you.
What if you can’t afford to hire someone else?
Bartering is still alive, both online and offline. If you can’t afford to hire anyone to help you, you can still use your time wisely and efficiently by delegating some tasks to others through bartering. For example, if you are a graphic designer and need articles written, you may be able to trade your services with a writer who is looking for someone to do graphic design work. The internet is full of marketers and artists looking to partner with someone to trade services.
When you use your time management skills to the fullest, you may come up with other ideas of your own to manage your time wisely, thereby focusing your efforts on the area of your business that most needs your attention.