Delegation & Outsourcing
The delegation of tasks is not always easy, especially when you’re just starting out in business. Finding good staff, contractors and tradesmen is difficult and there is the obvious financial downside over doing it yourself. However, it’s important to know your limitations, you maybe well suited to complete some jobs / tasks, others you may not. Building a business is a time consuming process and requires many different skills. Believing that you can do it all without any help may well be a mistake, especially if you are considering building an internet based business.
Technical people don’t always make great entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs aren’t always good technicians. Understanding what you are good at and hiring people to complete the jobs that you will find difficult is key to your business success.
Running an internet based business will definitely involve its fair share of technical work and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is not being entirely honest. As we will discuss in later posts, there are ways of contracting technical work out to highly technical personnel without paying a fortune. In the meantime some of the resourses you can use are as follows:
http://www.guru.com
http://www.getafreelancer.com
Running an online business will also involve some, if not all, of the below tasks on a daily basis. If your time is tight, you will need to identify people to complete the jobs you least want to do yourself.
Accounts – process all information as it occurs preferably into an accounting package
Paying Suppliers – make sure you pay anyone who is willing to give you credit in a timely fashion
Chasing Customer Payments – hopefully rare on the internet but any account customers have to be chased for outstanding money owed
Finding New Products – using the techniques and searching the locations mentioned later in this publication, you need to be on the constant lookout for new product lines
Placing Product Orders and Dealing with Suppliers – you need to be on top of your stock situation; running out of stock can create some major headaches
Adding Products – new product lines will need to be added to your e-commerce software
Answering Support E-mails – check your support inbox regularly and answer support questions as fast as possible
Answering Support Phone Calls – if you provide a support phone number answer the calls in a timely and professional manner
Taking Sales Phone Calls – if you provide a sales phone number, again, answer the calls in a timely and professional manner
Promoting Your Site – the promotion of a website is an ongoing process, you need to allocate several of your time units each day to the techniques outlined later in this document concerning the on-line marketing of your website
Packaging and Sending Parcels – make sure you package and ship the goods to your customers as fast as possible, customers love receiving their orders quickly
Checking Statistics – check your traffic statistics daily for changes in traffic flow and number of sales. This may highlight a problem with your site or a potential money earner, being on top of your statistics will allow you to react quickly to good or bad customer sentiment.
- Entrepreneurs have the creative ideas and the vision that start and continue to run a successful business.
- Managers organize and administrate.
- Technicians do the skilled jobs that require knowledge or a skill to complete.
- Production personnel do the semi-skilled and the repetitive and mundane work.
Most business models will require elements of all four; to begin with you will probably have to try your hand at most things. However, it’s very important that the managerial, technical and production aspects of the work don’t suppress your entrepreneurial spirit.
If the entrepreneurial presence is suppressed the vital creative ideas essential to a small business in an ever-changing market, will no longer be forthcoming. Decide as early as possible the everyday tasks you are suited to complete and ones you are not. Look for ways to delegate the tasks you are not suited to complete to third parties, do not try and complete all the work by yourself.
Ultimately, your business should run in spite of you, not because of you. Building businesses that run and make money without your everyday presence will leave you and your entrepreneurial spirit free to build further businesses. When you write your business plan, plan to make yourself dispensable within a three-year period. Obviously, you may still be required to make strategic and direction decisions together with some managerial input so you can influence the continued growth of your venture. But ultimately over time your business should still function without your everyday involvement!
In the past I made the mistake of becoming too involved in the daily operation of my businesses. The problem is, you can be too busy making a living to make any real money. Furthermore, in extreme cases it can seriously effect your quality of living and I have personally fallen into the trap of working 18 hour days, trying to personally complete all the jobs involved in running a business. Decide early to contract the help of other people to do the work you don’t want to do.