What Tasks to Outsource for Small Business Owners [Contributed Blog]
January 7, 2019 - 10 minutes read - Guest Post, Mod MarketingWhen you’re still young and relatively small, the business world is definitely an exciting place and it might be tempting to handle every single task yourself. Some business owners even hesitate with hiring their own team as they’re trying to stay in complete control – and, needless to say, their businesses end up suffering.
As a small business, there are in fact a lot of processes you might want to consider outsourcing. It will free up your hands a bit and make it easier for you to focus on what truly matters and build on your actual strengths.
Here is a handful of the tasks and processes you might want to consider outsourcing to a third party as well as a few of the best reasons why you should do it. Keep in mind that every business is different, though, so consider your own before you outsource anything.
What you should not outsource: Your strengths
First of all, it’s a good idea to consider tasks you might want to keep doing yourself. As long as you manage to keep your selling points and your biggest strengths onboard, most of the other tasks can definitely be handed over to someone else.
An important point to this, however, is to keep a close eye on the processes that make your business uniquely you. While it may be tempting to hand the social media management over to someone else, you risk seeing the tone-of-voice you’ve built a brand around change completely – and it may cause your audience to view your business differently over time.
Try to think about this before you make any decisions and keep in mind that this can apply to other tasks as well. If you’ve built a brand around your excellent customer service, for example, and have hired a team of people who your customers recognize, it’s probably better to outsource another task so that you’re not changing the tone-of-voice.
Outsource special skills tasks
Let’s start with everything you can safely hand over to someone else – or, at least, which you most likely can safely hand over to someone else. Again, it does depend on your business, and you don’t want to outsource your IT services if you’re actually an IT business.
In general, though, this is something that a lot of small businesses choose to hire a third party because, mainly, they don’t have that many IT tasks. It simply doesn’t make sense to spend time and money on hiring and training an entire team who never sees the day of light and is rarely called to action; check out Netstar IT support instead and you’ll be able to have all of your technical issues taken care of.
IT is the kind of task that you should outsource right away if you’re considering hiring a team for the job. Save this for when you’re a bit bigger and stronger as it will be easier to find funds for it – and you might have more technical problems as you grow as well.
Any other special skill task you can think of may be better to outsource as well, by the way, as you will often spend quite a bit of money on training and hiring someone. Save all of this for later and let someone else handle it for you instead.
Copywriting, for example, is one of the tasks a lot of businesses choose to outsource as hiring a team tends to cost a bit too much. Consider if this is right for your business first, though, as you may have built an audience already who is used to the specific writing of your company and would be disappointed to see the style change.
Keep in mind that the tone-of-voice used in every interaction you have with your audience will help to build your brand – and it’s important not to compromise this.
With that being said, you can always outsource the copywriting tasks while you’re still quite small and simply hire a team to stay in-house when you’re able to afford it. It’s the solution most business owners go for in any way, so why shouldn’t you?
Outsource repetitive tasks
Just like any other business, you probably have a lot of processes that repeat every month. There may be payrolls, accounting services, inventory checks, and so on. These things take up both time and money. As a small business, you will have to first find someone who is suitable to hire and pay them a decent salary – or you will have to train someone you already have in-house.
Both of these options are rather unpleasant to small businesses as the money you spend on paying to train and hire someone could have been spent elsewhere and, if you simply train someone you already have in-house, you risk seeing them do a mediocre job.
Even if these processes are repetitive and quite dull, they are still extremely important for the daily functions of your business – and you shouldn’t risk seeing someone else do it who is only half trained. Outsource it instead and you’ll receive an entire team of professionals who you can lean on and ask questions.
That’s one of the great things that many business owners mention when it comes to outsourcing; they’re not just getting a professional who can take care of the job but they’re also able to take advantage of the entire team’s expertise.
Consider outsourcing your most repetitive tasks and you won’t risk seeing someone mess up your employees’ payroll, your inventory or even the accounting services. The mess it makes it definitely not worth it.
Outsource customer service
As mentioned, it’s better to keep your customer service in-house if you’ve already built a strong team and a reputation with your excellent customer service. When you’re still young, however, it’s unlikely that you’ve come to this point – and giving a professional team the responsibility may be just what you need.
A company that specializes in customer service will be able to take your small business to new heights and really set a standard in terms of the service your customers will be getting used to. It is one of the most important things for customers in terms of whether or not they want to come back to your business, you know, and absolutely something you should focus on.
A customer service team that is kept in-house and trained by your company will cost a lot of money too, though, so outsourcing this may be a win-win in every situation.
As a small business, you should always be looking for new ways to save money and increase your profits a bit. By outsourcing your most repetitive tasks, the skilled processes of your business and even the customer service, you’re not compromising on the quality while still being able to save money.
Just hire someone a bit later down the road and make sure that your new team delivers the same kind of standard.
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Tags: entrepreneurs, management, outsourcing, remote team, Small Business Owners, Smb, Tasks to Outsource for Small Business
