Many people think that because they work efficiently that they always utilise their time wisely.  But is this really the case?

Efficient means you can get a lot done in a small amount of time… yet proper time management for the benefit of the business’s bottom line is another thing!

Today I met with a successful business coach who has a few different income streams.  He was talking about how he’d spent all morning on his copy for a new landing page he’s created to promote an upcoming event.  However the time he spent ‘locked away’ writing was in business hours, when he could have been making money calling and meeting with businesses!

One of his business services requires him to meet personally with his clients fairly regularly, and he isn’t able to do that during the middle of the day – when they are busy with the lunchtime retail trade.  He failed to see that this time in the middle of the day could be spent making money on another income stream, OR on those activities that need to be done AFTER all the client interaction has been done.  So I pointed this out to him – and he was very grateful for the tip.

Sometimes we’re too close to our own work that we can’t see how to improve it!

The important thing is to have a clearly identified plan of all the business activities to be done – and when those activities should be done in your workday. You will find that following a written schedule allows you to get the most amount of revenue in the door.

So think about all the things you spent time on in the last three business days and ask yourself:  were you making the best use of your time for your bottom line?

Tip:  Use your computer’s widgets to set up a sticky note reminder for yourself: “Am I Getting Paid for This?”

Sometimes we are lured by funky new software, devices with apps, and online tools that sing to us with their promises of status, flexibility, connectedness, and new toys to play with.  Rather than make us more efficient, these devices can actually cause us to lose productivity if we don’t first examine what our business needs are, with an eye on desired results.

Many business owners believe that getting the latest gadgets and programs will help their business… but the reality is far from it!  You can spend thousands of dollars on the latest laptop, related software, and then some specific programs for your business needs.  The costs can mount up.  But do you really need this major upgrade?  Will you use all the functions?

Every day there are new applications created for the iPhone and iPad, but most of these are more time wasters than time savers…  Then there are the programs that profess to take your hassles away, manage your marketing or your data, or print labels seamlessly, or even manage your tasks better in a timely fashion.

Here’s a tip:  technology is a lot like the big sales at Myer and David Jones… it’s only a bargain or of value if YOU NEED IT!

Determine Your Real Needs First
In my line of work I am constantly seeing new applications and systems designed to do multiple things. The marketing campaigns for these are brilliant because they make the busy business owner think that they NEED it to make more money!  Occasionally that might actually be the case.

Yet without having identified the business needs first – you aren’t going to make many wise purchase decisions.

When I worked for large corporations like NAB and Australia Post, we spent a LOT of time in the initial stages of our projects to determine our needs.  This shouldn’t be any different in the small or medium business.

If you don’t do this initial analysis, you will end up being MORE frustrated with a new tool that doesn’t meet your needs.  Plus you may find that they bog you down with complexity rather than make you more efficient. Seems pointless if you’re aiming to create an efficient and leveraged business!

So my advice to you is… if you are considering a new app, tool, system or gadget – ensure you know exactly how it’s going to benefit your business.  Otherwise you could get the exact opposite of what you set out to achieve.

Remember: in business purchasing make wise, informed decisions, and if you don’t have the expertise or knowledge about something – ask someone who does.

We are all masters of our own specialty… whether a builder, painter, accountant, real-estate agent, developer, coach, or manager – we’ve all got our area of expertise. But when is it time to let go of control?

Comfort Zones
We are very comfortable in our core talent, and there are also other things that come naturally to us in our daily work. Some people love administration and organising their desk! Others are suited to bookwork and managing accounts. Some people are naturally great communicators. We’re all different.

Yet as business owners we all have this common need to wear a lot of different hats to manage our business. These hats represent different functions and activities (e.g. sales, accounting, management, customer relations). Since most of us have invested a lot of ourselves in our business initially, it stands to reason that we want to ensure that everything goes smoothly under ‘our control’.

A typical small business owner naturally wants to control everything – because the business is their creation and investment. Yet, outsourcing or delegation is the first step to leveraging your time and being able to work ON your business instead of IN your business.

Getting help from someone else is often difficult and uncomfortable. The pain and fear of outsourcing is often expressed as doubt. A client of mine recently said, “I know I need to do it – I just get nervous that they won’t do a good job so I end up reviewing everything they’ve done”. Sound familiar?

How Do I Let Go?
There’s a process of letting go that will make it easier for you. My advice is – do it in baby steps. Outsource a small function first, one that doesn’t require a lot of time and energy and that you can check on in the early stages to ensure it’s being done correctly. Once you’re comfortable that they’re doing it well – then let them do it alone.

Choose your next hat and again keep it a small task. Do the same thing for the first outsourcing task. Give yourself time and don’t think that it’s going to happen overnight. Simply trust that it will be for your benefit, since you deserve to have your time back for yourself!

In all of this, remember that it’s important to find help from people who have proven experience and come with good, solid credentials. Use your wisdom and instinct in choosing outside service providers, and you will be far better off.

Outsourcing is going to be a strength for you and your business: so don’t be afraid to venture out from your comfort zone.

Let’s face it: we all have days when things just don’t go our way. If we feel strong, we can manage how that affects us emotionally, and what we choose to do about it. But what about when something you’ve set up perfectly suddenly doesn’t work? Even automated technology can fail sometimes, causing us time and effort.

I don’t like to admit it – but it happened to me recently. A few days ago one of my websites failed – for no apparent reason. It also affected my emails attached to that domain name and caused me to lose about 3 days worth of emails, perhaps very important emails. After spending an hour on the phone to my web hosting company, I learnt that ‘someone’ had changed my name servers. It was a manual error, but we have no idea who did it – and as a result my website and emails had crashed, costing me potential business, some stress, and a couple of hours of my day to get it fixed.

The one thing about technology is that it works brilliantly to make our lives better, however it requires human input and intervention to make it work.

How can I avoid this happening again? I honestly don’t know. It’s one of those spanners that stopped the wheels… but it doesn’t have a clear answer, with nobody officially to blame.

This kind of thing happens rarely, and when it does – we just have to get it sorted quickly and with the least amount of fuss. There’s no point investigating who was at fault because the problem has now been solved. And there’s no process I can put in place to save it happening again.

So in my ‘outsourced’ world built on automation and efficient systems, even I succumb to problems that cause the wheels to stop.

When a spanner is thrown in your works, do you feel safe in the knowledge that the providers you’re using are doing the best they can? I believe that having trust in your providers and keeping calm is the fastest way to get on with the business of making money and having a life.

When it comes to talking to your prospects or customers online, do you come across as yourself or as an automated purchase taker? Do you make it personal or keep it all business? Do you find a new prospect and try to sell them your big ticket item on the spot?

The best piece of advice a mentor gave me on this topic is this: See your prospects as though you’re dating them for marriage… you don’t go to fourth base on the first date – you’ve got to go on quite a few dates before you take it to the next level!

I often see business owners try really hard to make a sale by blasting out an offer on the spur of the moment, then sit by the phone and wonder why it’s not ringing.  Have you ever been sold to by someone you haven’t heard from in a while but ignored the offer?

Statistics from recent research tell us that it takes on average 7-9 touches to make a sale.  I have prospects who have taken longer than that, and who have required MORE than just an email every week.  My prospects like to communicate with me personally and get a sense that I understand them and that I’m adding value to them and their business.

How are you ‘courting’ your prospects?  Asking for fourth base on the first date?  Or are you taking your time to get to know them?  The truth is in the sales results.

As our web-based communication age continues, we are being challenged more and more to find new ways to promote and sell our products and services.  Remember that it’s not all about the latest design and pretty pictures.  It’s more than a great offer.  And it’s more than power words repeated ad infinitum.

It’s a mixture of ALL of these things, and the magic ingredient of the human touch.  People want to buy from people – and that’s who you are after all.

The Ladder of Loyalty

The Direct marketing system is built around a five step ladder of customer commitment, dating back to the 1930s.

On the bottom we have Suspects – people we think should have an interest in doing business.

Once they show interest in our business they become Prospects – we communicate to them to encourage a sale. Once they buy something they become Customers. But this is not where it ends.

If you continue the communication, giving Customers added value and real  information, they move up to the Clients level. So they are happy to buy only/mostly from you when they need those products or services.

By asking these Clients to refer friends who need your services, they then become Advocates. Advocates willingly encourage their acquaintances to try your products/services.

All businesses should nurture the customer through to the Clients and Advocates level – where most leverage happens. After all, look at your business you will likely find the Pareto Principle at work – 80% of the business comes from the top 20% of all people you trade with. These are your clients and advocates.

“Simplify, streamline, automate”.

They’re words you’ve heard before and might attribute to large corporate exercises to cut costs, save money and downsize.  True in some cases, but streamlining is not just reserved for the corporate world.

Where small business owners suffer is in the constant grind of daily tasks, never-ending work, and responding in a reactionary way to requests and problems. This leads to ending each workday feeling drained and uncertain about what progress, if any, has been made.

As the 4-Hour-Workweek describes, it’s not only a possibility to leverage yourself out of your business, it’s a creative choice.  Moreover, to get there takes some work – it doesn’t happen in an instant.

Keeping life simple is a golden ideal most of us have. But in our business, how can we possibly keep it simple?  To truly be ready for leverage and automation in your business, you must first go through certain steps to simplify things.

Simplify = understanding who you are, your business drivers, goals and strategic vision is a good start.  Know what excites you and what drains your energy.  Create a schedule to keep you on track, and employ methods that support your daily work.

Streamline = outsource the things that you don’t do best but that take up much of your time.  Consider your common tasks and activities and see where you can consolidate them.  Look at your marketing and sales processes, ask pertinent questions of your best customers, and then create better ways for your customers and prospects to experience your business.

Automate = use technology and systems to make life easier for you and take the guesswork away.  This will enable you to outsource more functions to others, because the processes are already set up.

Unless you’re an expert organiser (the top 2%) this can all be a headache to learn, and because of unfamiliarity it can be very slow.  Why not outsource it to those who are experts… enabling you to get on with making money in your business.

Just recently I faced the herculean task of beginning to prepare for a move interstate (both business and family).  Being a project director in a previous career, I methodically began setting out all the tasks and applying dates, resources, and times to them all.  That was the fun part of the exercise.

As my partner and I were getting quotes and narrowing down our preferred providers for different services, I was amazed at the difference in standards by business owners in different service businesses.  We experienced people not showing up and some answering their phone with nothing more than a “Yes?”… Aren’t businesses TRYING to make money these days? It is baffling.

One thing we both had in mind was to outsource anything that we couldn’t easily do ourselves, and which would take time away from our businesses and increase our stress.  That was our ‘strategic vision’ for the move, and it proved to be a wise one.

One example is arranging a proper quote for professional cleaning. I was instantly impressed with the cleaning company and felt confident that the job would be done to a high standard. And, if I wasn’t satisfied with it, they guaranteed to come back and keep cleaning until I was happy. Now there’s a guarantee that rings my bells!

We applied the same rules for outsourcing in our business to outsourcing all the functions of our move – one of life’s most stressful activities.  Most importantly, we were able to achieve our vision for the move, not just because we decided to keep our stress levels low, but because we chose the right people to help us.

What About Your Outsourcing?

In business there are many providers of services who can do the work for you… and there are many levels of service standards too.  I’ve heard some awful stories from business owners about who they trusted their work to, but I’ve also heard good stories.

It pays to get an example of their work, have a trial, AND get testimonials before trusting your work to someone else.  Keep your standards high and ensure you trust where your money goes.  Remember that the whole purpose of outsourcing is to leverage your time to enable you to make you more money.  So if it’s actually costing you in time, re-work and stress – then you better go back to the drawing board and look for better providers.

I was at a conference last weekend with about 70 other business owners, all brought together by their connection to Human Resources (HR).

They are a great bunch of people, and the room was abuzz with ideas and connections. Most of the business owners are solo operators, while some of them have support staff and consultants to assist with their business.  A large member organisation runs the conference and supports the development of HR in the SME sector in Australia.

What I love about being with these people is that they really learn from each other.  It reminds me how important it is to have people around you who can provide objective feedback and qualify your own ideas about what’s best for your business.  It proves the concept, “the power of three minds is the equivalent of five solo minds”.  You can learn and accomplish so much more with others who are passionate and motivated to succeed: just like you.

It’s tough sometimes as a solo business owner to get the same level of stimulation you might get working in an office with many others, each with their pros and cons. All the sessions and topics presented were informative and useful, yet I realised that most of these people come to the conference simply to mix with others and hence learn from each other. The jewel in the event is the ability to network in a group of like-minded individuals who can help you on your journey.

Too many business owners forget the benefits of mixing with other business owners. Sure, we have competitors who we may not want to be close to, and we are busy and focussed on our business responsibilities… but we all need opportunities to mix with others like us.  Personal development, professional development, networking, mastermind groups: there’s lots of ways to do it.  Just be sure you do – it’s really important!

I know, you don’t really want to outsource your whole life, just the tedious and difficult bits, right? I’ve been re-reading Tim Ferris’s book, “The Four-Hour Work Week”. Compared to the average small business owner’s week of 45 to 80 hours – just FOUR does seem fanciful, even ridiculous. It all comes down to how to make more money with less time in the business, freeing you up to do a variety of things you enjoy. (The book has been updated/expanded in December 2009).

When following the steps outlined in Ferris’s Dreamline worksheet, the cost for those things that we put off every year (a great holiday, a car upgrade, a gardener, etc) are typically not that much in total monthly income — remembering that figure is on top of the usual household costs. In fact, some of my “costs” also could provide an income, if using a low-cost virtual assistant. (Part of the outsourcer’s work could be billed to clients, or at least free me up to do more billable projects.) Tim Ferris blog – Ideal Lifestyle Costing has all the necessary calculators to work out costs of your own ideal lifestyle.

Also, qualified remote support staff can be outsourced for as little as US$300 per month (around $2 an hour) and they can do a variety of things like follow up calls, invoice creation/reminders, link building for your SEO, etc… all those things that eek away your daylight hours. Because they are working specifically for you on the projects you need, there won’t be any staff time wastage or double-instructing. See www.remotestaff.com.au for ongoing administrative tasks, or ask about the specialists at Infusionoz.com.au for higher level tasks like web design, e-marketing, CRM implementation, and content writing (also offering good value/prompt attention services and located in Australia).

Of course, remote outsourcing goes hand-in-hand with automated technology and streamlined systems. Great systems means higher productivity. Higher productivity for the average small business owner might mean more billable hours, with less stress and chaos in their lives. For a Mumpreneur it might mean more time to spend with family because her income doesn’t drop with periods away from the business.

So many business people are still stuck in the paradigm of exchanging time for money – what is my hourly rate, how many hours can I bill?

But when we see our business as a marketable entity – with products (passive income), Intellectual Property to record and protect, and a brand to promote – we start to see it as an Asset. We may even have a saleable asset, if someone else could take over the systems and product sales down the track and continue the revenue streams. Does that sound worthwhile?

You can do 50 different things to bring people to your website. But what about actually MARKETING to those prospects so that they eventually buy from you? 

One business owner I know had a website in a very crowded marketplace – gift baskets. Her site was nice enough but her conversion was very poor. If you’re in the gift basket industry in Sydney, you’d better be ahead of the game. If studies show that it takes an average of seven contacts from a business to convert a sale from a qualified lead, why do website owners often expect the people just browsing their site to instantly buy? Capturing people’s emails (with a tantalising offer just for subscribers) was my first piece of advice to her.

Where is Helpful Advice on Email Marketing?
Although there is a plethora of info on attracting people to your website, actually marketing to them and getting action (sales/calls/bookings) is often left to chance. 

Email marketing has been around for awhile now, but it is rare to get advice on what to send, how often, how to segment your list, and how to get a great response. So most business owners just send untargeted offers, which seriously under-utilises this low cost avenue for customer acquisition. (Of course I work with Infusionsoft, the tool to use to get those high performing results you want).

In addition, pay-per-click advertising to attract customers can get quite expensive if 95% of the prospects sail away before any contact. Email marketing works brilliantly with PPC advertising because it allows businesses:

• to tell them more details about the services/products
• to learn more about their visitors’ real interests
• to offer value through information prior to purchase (i.e. handy tips, news, events)
• to keep the relationship between business and prospect alive, right after they showed interest

Fortunately, I am working on a solution to help end the marketing confusion generally circulating in the small business world. It will be an exclusive Business Builder’s membership program. Stay tuned for some interesting, results-focussed advice.

Some E-marketing Tips

You need to encourage people to give you their email address, so what do you give them in return? While it is the most popular, you don’t necessarily have to offer a newsletter. Other options are: a free white paper with some facts about your industry, a free consultation or evaluation, or a free webinar or teleseminar.

Thank them for signing up to your list (automatically of course), personalising this message based on their encounter with your website. Once they read your newsletter/email, track which links they clicked on, and then target mailings to their interests and habits. You can even segment people who found you through search engine marketing in a separate mailing list from your general list.