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Running your business is a juggling act, you have six balls in the air at any given moment and if one drops, it could send the rest falling to the ground. So how do you keep your business running smoothly? The key is the title of this article. To effectively run your business you must learn to be efficient. If your business is struggling, there are a few things you can look at to evaluate in order to run your business effectively and efficiently.
1) Measure your business efficiency
First, you need to prioritize the outcomes that have the greatest DIRECT impact on your business. Once you have your priority list, you need to measure efficiency. Here you’ll be looking at whether the amount of time or money spent on getting that outcome is worth it. For example, if you are measuring the efficiency of your marketing and you spend $50 a month in marketing expenses and are seeing $60 worth of business from the $50 you spent, is that really efficient use of that money? Or should you consider changing your marketing tact to try and increase your return on investment?
2) Don’t be afraid to spend money to make money
Let’s take another example, workforce. You have 2 employees working for you, but to keep them from working overtime, you are finishing the work they can’t finish. Is this efficient? Let’s really look at this one, do you want to spend the extra money to hire another employee? Probably not, but by doing the job you pay somebody else to do, you are pulling your focus from the important aspects of running your business. Is that really an effective use of your time? Sometimes in business, you really do have to spend money to make money.
3) Hire an assistant if you need to
Now let’s go the other direction. Your business is just starting and you’re trying to decide whether or not to hire an assistant. You have 5 clients who you contact 3 times a week and are looking to add 2 clients each week for the next 2 months. That’s a total of 21 clients and 63 contacts per week. Whether you are calling or emailing your clients, making 63 contacts in a week should be a piece of cake for one person. However, when you add in the work that you are also doing for these client’s, it would make more sense to have an assistant who could handle the more mundane of your tasks. Would it be an efficient use of your money at that point in time to hire somebody to do something that is quite possibly manageable on your own? Definitely!
Efficiency breeds effectiveness. The two go together like the chicken and the egg. If your business isn’t effective you need to look at your processes and examine whether or not they are efficient. Weigh the outcome against the amount of work put in to reach that outcome. Be critical, trim the fat, and revamp your process!
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