All business owners know there’s not enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. Eventually you have to hire help so you can grow your business, but what areas do you want to outsource? The key is to find areas where someone else can add value and free up your time. We call it smartsourcing, because when it’s done right it will actually increase your profits.
You don’t want to just hire people randomly on your business. You need to narrow down the areas where outside expertise can add the most value. Those three areas are:
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Executive experience: If you’ve never run a large business before, you may want to get some upper level help to ensure you’re setting things up correctly. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a CEO. You could get an advisor to help or hire a consultant to spend some time with you on the more complex aspects of the business.
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Specialized experience: You can get away with being a jack of all trades when you first start your business, but after awhile you’ll need some specialized help to really drive certain areas forward.
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Repetitive and administrative tasks: These are the tasks that use a lot of your time, time that could be better spent working on more important aspects of your business.
Once you know the areas that are primed for smartsourcing, you can start to hire for the roles that will make the most impact. Here are our top three:
1. Customer support
At the beginning, speaking to customers and helping them with any issues is a valuable asset. Not only are you building a rapport, you’re also getting feedback on parts of your business that may need work. Once you get to a certain size, it will no longer be possible to speak to every customer yourself. The key with outsourcing this area is to ensure you’re hiring someone who’s great with people and will be as committed to your customers as you are. You’ll also want to make sure you’re checking in regularly with them to keep the latest customer feedback. If you lose touch with what your customers want that could affect your bottom line.
2. Web development
With the advent of companies like Squarespace and WordPress, it’s not rocket science to build a website anymore. But if you want to add ecommerce capabilities, connect it to analytics and feed all that through your accounting software, you may want to hire some help. Finding a freelance web developer should be fairly easy, but that doesn’t mean it will be cheap. Make sure you know exactly what you want, the more specific you can be the more efficient your developer can be. Also, don’t get swayed by possible upgrades or new technology. Especially if those upgrades won’t make a difference to your bottom line.
3. Bookkeeping and payroll
This seems like one of those repetitive tasks that you don’t get a lot of value out of, but bookkeeping can be deceiving. Little mistakes can actually cost you big money. Not only that, there’s a difference between just getting by with your bookkeeping, and being able to use it to help your business grow. Hiring a bookkeeper with expertise in your industry can also help make all your back office processes more efficient. If you’re looking to outsource a good chunk of your back office work you can even have your bookkeeper handle the payroll.
While it may seem like smartsourcing is just another way to spend money on your business, if you do it right, you’ll actually be saving your business money in the long term. If you’re looking for help with your back office, get a free consultation today.