Unless you’re making a conscious decision to not grow your business, you need to delegate tasks to others. Why? Because you can’t (and shouldn’t) do everything by yourself.
Otherwise, you’ll always be swamped with work.
Unfortunately, it’s common for leaders – particularly entrepreneurs – to not delegate, and their reasons vary. Some are perfectionists who’d rather do everything themselves; Some think delegating work minimises their importance. Others simply don’t want to be overshadowed by subordinates.
Whatever the reason, it’s important that you learn to hand over responsibility instead of just giving out tasks. Because aside from taking work off your plate, delegating develops your people’s knowledge and abilities. Plus, it fosters trust, showing that you believe in their abilities.
To help make running your business easier, here are several time-consuming tasks you should be delegating right now.
Admin
Tasks like managing your calendar, updating your social media, or responding to emails are easy enough, but they add up and cause you to fall behind on work.
Instead of doing all these tasks yourself, hire an admin specialist and assign the responsibility to them so that you can focus on your core business.
Sales and customer service
Being the founder of your business, you may know the intricacies of your product or service – but you’re not necessarily the best person to sell or to talk to customers about it.
Sales is a skill, after all; and so is dealing with clients.
But even if you have natural-born charisma for handling either task, it’s still better to bring in sales and/or customer specialists so that – among other things – you can:
- Take care of seasonal spikes in sales/call volumes.
- Sell to/Support customers in other time zones.
- Plan and support marketing campaigns.
Software development and programming
If you need a professional to regularly handle IT tasks for your business (e.g. managing your database, fixing your website), hire remote IT staff instead of doing it yourself.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer or an IT firm, and can handle such technical tasks; having your full attention on your business is more valuable than an offshore specialist’s cost per hour.
Accounting
Businesses of all sizes deal with a range of finance-related tasks like reconciling credit cards and bank accounts, keeping tax records accurate, or preparing required financial reporting documents.
If you’re not an bookkeeper by trade, hire an accounting specialist to do the work for you, so that you’ll:
- Minimise calculation errors.
- Prevent fraud.
- Avoid costly penalties or fees.
- Boost your bottom line.
If you’re an accounting professional, hire additional staff anyway to free up valuable time so you can concentrate on higher-value activities.
Design
It’s not easy to design your own logo, website, product illustration, or whatever other marketing material. And even among professionals, the quality of the work can differ.
If your handiwork doesn’t appeal to your audience and stand out in the sea of ads, banners, and other creations online, then you’ve wasted time. For best results, get a seasoned offshore design and multimedia specialist who’ll elevate your brand.
HR and recruitment
Your HR needs will eventually expand as your business grows. The moment you start hiring employees, you need to deal with time-consuming minutiae including (but not limited to):
- Payroll
- Recruitment and screening
- Health insurance
- Vacation and sick leave credits
The difference between HR tasks and everything else listed here is that without an HR and recruitment professional, you’ll have difficulty assigning any responsibility to others in the first place.
To make delegation and hiring employees feasible, bring in your own recruitment staff so you won’t have to do HR tasks yourself.
Marketing
There’s a misconception that DIY marketing gets easier as your reputation grows online. But when promoting your business by yourself, you’ll merely shift from working hard to become known to working hard to stay known.
You’ll eventually hit a ceiling – at least until you delegate your marketing.
To enjoy better gains, engage a digital marketing professionals like social media managers, SEO specialists, copywriters, content managers and other similar roles.
Leadership
You established your business, but you don’t necessarily have to manage every aspect of its operations by yourself. If your strength lies somewhere else, then consider delegating the responsibility to an experienced leader.
Delegate to the right people
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