Seven Things Your Small Business Should Consider Outsourcing
Getting the wheels on the track and everything up and running in a small business is tough. Getting your product or services to market can be difficult enough, alone, but that’s not all it takes to run a successful business. You need a coordinated operation that aims to reach as much of your target market as possible and to ensure that the path to customer satisfaction and company success is carefully managed all the way. It’s not something small businesses can do alone, not when they don’t have the manpower of their competition. But that’s where outsourcing comes in. While not everything should be handled outside of the business, there are some things that definitely can be, so let’s explore a few of them.
Accounting And Bookkeeping
All business owners need to have a grasp of their money situation. It’s vital to be able to make decisions that impact the health of your business. However, that doesn’t mean that you personally have to be the one managing the books, keeping up with payroll, and preparing financial statements. Working with bookkeepers can ensure that all of the legwork is done for you so that it’s a lot easier to see the situation on the ground, such as your account standings, your cash flow, and projections. Accountants provide an additional service beyond that, helping you prepare for tax season so that you can make sure that you’re staying compliant, but also taking advantage of the deductions that can save you some money.
IT Services
If your business is as simple as a PC (or laptop) or two, then you might not need much help from an IT service provider. However, if you operate internal networks, rely on data servers, rely on a lot of specific software, or even just manage data that needs to be secure, you should work with a managed services provider. They can help you not only ensure that your current system is being run efficiently and securely (with troubleshooting to help you get things back in working order), but they can also provide advice when you need it. If you want to explore the benefits of technologies such as the Cloud, data backups, or specific software for your team to use, they can help you implement and integrate them as efficiently as possible.
Your Marketing
If you want your business to grow, you need to work to find your customers and clients. While you might have a good idea of what you want your brand to be and the message you want to deliver to your audience, you might not be an expert in the various marketing methods, from social media to content creation and ad campaigns. Even if you do know the toolset, you might not have the time to carry it out, so working with a dedicated digital marketing agency can not only free you up but you can ensure that your brand is entrusted to a team of experts. Finding the right agency is important, as you want to ensure they know your industry as well as the best means to pair marketing with your specific business goals.
Sales Support
For a lot of businesses, marketing is a big part of reeling their target market in, but it’s sales that often close the deal. While many businesses manage large internal sales teams, if you’re a quickly growing business in need of a lot of sales and you don’t have the time to build that team for yourself, you can work with an external sales team to handle everything from lead generation to outreach and customer follow-ups. You can entrust the entire sales pipeline to the experts, while often benefiting from the data they generate through their customer relationship management systems on top of that.
Human Resources
You might decide that, rather than relying on outsourcing for much of your business, you need to invest the time and money necessary to build your own internal teams. However, are you ready for the added responsibility that comes with that choice? Human resources is often more complex than small business owners readily recognize, involving the management of the recruitment process, onboarding new team members, navigating labor laws, creating handbooks, and managing employee relationships, including resolving conflicts. Outsourced HR providers can help you not only handle all of those responsibilities, but also create the HR framework that allows your company to be a responsible employer, even if you decide to start handling it in-house at some point.
Customer Support
While marketing and sales might help you win the customers that support your business, you also need to make sure those customers are taken care of. Many businesses are able to handle custom support internally, but when you have a high volume of customers looking for help using your services or getting help when they need it, then professional support can help ensure that you never leave them hanging. These teams can handle inquiries, troubleshoot issues, resolve complaints, and help process orders for customers who are looking for a little help. They can help you make sure that there’s a real human response to customers in need, which in turn is likely to make them feel a lot more valued as a result.
Small Admin Tasks
If you run a very tight crew and you find yourself personally responsible for much of the admin that needs to be done, but you also feel like it’s taking your attention away from the things that can really help the business grow, then using the services of a virtual assistant might be just what you need. They can help with all kinds of things, from calendar coordination and booking travel to preparing documents for you or handling incoming calls from customers, allowing you to focus on the high-value work, such as closing sales.
What you outsource is going to depend largely on your goals as well as what you’re currently able to handle inside the business. You don’t have to take every single option mentioned here, of course.