There is an expectation of everyone in business to do more with less these days, observes Gregory Kennedy, writing for Entrepreneur.com.
With that in mind, Kennedy offers five tips for growing your business without adding more overhead:
• Automate tasks with software. The author points out that there are many tools now available that allow various manual tasks to be automated. He offers the example of social media management tools like Buffer, HootSuite and similar blogging capabilities that let you schedule posts and content in queues.
Email marketing can also be automated with inexpensive software, and Kennedy suggests you consider other tasks that can be automated, such as billing or accounting.
• Build business through referrals. Kennedy insists that this is a simple way to grow, and that asking customers directly for referrals is taking advantage of “low-hanging fruit”.
However, you don’t have to stop there. You could devise a rewards system to encourage customer referrals. The most effective way of doing this, comments the author, is to incorporate sharing into your product.
• Be an efficient leader and project manager. Improve the efficiency of your business by focusing on communication. Encourage people to contact you by email rather than phone, as email is “searchable, scalable, documented, available 24/7 in the cloud and there are a host of productivity tools available to become even more effective with it”.
Plan thoroughly, scheduling your whole week in advance and making your calendar sacrosanct. Discipline is essential. Kennedy also recommends cloud-based tools such as Dropbox and Google Drive to easily share important documents.
• Don’t get hung up on perfection. Kennedy advises: “Aim to improve the quality over the long term by making each iteration slightly better. Don’t worry about getting it right on the first try – you won’t.”