How to Manage a Growing Small Business
To successfully manage a new and growing business enterprise, you need to develop habits and use tools that will promote efficiency. Here are four things that every business manager can do to help keep things moving in the right direction.
Put Your Priorities First When You Start Your Workday
Many successful managers get most of their work done in the first few hours of their workday. Don’t use this time to tackle the easy stuff first. Start with the hard stuff first so you’ll be able to maximize your productivity throughout the rest of your workday. A lot of business managers start their day by reading and responding to email, but it may be better to save this task for later. The start of the day is a time when you’re less likely to get pulled in different directions by other people. If you start with people’s emails, however, then you’re letting other people decide your morning’s priorities. Use the start of the day to focus on the matters that you think are most pressing and important.
Keep Staff Connected
Sometimes when a small business has just a few hands on deck, it can be surprisingly hard to keep track of who’s doing what. Everyone is busy multitasking, and balls get dropped when people aren’t sure who’s carrying them. Consider using a shared calendar so everyone is aware of one another’s schedule. Project management programs can also help keep your staff on the same page by tracking project deadlines and individual staff responsibilities. Laying out individual roles in an organizational chart and having clear written descriptions of your staff members’ job duties will help to ensure that everyone understands what’s expected of them and has a clear picture of who’s doing what.
Simplify Your Human Resources Administration
When you’re trying to handle a growing small business, human resource matters can take up a lot of your administrative time. Staying on top of stuff like monitoring hours worked and payroll is hard when you don’t already have the infrastructure to do it. Choose a way to organize employee timekeeping that fits your business’ small size but leaves room to grow. For payroll, try using a processing tool that will let you make an online pay stub instead of outsourcing it to a costly payment processor. For mailing and shipping, try an online shipping platform to keep outgoing mail running smoothly and quickly.
Create a Marketing Budget
Some businesses rely on word of mouth and referrals to help their operations grow, but it’s essential to promote your business with online marketing and social media. You may not be into social media platforms in your personal life, but they may be a vital tool for your business. These tools are a core component of reaching a large volume of customers and building a successful business. The image that you project online will ultimately have a big influence on how prospective customers view your business. While your business’ growing resources may be limited, you need to have some time and funding allocated to creating advertising and promotional materials and launching a digital marketing campaign on social media.
Don’t Overdo It
When you’re pushing your business through a period of growth and development, you may find yourself putting in a lot more hours than you can sustain on an ongoing basis. Be realistic about how much you try to do. Attempting to take on too much at once can cause you to get discouraged and burnt out. Set a good example for your staff; If your staff sees you overdoing it, they’ll think that you expect the same of them. To attract and keep the best staff, you want to create a company culture that promotes work-life balance.
Staying organized, using technology to your advantage, and moderating all of your efforts will help you to keep control of your small business. As your business becomes easier to manage, your goals will become closer in reach.
