The 6 Biggest Time Wasters in Every Business: What’s Holding You Back From Reaching Success?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Biggest Time Wasters|The 6 Biggest Time Wasters in Every Business: What's Holding You Back From Reaching Success?Entrepreneurs have to make every moment count if they hope to succeed in the world of business. Building a new company from the ground up can be exciting, but it also frequently proves to be an all-consuming task.

Waste even a bit too much time while leading a young company and crucial duties can end up being neglected. Find ways of addressing the following six common issues and you will have more time to focus on the business-related details that matter the most.

1. Bookkeeping and Accounting

Every business needs to maintain accurate books and have access to informative accounting reports and insightful analysis. Unfortunately, many small-business owners end up wasting time trying to stay on top of related duties that they are not well-equipped to handle.

Accounting Firms are inevitably better-positioned than entrepreneurs to take charge of these all-important financial activities. Because they are much more efficient than part-timers, professional bookkeepers and accountants tend to offer highly cost-effective services.

Not needing to worry about issues like payroll, accounts payable, and tax preparation will allow a business owner to adopt a more commanding, supportive style of leadership. Even when hiring full-time accounting help cannot be justified, on-demand assistance is always available.

2. Email

Hundreds of billions of emails are sent every day, but many of them have relatively little to say. Many a modern entrepreneur starts each working day by spending an hour or even more filtering through a packed inbox.

While there will always some emails that need to be read carefully, thought about, and acknowledged, these tend to be fairly rare. Small-business owners who learn to quickly assess whether given messages merit much attention will free up time for more important activities.

3. Overly Demanding Customers

Many entrepreneurs subscribe, at least superficially, to the idea that the “customer is always right.” A focus on customer satisfaction, in fact, is a valuable asset for almost every kind of business.

Some customers, though, are simply too demanding and unreasonable to be worth devoting time to at all. Entrepreneurs who learn to identify and deal with difficult customers effectively will spare themselves many headaches in addition to saving time.

4. Micromanagement

Hiring a first employee or even adding to a growing team is often a sign that a business is on the right track. Becoming an effective, efficient manager, though, does not always come naturally to entrepreneurs.

One problem many small-business owners face is a compelling need to exert too much control. Try to specify and direct employees’ activities too precisely and time will inevitably be wasted.

In fact, workers who struggle under the burden of micromanagement tend to be less productive, creating a twofold cost. Entrepreneurs who learn to give their employees some breathing room will have more time to spare and become better leaders, as well.

5. Vendor Churn

It always takes time and effort to find a new supplier or other type of partner. Become too quick to switch to a new vendor at the slightest sign of trouble and the wasted time will add up. Business owners should never feel that their vendors are holding them hostage, but accepting an occasional, honest mistake is normally the best policy.

6. Meetings

Some large companies have become infamous for making unproductive meetings central parts of the workweek. Unfortunately, even a fair number of relatively small businesses fall into this trap, often with ostensibly good intentions. Meetings can be useful but should always be designed to repay the investment of time required to hold them.

A Proven Way to Build a More Successful Business

Many small companies end up being held back because of time being wasted by the owner. Avoid the six especially common time-wasters above and you will have a better chance of leading your own business to success.

How To Minimize Your Business To Maximize Growth

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When people start a business, they all head into it with a mindset of owning an empire that sees growth years on year. Now, unfortunately, reaching the level of a global empire isn’t something many of us will achieve, but there is no reason we cannot see constant growth throughout the years.

In this post, we are going to be looking at some very simple things you can do with your business that can show enormous amounts of growth very quickly.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Business Growth | How To Minimize Your Business To Maximize Growth

Why You Are Not Growing

If you have noticed that your business has reached a point where it has hit a metaphorical wall, then the time has come that you need to acknowledge that something is wrong with your business and needs changing.

One of the main issues is possibly that you are allocating your business funding correctly, and you are more than likely spending too much. While you may plan your spending carefully, more often than not, most businesses tend to spend money on things that they just don’t need to.

In the next section, we are going to be looking at a few of these, and hopefully, you will be able make a few changes that see your business start to grow overnight.

Stop Doing Everything

One of the biggest mistakes that businesses seem to make today is that they believe they have to have every department in house. While it used to be the way that your business would require many different departments, the modern world has a solution for this.

You can now take some of your most expensive departments and look at outsourcing them. You can easily find managed IT services and even outside call handlers. If you think logically, you can save up to 80% of your yearly wage budget by simply outsourcing some of your departments.

For many companies, this is a huge amount of cash, once you tackle this problem, think how much your margins change overnight.

Save On The Small Stuff

Other areas you can minimize are things like your workspace and your bills. There are many businesses now opting for shared office complexes. By taking on one of these, you lose the massive bills that come with leasing an office building, and you just pay a set rate monthly.

These complexes are often frowned upon, but the truth is that often they promote so much more productivity than your regular office, and the atmosphere is always amazing.

Sure, these solutions may seem incredibly simple, but you should realize that put together, they can take your business to brand new levels of success. If you are truly looking to make a difference to your end of year figures, then both of these can get you well on your way.

You may also find that once you have started, you will find brand new ways to save money. Just remember, just because you are minimizing doesn’t mean you are failing, it simply means you are thinking outside of the box.

5 Topmost Software That Helps You In Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Business Software | 5 Topmost Software That Helps You In Business

This is 2020, and the world has entered into a new decade, unlocking new windows to the trading world. People nowadays are indulging in various kinds of businesses and earning quality money. Youth is much more interested in becoming an entrepreneur than doing nine to five jobs. Many people are providing guidelines to business, even this, has become a business. People conduct public speaking seminars to spread awareness about entrepreneurship and unique ways to enter into the trading ball.

As you must have experienced, how every field is progressing with time and doing wonders to support each other. IT has embellished business and granted some modern ways to set your feet in it. There is now numerous software that helps in making things easy for an entrepreneur like deputy software. This software enables you to perform better and efficiently. They lessen the risks and present you with a proper platform to execute your plans without any haphazard. Here is a list of top-five software that you can use and grow your business. This list will help you to pick suitable software for your business. Have a look and follow the list,

Deal with Accounts

If you are commencing a business and don’t want to squander your precious time in 2+2=4 (accounts), what will you do? You should hire a person who can solve the account operations. However, after establishing a business, you will realize that you cannot afford to make a mistake in fiscal matters. You will also discern that human beings are not imperiled to commit mistakes. Therefore, what can be the after course? We have a quick account fix for you. You should borrow some help from the IT Department and lift your accounting matters to accounting software.

Presently, you must be wondering what kind of software you can use to handle the finance of your business? You should download QuickBooks software. Do you know anything about this magical wand named QuickBooks? It includes some very convenient features that you need to make things easier for you.

  • You can trust this software with all your business secrets.
  • It will aid you in tracking the cash and provide you with receipts.
  • It creates the invoice and any other business form that you may want to send and receive.
  • You can easily analyze the performance of your business by tapping the screen.

Website Building

As the internet is touching higher skies, every business needs a website. You cannot start a business venture without establishing a website and for that purpose; you need a website building software. People these days ask for the website first because it has turned into a matter of authenticity. The easiest and accessible website building software is Word press. It is free in the beginning and later offers discounted plans. Its features are striking as mentioned below,

  • It offers 300 themes to set up a domain. You can design it by yourself with eminent features.
  • It deports your posts to other social media platforms such as twitter.
  • It is SEO trained and increases the readability of your content.
  • You can dig the stats of the visitors that look into your website.

Digital Marketing

After expanding a topnotch business, you need to spread its name around the town. But how are you going to do this? What are the modern ways of marketing? You know the moves, don’t you? You have to acquire digital marketing software and lift your business through innovative techniques. We suggest you involve ‘Intercom’ in your business. You must be pondering what Intercom is and what it does? It is upscale software that helps entrepreneurs to grasp clients and engage with them. The features it comprised are stated below,

  • Intercom procures clients through artificial intelligence-based chatbots and generates faster links.
  • It forwards convincing emails to the people who sign up and transform them into clients.
  • It has a help desk that allows its members to get help at any moment.
  • You can depend on them with all your clients.

Project management

Everything has been going through a proper discipline but do you retain any idea about your team? How are you going to manage people with inconsistent behaviours, nature, and backgrounds? This whole team management fiasco will exhaust you but wait; we are here so why fear? We have an idea for you to get an instant update about your team members. Get Trello. Don’t know Trello? We’ll never leave you clueless. Trello is a software that promotes companies to manage their projects without any hurdle. It works in a very trendy manner. You obtain this first, make a card, include your team in that card and ask them to update it. Simple, isn’t it? Take a look at its impressive features,

  • You can avail Trello for almost every nature of tasks; family trips or high-end professional projects.
  • You can add attachments, comments and due dates to whatever task you are heading towards.
  • It provides you with a butler. Surprise? Not the real one. Butler boosts productivity through automation and formulates principles, commands, and buttons for your card.

Hiring and human resources

Last but not the least, the field of human resources is extremely important for any business. You cannot hire any Tom, Dick, and Harry without knowing their background. Recruitment CRM carries significance in every kind of business and an ideal relationship between employees and employers. With the uprising scope of the human resources department, candidate relation management (CRM) has taken place in the corporate world to hire suitable candidates. There is software that performs this high-end duty, but smashfly is the best of all. You will believe us after knowing its features,

  • It provides your team with talent acquisition software that helps in analyzing the skills of the suitable candidates.
  • It has an AI-based chatbot that heightens the probability of identifying the candidate through conversing them. Moreover, it schedules meetings for you.
  • It helps in organizing recruitments events without bearing any difficulties and leaves an unforgettable image on candidate’s minds.
  • It enables you to forget about paperwork and turn everything in digital.

These are some easy to use software that enhances the probability of your growth. You should utilize this software and enter into a rapid version of corporate. This is an era of technology boost so gain as much as you can. You are required to decide whatever software your business needs. This is the time to move forward keeping in mind the progressive technology and the fast world. Be smart and watch your step!

The Dos And Don’ts Of Automation In Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Automation in Business|The Dos And Don’ts Of Automation In BusinessAutomation involves using robots and software to take care of tasks. In recent years, it’s become a popular way of improving efficiency in business – by no longer having to manually complete tasks, you can free up a lot of time and energy. Most tasks nowadays can be automated. However, just because you can automate every task doesn’t mean you should automate every task. There are still some processes that benefit from a human touch and automating them could do more harm than good. To help you determine when you should use automation, here are a few dos and don’ts.

Do automate long, repetitive tasks

Long and repetitive tasks can be tedious. These are the types of tasks that are perfect for automation. Robots are able to handle long, repetitive tasks for hours if not days. They won’t get tired and won’t lose concentration like humans (which leads onto the next point of precision).

Do automate tasks that require constant precision

Humans aren’t able to offer the reliable constant precision that machines can. If you’re mass producing a product and need to apply a specific amount of glue to a specific spot, it could be worth looking into automated dispensing technology to do this task. Automation could also be useful for tasks that require precise calculations such as working out complex scientific formulas.

Do automate dangerous tasks

Some tasks could be particularly dangerous. Putting them in the hands of a robot could save you or your employees from getting harmed. Robots are already used to assess burning buildings, clean up nuclear sites, dispose bombs and inspect pipelines. While these tasks are still often manually controlled by a human from a remote location, certain routine tasks that involve dangers are starting to become automated.

Don’t automate user testing

The whole point of user testing is to test a product on a real-life user. While software can be used to simulate some testing, some of your testing will need to be done on humans to get a genuine reaction. This could include everything from tasting food to trialling out software.

Don’t automate marketing

Effective marketing relies heavily on appealing to human emotions and requires a lot of imagination. While there are automation tools out there to create social media posts, send out emails and generate ads, you could find that you get poor results by relying wholly on automation. Exciting marketing campaigns require human ideas – although once these ideas have been established, you may be able to automate certain processes (such as scheduling pre-written emails to get sent out at certain times).

Don’t automate tasks that require empathy

Robots suck at empathy. Any job that involves empathising with other humans should be handled by humans. A noteworthy example of this is handling complaints on the phone – getting a robot to answer complaint calls could end up frustrating most callers. Automated phone answering should only be used to direct people to the right human contact.

Four Top Tips for Growing a New Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Growing a New Business|Four Top Tips for Growing a New BusinessBecoming an entrepreneur can be the dream scenario for those wanting to escape the sometimes monotonous and uninspiring 9-5 working life. However, once you have bitten the bullet and launched your new business venture, it can become all too easy to sit back and let your business simply plod along, rather than seek new ways to enable its growth. However, if you want your business to succeed, then you need to ensure that you develop both short term and long-term strategies to generate new business and expand your customer base.

From improving your customer service by embracing the latest technologies, to implementing a digital marketing campaign, to learning how to network effectively, keep reading to find out how you can grow your new business in four simple steps.

1. Listen to your customers

If you want to keep your existing customers loyal to you, as well as attract new ones, then you need to make sure that you actively listen to their needs. An excellent way to find out what they want from your business is to consistently ask for feedback on your products or services. Although it can be hard to hear criticism, especially when it comes to your own business, it is essential to know where you are going wrong so that you are able to put it right. A simple email asking, “How can we do better next time?” is all it takes to gain invaluable insight into your customers’ requirements.

2. Improve your customer service

As a small business owner, it is incredibly important that you provide your customers with the best possible level of customer service, as just one poor experience can result in you losing a loyal customer, and also encourages negative word of mouth. If you are struggling to respond to your customers’ inquiries as quickly as you would like to, but cannot afford to take on any more employees, you may want to consider investing in a chatbot that can deal with an infinite number of customers simultaneously.

3. Don’t forget the bigger picture

It can become all too easy to get preoccupied with the day to day running of your business and fail to invest adequate time and funds into your long-term goals and strategies. For example, it has never been more critical for small businesses to improve their SEO rankings as this is the simplest way to attract more customers to your site, which in turn will increase your conversion rates. If you are not overly confident in your SEO abilities, a digital marketing agency can help you to generate leads that will result in conversions and ROI.

Try and make sure that you sit down with your employees and/or investors at least once a month to discuss your long-term visions and goals for the business while making solid plans and action points.

4. Extend your networks

Not everybody loves to network, but unfortunately, it is a necessary process if you want your business to grow. Are you familiar with the saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know”? Well, never has a truer phrase been said when it comes to expanding your small business. You need to attend as many relevant networking events as possible, as well as ensure that you network effectively.

How do you do this? It is not rocket science. The key is to make sure that you give and take. For example, if you see someone who you think can offer you advice, don’t approach them and simply bombard them with questions. You also need to listen to what they have to say and try and find a way in which you can be of use to them too.

Networking can be a great way to connect with customers, investors and even potential employees, so make sure you are open and responsive when you attend events, as you never know when you may need a helping hand from someone in the industry.