Trying your best to get it all done in eight hours but constantly find yourself pressed for time? As a small business owner, your time is precious and you need to prioritize your tasks so as to meet deadlines and grow your business. It is vital to saving time to accomplish tasks rapidly and successfully. Try these four key ideas to save time at the office.
1. Track your time
Firstly, to understand how much time you spend on daily tasks, take a week to write down every activity you spend time on, evaluating how long each one takes. Note down everything from emails, time spent talking to clients to breaks and social media. This way you can find out where you waste time. Following this you can create a schedule that cuts down on those time-wasting activities, freeing up time for those tasks that count for the success of your small business.
2. Let technology do the work for you
There are many tech savvy solutions, such as cloud solutions, that can minimize the amount of time you spend on chores. For example, if you use social media for marketing purposes you can use a central social media management system. Most small businesses have more than one account. Logging into and posting on each site can be laborious. Solutions which provide a central dashboard like HootSuite enable you to post from one main location, allowing you to bypass switching between websites. HootSuite even permits you to schedule posts throughout the day entailing you don’t need to constantly sign back on.
3. Hire a virtual assistant
An extra pair of hands can make a huge difference especially when it means meeting a deadline. Hiring a virtual assistant is an economical and practical way to ensure that you save time. Virtual assistants can aid your small business in numerous ways. For example, they can answer or make calls for you, schedule appointments, make or take orders, place cold calls, work on sales for you or follow up on sales leads, coordinate mailings and media campaigns plus much more. Additionally, if you hire them from a company like Intelligent Office, because they are not a full time employee you will not need to waste time recruiting them, putting them on the payroll or training them.
4. Minimize meeting time
Meetings are an essential part of your small business calendar but they are not always necessary or could be conducted virtually, as opposed to in person. Work out which meetings are indispensable and scratch all others out of your calendar. Also, for out-of-office meetings, ascertain which meetings you really need to travel to or whether you could attend virtually so as to save on that travel time. When you do attend meetings, create a clear plan for them which elaborates what you need to accomplish. Remember to cut off people who talk too long on extraneous topics and end on time.
If you follow these 4 key ideas you should find you have much more time for the tasks that matter.
