If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you run a small business. Since you most likely have a small team, it’s easy for things to get hectic — fast. Papers pile up, inboxes get cluttered, and soon you have lost track of your bills and contacts you needed to follow up on. Not only will disorganization hurt your business, but it will also hurt your mental health. Take a deep breath and follow these steps to get organized.
- Make the hiring process digital.
Is your desk cluttered with a pile of resumes and notes on the candidates you met or talked to? This is a great way to collect unnecessary amounts of paper and miss out on highly-qualified candidates. Consider moving your hiring process online: post jobs on the web, invest in resume scanning tools, and find an AI that will vet top candidates for you. With this process, you can review and reject unqualified resumes and contact candidates who you want to meet.
Also, consider getting an online interview scheduler if you meet with several candidates throughout the week. This can make it easier to balance your work with job interviews and the onboarding meetings that come after.
- Outsource your customer service.
Do you find yourself answering calls from customers all day or taking orders from clients because you are the closest one to the phone? If so, you need to change how you handle customer service.
Look into a platform like the Zendesk call center to help your customer problems. This creates a centralized location for customer issues, regardless if they come via email, chatbox, or phone. Plus, you can assign an employee to manage the software and solve problems on their own. This allows you to focus on big-picture issues and company growth.
- Look for systems you can automate.
If you can move a few dozen tasks off your plate each month, then you can free up mental space to relax or plan the growth of your business. For example, if you can set up an automated bill pay process (and paperless billing), you will never have to remember to pay your rent or cover your electric bill. While you will still want to review these bills to make sure they are correct, you can save time and mental energy knowing they have been paid.
- Centralize your social media presence.
The vast majority of businesses in 2020 are active on social media and 90% of consumers say they buy from brands they follow online. As your company grows, you will likely become active on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even TikTok. This is a lot to manage.
Look into social media management systems to help you get organized. Tools like HootSuite and Buffer are popular with both large and small companies. You can also share access to these tools with any social media agency you hire to keep your pages active.
- Find a project management software system you like.
As you start to take on larger orders and more complex projects, you may need a project management tool to keep everything organized. With these tools, you can assign tasks, check when they are complete, and provide information from the client in a sharable, centralized place. These management tools can help if you are a solo business owner who needs to get organized or if you hire several employees who juggle multiple projects at once.
If you are going to be a successful business owner, then you need to be strategic. Work smarter, not harder. And find ways to get organized and learn what you can outsource in order to stay on top of your tasks.