There are a lot of areas to outsource, especially for entrepreneurs and small companies. Consider outsourcing those areas where you and your team struggle, or that you are doing by yourself (but shouldn't). Research shows that when you multitask, or manage multiple projects at once, you can experience a 40 percent drop in productivity. "Juggling is an illusion," writes Gary Keller, chairman of Keller Williams Realty. "In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession. It is actually task-switching." On average, multitasking costs the global economy more than $400 billion annually.
Also, look at the difference in costs between a full-time hire and outsourcing. That difference alone could help you decide. Here are five tasks you can easily outsource to contribute to the growth of your business, while freeing up your time.
1. Digital Marketing
There's a variety of areas that a marketing assistant can cover for you: social media management, e-blasts, content creation, graphics and digital strategy among others. The objective is to generate inbound leads and drive traffic to your web or social network. Rather than spending your time producing and distributing content, or hiring a full marketing team to handle it, you can start small by hiring just one marketing assistant, or employ an entire outsourced marketing team. Both options save you money and help you build better relationships with your customers while generating new leads.
2. Customer Service
Not everyone has people skills. For any company, the customer service provided is its most important weapon to keep clients happy and attract new ones. It takes a lot of diplomacy and knowledge to deal with problematic customers, or to communicate the correct information without divagating. When you outsource a customer service representative, you can build your own service — from a cool modern service without scripts to very corporate, delicate and scripted support. Representatives answer phone calls and emails for you, providing elite service and resolving doubts, so you can relax and focus on more important things.
3. Lead Generation
Most businesses generate leads through online marketing, and the content you produce works to convert them. According to Search Engine Land, the average conversion rate across most industries is just over 2 percent, with the top 25 percent of sites seeing conversions at 5 percent or higher. While marketing strategies produce "inbound" leads, an agency can give you "outbound" leads, which can be more effective due to the information you can research about your target market. You can build a very specific database and always improve the research to fit your needs.
4. Appointment Setting
I highly recommend outsourcing your appointment setting. You probably have a database just standing there, getting full of dust, that no one updates — but you really want to call those clients and offer them your services, follow up on old clients, and reach new ones. But you don't have time. Hand your database to an agency so you can generate an updated database and contact those potential clients to set appointments. With outsourced appointment setting you can generate around 10 new clients per month on average.
5. Scheduling and administrative tasks
It's easy to get bogged down in dozens of small tasks that eat up your time each day. As a small business owner, you need to focus on your core processes. When you hire a virtual assistant, you eliminate a lot of wasted time spent on emails, agenda management and other repetitive tasks. Outsourcing isn't a luxury; it's a smart growth strategy. When you let experts handle the tasks that drain your time and focus, you reclaim the space to innovate, lead, and expand. Partnering with a virtual staffing agency can give you that freedom while ensuring every aspect of your business runs smoothly and effectively.