For any kind of business, there is always room for getting better. Certain things that you might be doing in a particular way can always be done in some other way that is much efficient, but efficient cannot always mean to be productive. Since, we humans are not machines, trying to do something efficiently may not always result in high productivity. Thus, there has to be a balance between the two. The following tips are especially important for the small businesses where resources are scarce and results matter the most.
Don’t try to multitask
Research has proven that multitasking does not increase productivity. Trying to do multiple things at once will definitely ruin your day and result in a low quality result. Focusing on one thing at a time definitely helps in obtaining a neat and clean end result which will be satisfying to you.
Do not over burden
Being a small business owner, it is likely that you might want to take a lot of work to give an initial boost to your business. Although it is important that you do not overburden yourself and your workers with too much work and expect a good result. Taking it slow and scaling the operations is the right way to expand the business.
Avoid unnecessary spending
If you do most of your business online, then you may not even need an actual office space. You could simply work from home and coordinate with your workers over Skype or other online communication applications. That way you could be saving a whole lot of money which can be in turn put into better marketing of your services or products. In case you want to have clients meet up with you and you want to appear professional to them, you can always rent out a virtual office space for a few hours or days and get done with the meeting. The client doesn’t even have to know the reality of you not having dedicated office space. Oh, you and your workers can now work from the comfort of their homes and that is likely to increase the productivity many times as compared to calling your workers and making them sit in the office throughout the day.
Set Realistic goals and appropriate deadlines
Every small businessman wants to grow their business limitlessly, but everyone has to start from the bottom. Keeping in mind about the reality and assessing your team’s capabilities, the appropriate goals must be set. Setting unrealistically large, impossible goals will result in heavy losses and that can result in frustration and reduced productivity.
Appropriate deadlines must also be set for the given task. If a long timeline is placed for some simple tasks and a seemingly short one for a difficult one will be utter nonsense. If a client demands certain difficult task to be done in unrealistic short timeline, then you must assess the task and communicate with your team to decide if the deadline can be met and only then accept the client’s demand.
Even if these tips look “common-sense” to us, most startups often forget about them and that results in many of the startups closing their shutters quite early on the line. These tips will surely help keep your mind straight in your business.