Is your small business not leveraging tools and automation in 2021?
A small business often doesn’t enjoy the kind of bandwidth & liberty a large business does. A large-scale business is bridled with credit from various stakeholders like VCs & Stock Exchange which offers them financial autonomy and that allows them to expand their operations and scale their business to the next level.
Investing money doesn’t come with the self-doubt of whether this small investment would cost me bankruptcy?
But there are certain things, tools, and technologies that even small businesses can leverage to increase productivity and maintain a growth trajectory.
That is what we are gonna discuss in this post, so if you are a small business owner then you’re in luck keep reading this post to make the most out of it.
Whether your small business deals directly or indirectly in the digital, it’s worth noting in these digital times that every business is leveraging the digital to grow exponentially.
Even groceries heavily leveraged internet marketing to keep the business running in challenging times like COVID-19
Now since we have addressed the fact that any nature of the small business can leverage digital tools it’s time to jump into the list which is what you came here looking for
1. Answering Services
Answering Services for Small Business is all the rage right now. This is a business service that has gone mainstream lately. Earlier very large corporations were leveraging this business service as they had ridiculously huge clientele; I am talking about firms like IBM and the likes. Corporations like these would outsource menial tasks like answering calls to a business process outsourcing firm which in itself is again a huge corporation.
As a small business, you don’t need to outsource to huge Business Process Outsourcing corporations tiny agencies and small firms are offering these services so that small businesses like yourself can take advantage of them.
If you’re a small business that gets a lot of calls that don’t directly impact the business then you seriously need to consider taking this service it can you countless hours which you can otherwise spend generating more leads and clientele.
In the hindsight, you will realize that having spent some you are getting the bandwidth to make more business which is a win.
2. Zapier
As a small business, I’m sure that you have to indulge in a lot of marketing activities or rather Digital Marketing activities to generate leads and sales for your business.
Like on a very basic level; even a locksmith whose business operates entirely in the non-digital world; even he benefits greatly from Digital Marketing activities like Facebook ads and Google Ads.
Any small business that deals with Digital Marketing activities to generate leads understands how messy it can become to manage leads, address them and take follow-ups.
Awkwardly enough at times, leads are even lost as it gets tossed around from teams to teams.
One tool that can help you with this is Zapier. Zapier has got brilliant automation.
Automations like if a lead is generated via Facebook Ads campaign then via zap the lead data will be auto-populated on the Google Spreadsheet that your team has access to in real-time.
Some automations will automatically send emails to your leads. So yeah, definitely give Zapier a try.
3. Use Project Management Tools
If you get sleepless nights wondering if your team has begun the process or not and where they are in the timeline then it’s indicative that you are not leveraging project management tools like Monday or Asana.
These project management tools are the answers you have been looking for to lead a less stressful life and manage a business like a pro.
Essentially what project management tools do is it allows you to add your team members in it and the team members can add the tasks they are responsible for accomplishing.
The team members can add labels that signify the timeline and status and as the task gets completed they can even mark it done which is relieving feedback for the business owner and likewise you as a business owner can gain a birds-eye view on the whole project like how it’s going what are the bottlenecks that are impeding the workflow.
Managing business this way can help you restore your mental sanity which goes a long way.
- Hire Virtual Assistants
In the remote working age, it is worth considering hiring virtual assistants that can help you out with administrative work like data entry work; basically, any menial tasks that you would hate doing yourself.
Typically as a business, you would hire a human resource to take care of things like this which is workable except for the fact that hiring virtual assistants is more cost-effective.
For a small business indulging in menial tasks like copy/paste, data entry, handing spreadsheets doesn’t arise as frequently or at a scale as it does for a large organization which allows you the flexibility to hire virtual assistants who would do this groundwork for you.
You can come across amazing Virtual Assistants on freelancing networks like Fiverr for example.
This is service is somewhat similar to outsourcing answering calls both are menial tasks requiring your time which you can otherwise spend on things that will generate revenue for your business.
