Try these 5 tactics for a Week, and be Twice as Effective
Do you want to double your business effectiveness and productivity? Follow these 5 tactics for a week and enjoy the results.
Working with a lot of medium sized professional services businesses recently I’ve seen an interesting trend. The business partners have successful businesses, but effectiveness and personal productivity is often variable.
TACTIC 1 Where do I want my business to be in 5 years’ time?
Quantifiable measures are needed – i.e. whether it is on fee-earners having a individual or departmental income targets or whether growing your client base by 25% is key.
What are you spending your time on?
As your business grows, it can be tempting to be ‘all things to all men’. Despite being able to charge say £150/hour for your professional services, you may be struggling trying to juggle social media activity, attend networking to promote your business, keep staff fully and productively occupied, plan what the next few years will look like, worrying about new competitors with commoditisation of services (Amazon, Tesco, or Uber maybe!) as well as doing all the £150/hour ‘stuff’.
TACTIC 2 Ask yourself what makes you unique
What do you do (and only you can do) versus what is it you spend your time doing?
Making a list sounds simple - and that's because it is, but the results may be quite surprising.
TACTIC 3 Record what exactly it is that takes up your time
On an average day, it’s likely you may spend around 80% of your time doing things that your staff, fee earners or specialist suppliers could do for you instead – much quicker, possibly better and definitely at a cheaper cost.
Do I do my own annual return? No, I outsource that to my accountants. Would I attempt to draw up a DIY Will myself? Wouldn’t dream of it. So why, is there a mindset that expert professionals ‘should’ be doing all these things?
TACTIC 4 Block 1 hour out of your diary
Come up with a plan for what activities are needed to help focus on achieving your aims. Leaving more time for planning in the long and short term is the single most important thing I would argue for any business owner/partner to do – on a regular basis.
TACTIC 5 Review how effective is your marketing?
Marketing or campaign plans can be drawn up and then executed. Where the process can fall down however is reviewing what the results were and compare against targets set. Doubling your Twitter followers may sound great, however if it fails to win any more clients ultimately, or build up your digital presence, then is it really adding business value??
If activities, undertaken by you or your staff are not contributing to the overall objective – simply stop doing it!
For a discussion on bespoke support for your business, call us on 01276 536310 or email at info@zgriffiths.uk
