Business owners everywhere are working seven days a week, struggling to sell their products and services, as well as attending to all the daily tasks of keeping the business going. The paperwork alone can be a full time job. Few seek help, often saying, “I can’t afford to hire someone…...
Outsourcing is when you hire someone from outside of your business to perform certain necessary tasks.
Different business owners have different reasons for outsourcing their business tasks. It all depends on what they want or need to accomplish, how much time they can personally devote to particular tasks, and how they value their time.
One mistake that many small business owners make is thinking they have to do everything themselves, either for reasons of creative control, or because they think outsourcing is not a justifiable expense.
The truth is, if you can outsource part of your business workload, you will be able to devote more of your time to tasks that hold more value and importance for your business.
In some cases, businesspeople outsource some of their work because they do not have the equipment or resources, or they do not have the expertise to do it themselves. Or they may simply need help through a busy period.
Whatever the reason for outsourcing, if planned with purpose, it can contribute to the productivity and ultimate success of a business.
One advantage of outsourcing is the fact that it is much more efficient than hiring, training and supervising new employees. Simply hire a professional, tell them what needs to be done and let them go to it. A side benefit is you won’t need more office space to accommodate more people. Not only does outsourcing leverage your time, it can also help to leverage your resources.
Additionally, when you outsource some of your workload, you won’t need to worry about additional paperwork involved with hiring an employee, such as tax forms and scheduling. And you won’t have employee costs like taxes, vacation time, workers compensation and so on.
Another advantage is that you won’t need to purchase or lease new equipment or go through the ever-challenging process of learning new software or new skills.
The key benefit to outsourcing is the time it frees up for you to concentrate on more important business-building tasks.
You can focus on your marketing efforts; work on improving your customer service; devote some time to new product development; speed up your delivery system; develop new markets; land some bigger customers and larger orders; expand your services to take on any overflow your competitors can’t handle.
Some small business marketers may look at outsourcing as a burden of expense rather than a benefit. “How can you justify the expense,” they ask, “when sales and income are low?”
The thing is, if sales are low, that is exactly why you need to outsource some of your tasks – so you can devote more time and attention to your marketing and advertising in order to generate more sales, faster.
The key is to have a solid marketing plan. Know what you need to do to achieve your sales and income goals; identify the tasks that are critical for you to pay personal attention to, and determine which tasks can be delegated to an outside service.
Outsourcing is just one of many resources at your disposal. When used wisely, outsourcing can definitely contribute to your business and marketing success.
Sales psychology is an advantage whether you are in a conventional brick and mortar business or an online one. The great thing is that sales psychology is not difficult to learn. Essentially all you need to do is put yourself in the place of the prospective buyer.
One aspect of sales psychology is that people respond to specifics more than generalities. If you sell photocopy machines, saying a particular unit is a high-speed duplicating machine is not impactful. But if you say that your machine produces 10 sheets of A4-sized copies in 12 seconds with the ability to automatically collate documents into correct order, then it seems more impressive. In sales, rounding off figures dilutes its impact so state numbers without rounding off.
This aspect of stating things in specific terms also applies to targeting your prospects. People must know whether your product or service is for them or not. Hence, the term ‘Home Owners’ is not as good as ‘Gardening Enthusiasts’. And ‘Gardening Enthusiasts’ is not as specific as ‘Tropical Plant Lovers’. Get specific. Got it?
Another aspect of sales psychology is that people are interested in how they can benefit from your product or service more than what the product can do. This seems obvious but most business owners and sales people miss the mark on this one. My favorite way to make sure I’m focusing on benefits instead of features is to ask myself “What does it do?” (to uncover a feature) and then “What’s so great about that?” to uncover the benefit to them.
Why on earth would you want to run an event for your business? Events take a lot of organizing and publicity, not to mention the time you might not have and, depending on what you want to do, they can also cost quite a bit of money.
So is it really worth all that effort? In a word, yes!
An event is a fantastic way to get a whole lot of your clients and potential clients together so you can present to them all at once, saving you huge amounts of time and effort trying to reach them all individually – and even better, as the speaker, you come across as an expert in your field. Give your clients valuable information and they will talk about you and recommend you to others. Having an event is also a great way to encourage your clients to network with each other and see how they can help each other – and of course, it’s you they’ll thank for that opportunity.
Having your name on an event can be very good publicity for you and your business. If you pick a hot topic for your industry you could find yourself interviewed by the local press, on the radio, or even on television, all of which increase your chances of being seen as an expert by potential clients.
You may even make money directly from your event – either by charging admission, finding sponsorship or by having products to sell at the event. Regular events could produce a nice stream of new income.
You could generate yet another income stream just from one event by creating one or more products – you could video it, record it, transcribe it, turn the learning materials into an ebook or online course and sell it – the possibilities are endless.
So once you’ve decided to go ahead – how do you pick a good topic? You’ll need to look at what your industry is discussing right now and what they really want to know. There are lots of ways to find this out:
- Run an online survey – www.surveymonkey.com has a free option you can use to create some very useful surveys
- Call several trusted clients and find out what they’d like to learn more about
- Go to online forums on your subject and see what everyone is talking about
- Post on online forums and ask people what they might be interested in
- Look at the bestsellers on Amazon, Barns & Noble and Clickbank
- Look at the most popular keywords using a word tracker tool (www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com is our favorite free tool)
- Go to your trade association and ask what their members are interested in
- Look at competitor’s ezines and see what they are discussing at the moment.
Once you have your topic you’ll need to pick a date and an event format. What kind of event should you offer? Look at where your potential clients are based:
- If most people are in a particular area of the country, you should consider having a face to face meeting – this is always the best option if possible as you have much more chance to impress and to deal on the spot with any objections and questions, as well as providing that all important networking opportunity for your clients.
If your clients are scattered across the country or even across the world, you may want to look at running a telecast or web based event:
- With a web based event using a facility such as www.hotconference.com, you have the option of using the whiteboard, showing a PowerPoint presentation, directing people to view a website and seeing the attendees online via webcam – this is a great way to give a presentation but make sure you are practiced at using all the features of the software first and consider whether your clients are technically-minded enough to be comfortable with this, and likely to have equipment such as webcams and microphones.
- If this is your first time running an event, the easiest option is to run a teleclass, where you set a date and time and participants simply dial in and listen to you. Many companies, such as www.freeconference.com, offer this service and a quick Google search should bring up a long list of companies you could use.
If you choose a live event you’ll need to find a good venue. Look at cost, position – find somewhere central with good transport links and parking. Make sure you see the room you’ll be using before the event so you can see the space you have available and plan your layout. Check maximum numbers the room can hold for fire regulations, find out where the fire exits and fire alarm are and make sure there is disabled access.
You’ll need to market your event very well to get good numbers:
- Use your own ezine, local press and radio, the chamber of commerce and online forums.
- Write articles on your subject and submit them to article directories and other ezines.
- Tell your trade association and use online event listings.
- Go to networking events and take leaflets with you to advertise what you are doing.
- Ask each client to bring one potential client to get a free place
- Offer to speak at other events on the run up to yours with a taste of what people will get on the day.
- Find another non-competing company who are aiming for the same market and do a joint event
Don’t just rely on one way to get publicity – think of as many different ways as you can and use the best ones for your event.
You’ll need to be very organized and plan well ahead. Make sure you order any equipment you might need in plenty of time. Make up an event checklist and buildyourself a kit with plenty of spares – pens, training materials, extension cables, flip chart paper, gaffer tape, scissors, etc. Check with the venue that everything’s ready for you the day before the event.
The more value you provide, the more likely you are to be seen as an expert in your area and the more business you will get from your event and from word of mouth after the event as a result, so don’t deliver a sales pitch – your content has to be high quality, entertaining and informative or people will feel cheated, particularly if they paid to attend.
Once the event is over make sure you follow up and ask for feedback – it’s the best way to find out if the event was what your clients wanted, to get ideas for future events, and also a great to chance to chat to prospective clients to see if they’re interested in working with you. You can also collect testimonials which will help you if you plan to run events on a regular basis, and which you can also use to promote any products you develop from your event content.
In short, pick a great topic, plan everything carefully, publicize what you are doing as much as you can, and check everything is in place the day before the event. On the day, don’t forget to relax and enjoy yourself – if you are having fun, the audience will too. Lastly and by no means least, whatever you do, don’t forget to follow up.
Just by following these guidelines you could find yourself with any amount of new clients, lots of publicity and several new income streams.
Worth it? Definitely!
