How to decide the daily tasks for your business?

Managing a business is daunting. No matter what the size, business management comes with loads of risks and rewards. However, for small business owners, it’s a bit more challenging. Because small business owners are accountable for even the minutest tasks, ranging from finance to sales and recruitment to managing inventory.

It’s so natural for small business owners to feel overwhelmed at one point in time. They may get easily caught up in mundane jobs like checking emails, handling social media, briefing, following up, and so on.

But this is not going to lead businesses anywhere.

They need to push their strategies and focus on what’s essential for their business.

If you’re a start-up, now is the time you need to pull your socks up and aim towards driving results.

Listed below are some actionable activities that can bring leads and generate results for your business. Let’s study in detail!

1. Focus on the “bigger picture.”

Think, plan, and achieve- These three steps are a must to implement.

Spend some time with yourself. Go for a coffee and ponder these questions:

• What kind of business do you want to be?
• Should you be investing in new products?
• Will it better your relations with existing clients?
• Should you be investing more in resources or need to get rid of unproven resources?

Staying ahead of the curve is the key to achieving your goals. Spending time on customer relations will give you a better idea of whether your company is in the right direction. This is why, first invest in client research, accumulate data, and monitor it regularly.

Going forward, implement it, and refine where required.

2. Client expansion

• As mentioned above, learning from your leads gives you a deeper understanding of what they think, how they presume, and how your product can solve their problem.
• No business can survive without client development. While client expansion is working towards your existing client base, client development identifies potential customers and figures out how to resolve their needs.
• Startups generally fail to meet their target audiences’ needs because their entire focus is on their product or service. This is the biggest mistake to avoid.
• The earlier you invest in customer development, the more money you’ll be able to save in the long run.

3. Review the brand’s ideals and objectives

A well-structured and thoughtfully curated business plan enables your business to climb the ladder of success. Leverage it to plan a strategy that helps in the long run. It also helps you to give precedence to the most essential tasks of the week. By analysing your business strategies and ideas consistently,  you can periodically evaluate the performance and make further modifications as the business expands.

• Did you observe any changes that should be emulated going forward?
• Is there a need to redefine the current business goals?
• Were there any major loopholes observed in this month’s performance metric? Should you work on those or should you still experiment?

These are some questions you need to ask yourself and then develop a strategy that aligns with your business goals.

4. Setting goals specific to your business

Successful businesses know where they are where they want to be, with a proper goal-setting framework in place. Refer to your business objectives and design plans into doable steps. Assign yourself a couple of goals each week with a set deadline. This will encourage you to hone your skills and work towards them.

Break your goals into smaller tasks, and eventually, you’ll be on your way to succeed.

5. Learning

Learning is vital for growth. As soon as you think you’re the master of everything, you are already behind the game.

• As a start-up business owner, you should always soak up knowledge from players who are ahead of you in the market. Precisely, you should learn skills that help you elevate your business, for example, design, marketing, technology, sales, etc.
• On the flip side, learning about general topics can help you grow as an individual and view life differently.
• There’s a lot of content out there. Invest in reading blogs. Reading books is also helpful to stay upon.
• Also, don’t skip other learning methods like webinars, podcasts, online training, video-conferences, etc.

6. Stay consistent with blogging.

Blogging has now become one of the most valuable tools for start-ups to stay ahead of the competitors. Not only does it attract organic traffic but also outgrows your brand.

• The more informed your audience is, the more loyal they become towards your services. You can position your brand by investing in blogs.
• And if you keep spending enough time on your blogs, it will eventually grow into a well-recognised name.
• Blogging also ensures that you become popular amongst the right people.

So, why not have steamy content online and use it for self-promotion? Either use your blog to share industry insights or curate content from others.

7. Investing in your resources

You just ignore the fact that your employees are your valuable assets. Your recruitment department has worked diligently to hire the best talent, making time to develop them into better leaders.

• The best way is to spend one on one time with them. Getting along not only builds bonds but also helps you in knowing them better. Alternatively, you should conduct a yearly review process to understand what they’re doing well and what they are stuck at.
• It’s also good to know how your employee feels about its culture and the working environment. A brief meeting can give your employees a boost of confidence.
• Don’t overburden yourself by creating a questionnaire. Identify your employees’ strengths and weaknesses in the first place and then take their perspective.
• Acknowledge them for their best contributions and guide them on how they can secure more in other areas. As an owner, it’s you who can make your employees feel comfortable and make their jobs easier.

8. Growth

Operating a business requires you to move forward. Once you stop, your business will slow down, and your competitors will pass you. So, just like you keep pedalling while riding a bicycle, the same way, you should keep moving and looking for better ways to stand out.

• Experiment with new ideas and growing from them is the simplest hack to succeed as a business owner.
• In simple words, growth hacking is all about looking at your marketing funnel’s various steps and conducting tests to identify how you can expand more quickly than your competitors.
• Once you find the process that works in your favour, turn it into a regular habit. Discuss with your team, measure, analyse and take note of it.
• The key is to invest time every week for generating ideas that aim towards growth. This should be a team task and performed systematically.

9. Networking

As an entrepreneur, nurturing the right relationships can be your most important asset. They can maximise exposure to your content, form channel partnerships, or help you with funds, whenever required. So, they can act as a catalyst to grow your business exponentially.

• You should spare some time for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Reach out to new people, follow them, not to ask for favours but to acknowledge their work and share it across your network.
• You can also lend them a helping hand by featuring them in your content.
• LinkedIn is one of the valuable and professional platforms. Leverage it to build relationships.
• Reach out to people who fit in your customer persona.

The Ending Notes!

Initially, the process of managing a business required employers to get into every role, right from account management to sales and marketing to handling client service, and so on.

However, as you grow and recruit new talents, you need to shift their roles to be leaders. You, then work more ON the business and not IN the business.

That’s what you should aim for in 2021 and beyond.

Also read:

1) ‘Small’ is the new ‘Strong’!💪 Here’s why we should support Small Businesses
2) How to Know if Your Business Idea is Going to Be the Next Game Changer?
3) Business Success Tips Every Business Owner Should Know
4) Tips to Grow Sales of a Small Business