Every small business owner knows to be careful with their cash. When money is tight and revenue light, it’s vital to stretch what you have as far as you can.
Fewer business owners do the same with their time and nonfinancial resources. This is a mistake. The saying, “time is money,” is built around a whole heap of truth, not a mere grain. And using human and other nonmonetary resources more efficiently almost always has a positive impact on the bottom line over time.
If you’re looking for ways to make your business more efficient but feel like you’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit, look closer. You might find some unexpected opportunities to squeeze even more out of your enterprise.
Consider these eight strategies if you haven’t already.
Use Platforms That Make It Easier to Buy at Scale
Partner with platforms that understand small businesses’ need to drive efficiency as they scale.
For example, suppose you’re a clothing retailer that buys items in bulk and sells them online or in-store (or both). In that case, you’ll want to pair up with a wholesale apparel marketplace that offers above-and-beyond payment terms and free returns that enable you and your team to try new products before you commit to stocking them.
The key is to find a wholesale platform that helps set your business up for success in the long run and wants to see you grow as much as you do.
Ban Impromptu Meetings
The science is clear: Frequent interruptions are bad for productivity and worse for work quality. So, “protect our time” might as well be your company’s rallying call.
One of the simplest ways to protect more of your and your team’s time is to ban impromptu meetings. You might call them “drop-ins” or “unscheduled standups” or “hey, my door’s always open.”
Whatever your preferred nomenclature, these impromptu meetings are not helping matters. They’re interrupting them. Replace them with scheduled daily meetings if you must; weeklies are probably sufficient for most team members, most of the time.
Respect “Away” Status
This is a core component of the Time Lock concept popularized a few years back.
Like the ban on impromptu meetings, the idea behind “locking” discrete periods of time is simple: minimizing distractions and interruptions. An urgent email or Slack message is nearly as disruptive as a knock on the door, and much more likely in the new world of remote work.
Banning the sending of messages to team members on Away status is not practical and probably not enforceable. What you can do is make clear that team members shouldn’t feel obligated to return from Away simply to answer messages, and certainly not after hours. For truly urgent matters, an old-fashioned phone call is the way to go.
Take Advantage of Buying Groups Whenever You Can
You might already do this for group health or disability insurance. Now, you can look for other opportunities to pool your buying power with other small businesses.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to coordinate directly with these enterprises to leverage the power of buying in groups. Coworking is really just group leasing for office space, for example.
Invest in the Inventory Management System You Need Tomorrow, Not Today
You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t expect your business to grow. But it’s entirely possible you haven’t thought much about what you’ll need when you’re a bit farther down the growth curve.
One need that has a tendency to become urgent all at once is inventory management. When you’re still in the dropshipping phase or operating a pop-up boutique on the weekends, you can probably address your inventory management needs within your entry-level e-commerce plan (or maybe even on an old-fashioned spreadsheet, depending on your sales volume).
That’s simply not going to be the case when you’re running a store with hundreds of SKUs and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in monthly revenue. Let alone when you’re even bigger, as you have every right to hope you’ll be.
Get out in front of that need and size up your inventory management system now, while you have the luxury of learning it in your spare time.
Automate Marketing and HR
Marketing and human resources are two very important business functions that don’t directly generate revenue (unless you run a marketing or human resources firm, of course). While you can’t afford to eliminate them, you do need to make them as efficient as possible.
Automation is the difference-maker here. Fortunately, automation is well-advanced in both spaces. You can run an effective marketing campaign using Google AdWords and your preferred social media marketing engines. Likewise, you can onboard a new employee in the cloud, with perhaps just one or two real-time conversations to set expectations.
Why would you do it any other way?
Clearly Define Roles (So That Team Members Aren’t Surprised When You Delegate)
Finally, make sure everyone on your team, including contractors and temps, understands the precise parameters of their roles.
This is important for productivity’s sake; you don’t want one person duplicating another’s effort. It’s also important for morale; nothing is worse than delegating a task to someone who didn’t realize it was part of their job.
Role definition is best done during onboarding, but that’s of course not possible for current team members. Use your annual review (if you have one, and you should) to clarify expectations.
Help Your Business Grow Faster
Growing a business takes time, discipline, and commitment. Entrepreneurs who expect difficult problems to solve themselves rarely see their hopes pan out.
Finding ways to operate your business more efficiently is key to its eventual success. These (somewhat) unexpected efficiencies can help you reach that outcome, however you choose to define it, a bit more quickly.
Perhaps you’ve contemplated some before. You’ve thought about using wholesale marketplaces to buy more of what you need faster, or finding new and different ways to protect your employees’ time (and your own), or automating essential business processes that don’t directly generate revenue.
As you know, contemplating alone won’t get you very far. It’s time to take action and invest in the future of your business. With these efficiencies locked in, you might make it farther than you had any reason to expect.