Top 7 Ways Delegation Can Grow Your Business

Business owner often pride themselves on how much work they do within their business. However, they may actually be holding their business back. By delegating what they should not be doing, they remove themselves as the constraint on their business' growth. Delegating menial or time-consuming tasks frees you to focus on more important activities that lead to the growth of your business.

As the owner of a virtual assistant company, I am in the unique position of seeing what works and what doesn't with delegating to a virtual assistant. I'm often asked by new clients, "I see that your service could be really useful, but how should I delegate to you guys?" These clients hope that I will have the ultimate answer of how they should leverage us.

Unfortunately, there is not a "one-size-fits-all" answer to this question. The best way to use a virtual assistant differs from individual to individual so I can't say, "Have us do X, Y, and Z." One client might get the best results from having us take care of customer support so they are freed to focus on marketing while another may need to stay in contact with their customers and have us do their marketing.

Rather than providing a definitive answer, I ask clients to think about what they need or, in other words, what result they are looking for, and work backwards from there.

For instance, if you want to have more free time to spend with your family, create a list of your most time-consuming tasks, figure out which tasks, or which parts of each task, can be delegated, and then hand them off to us.

Here are some other ways we can help you...

1. Taking care of tasks that are procrastinated
   
   There are probably aspects of running your business that get put off - because you don't enjoy them or you are just too busy! Whatever the case, rather than putting something off till tomorrow, delegate it today. You'll be amazed at how much better you sleep at night knowing that nothing is being neglected.
   
   
2. Helping you feel less stressed
   
   When the phone is ringing off the hook, your emails are piling up, and your list of to-dos keeps growing, it can be difficult to keep a clear head, let alone focus. Let us take your phone calls, trim the obviously unimportant emails from your inbox, and take care of any to-dos that don't necessarily have to be done by you. When you are able to concentrate, you'll do better work and faster.
   
   
3. Keeping you focused on what is important
   
   As a business owner, it's important you use your time wisely - on those few high impact activities that make a difference to your businesses' bottom line. You need to maintain constant awareness of whether you are doing something that could be done by someone else. If you catch yourself doing anything other than "me-only" work, delegate it to us immediately.
   
   
4. Identifying and exploiting marketing opportunities
   
   Think of us as your extended marketing team. Not only do we have an office full of ideas, people with marketing backgrounds, and a lot of experience with advertising, we have the resources to do research on potential ad placements in your niche, create promotional materials, and write ad copy.
   
   
5. Improve your business' professionalism
   
   We can answer the phone for you, put together an appealing email newsletter layout template that you can reuse, provide great customer service, and more.
   
   
6. Taking care of "I should be..." tasks
   
   Every business has a slew of unexploited opportunities. Does your business have a newsletter? A blog? Do you mail "thank you" cards to your best clients? It's time to make progress on all those things you know you should be doing but just can't find the time to get done.
   
   
7. Hold you accountable
   
   We could all benefit from someone looking over our shoulder occasionally. It's too easy to ignore what we know we should be doing or rationalize not doing it to take care of what may seem more pressing. By speaking with someone else, we are reminded of what we are supposed to be doing and why. Many clients claim these "check-ins" alone have drastically boosted their productivity.

Brian Gladu
Owner, LongerDays.com
http://www.longerdays.com