If you have a small business you will appreciate this guide to things to try for better organization and success.
We all have an idea of what an efficient business looks like. Not a file out of place, a robust ticketing system for customer complaints, employees who always know what they’re doing and can freely take initiative. These are ideals we all hold, whether we admit to it or not.
However, this idea of perfection can slow down your own progress in creating a well oiled and organized workplace. For those of us who regularly work at a messy desk or always have one more thing to do before leaving the office at the end of the day, the above scenario is something we end up daydreaming about a lot!
But a business doesn’t need to be perfect. As long as you’re turning a profit, satisfying your customers, keeping your employees happy, and paying your taxes, you’re doing just fine! Even if you feel disorganized. And like there’s a lot of work left to do. You’re maintaining a healthy work/life balance for all involved.
Of course, if you feel there really are some organization issues within your company, there are some things you can try to streamline your operations and make them easier to manage.
I’m sharing about this topic because I’m a bestselling personal development author with about 2 million books sold globally. Plus I’m well known for my peak performance entrepreneur consulting.
I love sharing insights and strategies to empower entrepreneurs and small businesses to be more successful.
With this in mind, coming up I’ve listed ten tips for better organization methods in your small business.
Keeping your desk clear is a very simple and easy way to get more organized at work. You can throw scraps of paper and bits of tissue away. Take cups and glasses through to the kitchen. And make sure all your pens and pencils are in the holder.
It’ll take you about five minutes to get this all done – et voila! Your desk will be a lot cleaner. And feel a lot neater. Plus when you’re looking at it while you’re working, this is going to have a long term impact.
Keep the desk neat going forward – it’s good for your mental health – and you’ll begin to apply the same principle elsewhere in your working life.
Have you ever said no in your time as a business owner? If you’re brand new to the role, then probably not! It’s easy to think that if you do, you’ll come across as harsh or rude. Or you’ll never get the chance to pick up an opportunity like this again.
But don’t listen to that self critical voice in your head. And under no circumstances let FOMO get in the way of responsible decision making! You need to be able to say no from time to time, to prevent yourself from taking on too much. This is especially true if you don’t have the workforce to accomplish everything you’ve ended up promising.
How often do you go into your calendar and manually update it? Probably not too often. A lot of calendars are automated these days from the inbox. But even so, you won’t have every meeting or significant event on there without a select focus on adding it.
That means updating your calendar on a daily basis. If that meeting got moved back, make sure it’s been moved back. If that vacation time needs scheduling in still, make sure it’s marked clearly. And in bold.
The more filled your calendar is, and the more accurately it reflects your day to day, the easier it’ll be to say no to things you can’t manage. Plus say yes to the things you’ve actually got the time and resources for.
If you don’t have a to-do list already, now would be the perfect time to make one. You need to have a clear priority list in front of you over what tasks need dealing with as soon as you get into work and what tasks can be saved until after this initial morning rush.
Often this means the more labor intensive, effort heavy tasks come first, with things like your emails being saved until after lunch. If it doesn’t need attention right now, save it until you’ve really got the time for it, and apply that method day after day until you feel like you’re on top of things.
Spreadsheets are great for seeing a lot of data all in one place. Even better, they allow you to see what the data is, why it’s important, and you won’t have to scan the document for too long to make use of these points.
That makes the skill of data analysis a lot easier, which will provide much better background research for all future business endeavors – especially your marketing campaigns! When you have neatly organized spreadsheet tables that contain useful, accurate, and actionable statistics, it won’t be hard to see your profit margins, your customer insights, and how you can combine the two for a better cash flow.
If you need a bit of a refresh in creating spreadsheets, log onto MyExcelOnline.com, invest in the course that’ll buff up your knowledge, and then start using them on a daily basis within the workplace.
We mentioned earlier that you can save your emails until the most important tasks have been dealt with. But we also recommend you don’t spend much time on your emails either. They can be pretty overwhelming when you’re a business owner. And you can lose three to four hours to them per day.
So keep things to 60 minutes at a time. This is your email hour and it’s the only time in your day when you’re able to delve into your inbox. And sure, if a supercritical and time sensitive email comes through, pay attention to it. But that happens on quite a rare basis, and you can save anything you receive after this hour is up until tomorrow.
Don’t staple yourself to your desk! File sharing can be done quite easily between devices, using cloud software such as OneDrive. You can then access your files as and where you need them, no matter if you’re at your work desk or working from home or a nearby cafe for the day.
As long as the cloud is password protected and you’re the only one who can get in, you’ll be safe to keep data there when you need to.
If you’re making marketing materials to be used in a week’s time, you’re not going to be on top of the campaign at large. You need to know when a product or offer is going to come out, what needs preparing for your blogs, social media posts, and announcements, and copy such as new product descriptions and email newsletter bodies need to be written well in advance.
This way you market for the future, have plenty of time to redraft and edit your marketing content, and you’re not rushing to make sure everything goes out when it needs to. This frees up a lot of time in the schedule, trust us on that one!
CRM software, also known as customer relationship management, keeps all of your customer facing tasks in one place. As a business owner, this can really help to stay afloat during busy seasons, such as the summer or Christmas time, and helps to maintain the same discipline all year round.
After all, CRMs come with easy to access data at a bird’s eye overview, meaning you’ll be able to address any and all customer issues while still maintaining confidentiality over their data, as well as provide yourself with an in depth look at your sales. You really can do it all from this one screen!
Ultimately this means no more back and forth, no more losing data and having to waste time looking for it, and definitely no headaches over customer tickets going missing and having to be resubmitted!
And onto our final tip for staying organized, sometimes you just need an assistant to help out! Whether this is in person or virtually, having someone there to update your calendar for you and get the rest of the annoying admin tasks out of the way will make the days seem so much more spacious.
But who should you hire to become your assistant? Well, you want someone who knows what they’re doing (especially when it comes to your type of business), but you also want to hire someone you get along with. This person may end up handling some very sensitive details on your behalf, so you need to feel like you can trust them in the long term.
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