6 Productivity Tips to Help Your Small Business Succeed

Small business owners are some of the busiest people in the world. However, being busy doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re productive.  

A lot of small business owners today spend their days running back and forth, responding to emails, creating local SEO Miami strategy, and tackling day-to-day tasks in general. But, at the end of the day, they realize that they’ve accomplished nothing.  

Being productive isn’t just about being occupied and unavailable. It’s about getting the job done by working efficiently and focusing on the task at hand. Productivity is all about cultivating discipline and practicing winning habits.  

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, productivity is key to your success because productive people generate tangible results that propel their business forward.  

How about you, are you productive or just busy?

If you’re struggling to balance projects or you’re losing sight of long-term goals, here are six productivity tips that will help you stay motivated and drive your small business to succeed.  

6 Essential Productivity Tips to Help Your Small Business Succeed

1. Spend Time Creating a Concrete Plan

If you want your small business to succeed, then you need to plan. Having a concrete plan in place helps you focus on the specific steps necessary for you to achieve short-term and long-term goals.  

An annual business plan serves as a guide to help you stay productive, especially during days when you don’t know what to do.  

Start by deciding on what you want to achieve for the year. Then, break them down into smaller objectives that you need to achieve each quarter. Once you’ve done that, you can now figure out what you need to do each day to accomplish those quarterly goals and bring you closer to attaining your long-term target.  

Here's an example:

Let’s say you want to lose weight to become healthier so you're not always sick, and reinvest the funds you’re spending on medicine and hospital bills into your business instead. Your ultimate goal is to lose 100 lbs by the end of the year.  

What you want to do is to divide the 100 lbs by 12 months and consider eight lbs as your monthly goal. Then, further, divide the eight lbs by four weeks, so your weekly goal is down to two lbs.

Now that you know how much weight you need to lose per week, it’s easier for you to plan out your days, like what you should eat and your exercise routine, allowing you to achieve your weekly goal.  

When you do this, the 100 lbs doesn’t feel so intimidating or impossible.  

2. Learn How to Prioritize

We're pretty sure you're familiar with the phrase "so much to do, yet so little time". It’s something every entrepreneur and business owner can relate to.  

You only have 24 hours in a day to tick off all your tasks but through prioritization, you can complete everything that needs to be done. By establishing your priorities, you can give your full attention to work that is urgent so you can later focus on other lower priority assignments.  

Here are some of the major reasons why your business needs your time management skills:

• Lets you do more in lesser time: Prioritizing tasks allows you to focus on more important assignments first and then delegate other lesser tasks. Being able to focus translates to a higher level of productivity for your business.  
• Relieves you of work-related stress: When you prioritize tasks according to importance, you’re less likely to rush through each job. You’ll be able to think clearly, focus on the task at hand, develop better ideas, find solutions quickly, and make wiser decisions.  
• Gives you time for business expansion: Prioritization and time management give you the time to learn something new and explore ways to expand your business.  
• Increases your work quality: Working on a tight schedule forces you to rush through your work, leading to subpar results. However, with prioritization and time management, you can focus more on certain tasks without any stress. That will, in turn, boost the quality of your output.  

3. Delegate Day-to-Day Routine Tasks

To be able to do tasks that improve customer value and drive profits, you need to learn how to delegate non-core tasks.  Non-core activities are day-to-day routinary tasks that are not profit-centered.  

Doing so allows you to focus your time and energy on work that will propel your business forward. It’s common to see small business owners wear multiple hats, and that’s okay, even necessary while you’re still starting. But, once your company is expanding, you need to delegate lesser important assignments.  

Delegating also empowers your employees, builds trust, and helps with professional development.  

If you’re anxious about delegating tasks, here are some tips to help you do it successfully:

• Know what to delegate because not every task can be delegated.

• Use your employee’s strengths and goals to learn which tasks to delegate to whom.
• Be clear with your instructions when delegating tasks. Let them know what the desired outcome is, the deadline, and the metrics you’ll use to measure the success of their work.
• Provide your employees with the resources they need to complete their assigned projects properly.  
• Establish a clear communication channel and make sure your employees feel comfortable reaching out to you when they have questions and provide updates.  
• Provide and ask for feedback to ensure you’re delegating effectively.

An example of delegating work effectively is hiring a digital marketing agency to work on your local SEO Miami instead of doing it yourself or hiring an in-house team. Not only is it cheaper, but it also saves you time and money from doing all the hiring, selection, and training processes.  

4. Automate Tasks

Automating tasks can make your life and your team’s lives easier. You can cut down on manual tasks such as sending out follow-up emails, posting social media content, computer back-ups, updating contact information, data input, and so much more.  

There are so many productivity tools available online that you can use to streamline your process and boost your quality of work, such as Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Google Alerts.

Automating manual tasks not only streamlines your internal processes but also increases your team’s productivity and efficiency.  

5. Be Organized

Being organized is one of the habits you should get into. It enables you to stay on top of your tasks and ensures that you meet deadlines.  

Here are the other benefits of being organized:

• Save more time: Instead of spending a chunk of your time trying to look for files or other things you need, you can have more time to work on important tasks.  
• Reduce stress: According to research, clutter can make people feel stressed, uneasy, and depressed. Always keep your files, desk, and office organized to free your mind of added stress.

• Be on time consistently: Some people get too caught up in a task and lose track of time, resulting in a missed deadline. To complete your task ahead of time and to prevent getting sidetracked by other urgent tasks, always set calendar alerts.  

6. Track Business Performance

As you grow your business, you must track its progress regularly. This makes it easier for you to properly assess how well your company is performing, make the most out of market opportunities, and ensure that you have the right strategies in place.  

Another thing you want to track is your progress towards your goal. Have you fallen behind or are you making moving forward? Having a proper assessment will provide you insights you can use to adjust your strategies or course of action accordingly.  

Need Help Getting Productive?

We totally get you. Running a business can indeed be overwhelming. It requires your full commitment, time, and concentration. And, sometimes all these things can physically and mentally drain you.  

Crushing goals doesn’t have to feel dreadful. When you’re able to manage your time well, prioritize tasks, delegate lesser important jobs to your team, keep organized, and track your business’ performance regularly, running your business and crushing goals will feel like second nature!

At Digital Resource, we can help you become more productive in terms of promoting your business online. Our team of digital marketing experts can craft a custom local SEO Miami strategy that will not only put you on top of search results, but also ahead of your competition.  

Seeking professional help might just be what you need to get more leads and make more sales to expand and grow your business. Contact us today and we will take your business to the next level!

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