As a business owner, you know that time is money. The more efficient you are with your time, the more profitable your work is and the more time you’ll have to create new income streams.

When you’re a small business owner you must wear all your business’ hats and still balance your family life. This means that time is also sanity. The more efficient you can be with your time, the less overwhelmed you feel and the better work/life balance you can achieve.

Workplace efficiency is an abstract concept that tends to run hot and cold. It can easily get lost behind deadlines, logistics, and accounting. It’s also something that we can always improve on, and in doing so we’ll improve our bottom line. This is also necessary if we want to grow, succeed, and stay at least one step ahead of our competition.

Every time you find a way to improve a process or cut out a small chunk of time, your business will gain ground and move forward.

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With all this in mind, here are a few things you can do to make your business more efficient now and help keep it that way in the future.

Focus on What You do Best and Outsource the Rest

The Smart Company reminds you that you’re just one person. You can only do so much with your business, especially when you’re juggling multiple roles and trying to maintain a work/life balance.

They suggest that you stop trying to do everything yourself, focus on your key strengths, and outsource the rest. This means you’ll need to spend some time creating a strong team of people whom you can trust when you delegate tasks to them. You’ll also need to find the right systems and procedures that will support this process. This is time well spent though. Doing these things will help your business become more efficient and improve your bottom line at the same time. In this regard, you can think of this process as an investment in your future.

Automate and Systemize Your Business

This is another way to help make your business more efficient.

By developing scripts, creating templates for your most frequently used documents, forms, quotes and emails, and writing and scheduling auto-responders, social media updates and blog posts, you’ll not only streamline these processes, making them easier, but you’ll also make them more efficient and save yourself some time.

This is something you should do before you start outsourcing or looking to outsource tasks. This way you’ll have flow charts, checklists, and step-by-step guides to help your “employees” complete their assigned tasks with minimal direction from you.

Leverage Technology

Running your business efficiently and on-the-go is easy today since we have laptops, smartphones, tablets and a variety of innovative programs and apps to help us.

There are many ways to use technology in your business to reduce the time you spend on tasks and make the time spent more productive. You’ll find programs available to help you with everything from bookkeeping and billing, to client relations and marketing campaign management. Simply conduct a Google search to uncover programs and apps that are relevant to you and then read the blogs and app guides that review them for you.

Of course, you can also ask other people in your industry what they’ve found that works for them.

Know Your Finances

By knowing where you stand financially you’ll also be able to be more efficient because you can make smarter business decisions.

You’ll also be more strategic with how you use your resources. Some of the key areas you’ll want to stay on top of here include your profit and loss, assured income vs. expenses, break-even point, and working budget. By reviewing them on a regular basis you’ll not only operate within your means, but you’ll also be able to know when the best time to scale your business is.

Target Marketing to Your Audience

Make your marketing more efficient and stretch your budget farther by focusing your marketing efforts towards the people who are most likely to buy your products or services.

By identifying your target market, you can decide what’s the most relevant message for them and where, when, and how you can reach them. All it takes is a little research to form this type of a strategic approach to your marketing. Doing so will ultimately save you time, money, and effort. It’ll also help you make more money through increased sales thanks to your more relevant and targeted marketing.

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Encourage Open Communication

It’s important to think beyond having an “open door policy.” In other words, you can’t simply tell your employees to come to you when they need something, but you must really encourage them to speak their minds and share their ideas with you and with each other too.

By encouraging communication and collaboration between employees, departments and management, you’ll increase morale and creativity too.

Implement Smart Mobile Devices

Mobile devices enhance communication both inside and outside of your office.

You can streamline these procedures through simple communication and the use of applicable apps. When your employees have tablets to use they’re able to move around your office without losing time on a project. Smartphones are also important since they help people in the field stay connected and informed without returning to the office.

Embrace and Use Feedback

Your employees will have feedback about how things are going – including compliments and criticisms.

These are things you need to hear so consider creating a private web page or hosting with bi-weekly or monthly meetings so everyone can share their ideas with you. This will improve employee morale and increase productivity.

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