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When, What And How To Outsource

If you’re running an expanding small business it can be difficult to know what you can do in-house, and what you should outsource. There are special circumstances for both – what your company actually does, how reliant you are on the service, and what resources and money are available to you – but there are also general rules that can and should be applied when the decision to outsource is made.

When to Outsource

You need to evaluate what you can do effectively and economically in-house first, naturally.

Running a small business eats up a lot of your time. If you find that you’re cutting time and resources from the jobs integral to your business, just so you can do tasks such as bookkeeping and payroll – it’s worth considering outsourcing.

However, when judging the relative value-for-investment returns offered by outsourcing versus in-house work, don’t just include the cost.

The skills your staff have built up while working for you, their familiarity with your business and your needs, and their greater reliability can all be hidden advantages to using in-house services. So even if it works out more expensive to do everything in-house, you might decide that paying a premium for reliability and known quantities is well worth it.

Conversely, you might decide that your staff’s skills make their time more valuable in real terms than the amount you are paying them – so even if a freelancer costs more, your in-house staff could spend their time better.

Finally, make sure that no editing is required. Editing of outsourced writing or coding might take no more than 15 minutes a pop, but it still adds costs on top of costs. Your time, and the time of your employees, is valuable. Be absolutely sure that you factor in the time-cost of editing outsourced work.

outsourcing dilemma
Image by: Robbert van der Steeg.

What to Outsource

The benefits of outsourcing are that you get to shift tasks that may have been sapping a lot of time and a great deal of money from your company simply because your workforce doesn’t have the skills or motivation to perform these tasks quickly and effectively.

Don’t ever outsource something just because it’s not an enjoyable task. You need to consider whether that task is one of the important things that people come to your business for – give that up, and you’ll compromise your standing as a company.

Do, however, consider whether a task is taking longer because your skilled and professional staff are given no motivation to complete it quickly – that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should outsource the task in any case like this, just that it is an option to be looked at.

Outsourcing data entry tasks might be worth it, for instance, if your company’s paid staff are mostly writers, and thus aren’t interested enough in the task to complete it quickly. If there are opportunities within the company related to data entry, however (being in charge of Content Management Systems, for example), you might find that the work gets completed very quickly and efficiently indeed.

There’s little point in punishing staff for completing boring work slowly, though – it’s easier and creates less ill-will to outsource the work to somebody who gets paid more if they work faster and harder!

There are a lot of tasks that make sense for most businesses to outsource because teaching someone the skills required doesn’t make sense given the limited time they’ll be spending on the task.

Bookkeeping and payroll only generally take half a day a week, so there’s little point in training someone in-house specifically to do that. Similarly, there’s hardly any point in hiring an IT guy if your company consists of relatively few computers – it makes more sense to bring in freelancers.

How to Outsource

When you’ve decided what you need to outsource, shop around for the best deal. Think about what packages are on offer, and whether you need to choose someone local or not. Anything where you might need an on-site visit (for example, IT management or office interiors) will need to be local, with say, an hour of where you are based, whereas tasks that only involve digital communication are fine to be based further afield.

It’s not necessarily a good idea to outsource overseas – even though the costs might be compelling, often you get what you pay for, and your service may suffer.

Think of how comprehensive the service needs to be, and don’t be afraid to negotiate on prices and what you think should be included. Many companies offer flexible rates, depending on both the service and the business.

Outsourcing should be utilised to complement your key business objectives. Ideally it should be implemented to allow your skilled workforce to concentrate on their primary role. If this is done correctly, you will see your business grow and achieve success.

Any outsourcing horror stories to share? Great successes? Let us know in the comments!

About the Author: James Duval is an IT-for-business specialist who is addicted to his Xbox. He writes blog posts for Interaction UK London.

Achieving Cost-Effective Growth through Sponsorship

If you’re looking for a way to differentiate your business from the other firms in your niche and increase its visibility across your trade area, sponsorship may be your answer. There are many ways to use sponsorship to drive your sales, but its most effective uses are often its most obvious. Regardless of your company’s size and sales goals, you can use the following primer on corporate sponsorship to take your business to the next level.

Consider Your Audience

As a small business owner, your trade area may be fairly circumscribed. While you’d no doubt prefer to expand your business beyond its current narrow confines, you can use sponsorship opportunities to your advantage while you’re still small. Look for manageable, community-focused organizations and events that need sponsors, like youth athletic tournaments, high school plays and county fairs and parades. You’ll generate tremendous goodwill by sponsoring such events, which don’t usually register on the radar of major corporations. Regardless, state athletic tournaments, minor-league sports clubs, and civic construction projects are all worthy investments.

Budget Considerations

Generally speaking, the size of your advertising budget will be proportional to your annual revenues but the reality is more complicated than that. When choosing between sponsorship opportunities, first determine whether you’ll be an exclusive sponsor. You should avoid buying into the lowest rungs of tiered sponsorship opportunities: There are so many businesses down there that it’ll be difficult for yours to gain separation from the pack.

Just as importantly, you’ll want to confer with the sponsored event’s organizers beforehand to work out a hard-and-fast budget. Draw up some type of contract outlining your duties and expectations as a sponsor, with exact fees laid out to the extent possible. You don’t want to publicly air dirty laundry and squander the goodwill that your sponsorship has generated.

Marketing Strategy

You’re sadly mistaken if you think you can just pay for a sponsorship and then sit back and watch the sales roll in. Successful sponsorships require aggressive legwork before, during and after the sponsorship’s active period. Common sponsorship support activities include:

Merchandising: If you’re sponsoring an athletic tournament or other such discrete event, consider releasing a line of clothing or kitchenware that tastefully promotes both the event and your business.
Invitations: Again, you don’t want to be seen as crass, but inviting your most reliable clients and suppliers to the sponsored event will go a long way towards growing your business. Be sure to highlight other your other community-building activities when you do.
Coordination: If you’re not the event or organization’s exclusive sponsor, pay careful attention to your co-sponsors and try to coordinate with them as much as practicable. If you especially like the way any specific co-sponsors do business, approach them after the fact to gauge their interest in future partnerships, even if your businesses have little in common. Good companies make everyone with whom they interact look attractive by association.

Securing favorable sponsorships for your business can be more difficult than it would appear, especially if you’re a local concern with a limited advertising budget. By sponsoring realistic events and organizations, using your sponsorships as a promotional platform to grow your sales, and working closely with fellow sponsors on future partnerships, sponsoring a local soccer team or civic organization may turn out to be the best business decision you’ve ever made.

About the Author: Linda Rhimes is a freelance blogger and occasionally writes for Delivery.com – a site she loves using to find Pizza Delivery Local.

Exhibiting at Trade Shows: How to Prepare

Trade shows and exhibitions have some of the highest ROI of any form of marketing. Aside from providing a great arena to meet qualified leads they also offer great opportunities to catch up with the latest developments in your industry. Check out competitors and maybe get a bit of inspiration for your next ground breaking product.

The problem is that trade shows require a large initial investment to get those opportunities and leads, so preparation is vital to ensure you aren’t throwing money away.

Objectives: Why are you going to this event? (hint: the answer isn’t because we can, or everyone else is doing it) Make sure you and your staff know what you want to achieve and plan accordingly, whether it’s to get a record number of qualified leads, great press coverage or an inside look at another industry, create a metric and make sure you have a way to track it. Preferably you should do this stage before you have even chosen an event. You can then pick the event which best fits your objectives rather than tying your objectives to the event.

Training: Staff surely don’t need to be trained just to talk to people? Well, actually yes they do. Good exhibition communication is often a mixt of counselling and acting. Your exhibitors need to be able to listen to the problems of the visitors coming to the stand so that they can offer them solutions, not products. They need to be able to listen sympathetically while hiding the fact they are tired and have been on message nearly all day. Much of the literature around trade shows suggests reps should spend 80% of their time listening and 20% talking.

Training your staff is vital to achieving this mix, and hopefully creating enthusiastic representatives. Depending upon what your budget is you can either hire outside experts to coach your staff on the finer points of exhibiting techniques alternatives a more affordable approach would be set aside an afternoon (at least) before the event to brief your staff. The briefing needs to include any products or services they need to be aware off, proper data capture methods and some practice of talking to visitors.

Consistent messaging: Having a consistent message is a vital part of any marketing and branding effort. Events are no different, and you should make sure that you are using your brand colours and logo’s on marketing literature, display stands and even clothing at a minimum. If there is any time when you are representing your company then sales meetings and trade shows are it.

Clothes are particularly vital when it comes to the message you want your brand to convey. A professional consulting company will probably want to wear suits, with any branding confined to lanyards and maybe ties in the company colours. In contrast a tech start up might prefer the branding opportunities available in a more relaxed approach such as adopting branded polo shirts. Similarly you need to think carefully about any promotional products you offer. For example if you want to promote your green credentials a pile of plastic tchotchkes will look hypocritical at best. A far better approach would be to create a report that can be downloaded from your website using a code only available at your stand. This will make you look both more professional and greener.

Pre-event Marketing: So you have trained your staff well, provided branded material and you have a great looking stand. But does anyone know where to find you, or why they should try? This is where pre-event marketing comes in. You need to tell people that you are going to be at the event and why they should care. While this can be as basic as taking advantage of the show organiser’s pre-event publicity, pushing it on your website, social media and offline marketing material can bring in a huge amount of interest. Try to come up with a promotion that will bring relevant people to your booth like a preview on a new product, a workshop or a chance to talk with an industry expert.

Eating and Sleeping: One thing you cannot do is leave your booth unmanned, but you also can’t expect everyone in your staff to spend all day on it. The simplest and most effective thing to do is arrange a schedule beforehand so that everyone will have at least one chance to sit down grab a bite to east. This will help your stand look professional, as there is no bigger turnoff than seeing a messy stand with discarded food wrappers. If it is at all possible then you should have a minimum of two people on the stand at all times. This will means that there is always someone to cover in case of emergencies and that visitors won’t to have to wait too long to find someone to talk to.

Similarly always book hotels and transport as far in advance as possible. This will not only save you money, it will also mean you can get rooms as close as possible to the exhibition centre. A five minute walk beats an hour long commute any day.

Hopefully this guide should help make any exhibits a success and ensure that you come out of the event with lots of great leads.

About the Author: Written by Daniel Frank on behalf of Nimlok Exhibition Stands

Image: Phil Sexton / Flickr

How SEO Can Help Your Small Business

When running a business website, you want your site to get as much traffic as possible to increase the chances of making sales. Since traffic is ultimately the life blood of your online business, figuring out how to increase this traffic should be priority number one for your business. By engaging in some good SEO practices, you may be able to increase your site’s traffic without spending a lot of extra money along the way.

Search Engine Traffic

When you use leading SEO services or methods to improve your site’s rankings in the search engines, you may be able to increase your traffic substantially. The nice thing about using this method is that the traffic can keep coming for months or years without having to pay for it again and again. By comparison, if you use paid traffic methods like pay-per-click marketing, you’ll have to pay for each visitor that makes his way to your site. This means that there is a lot of pressure to convert each visitor that comes to your site. Otherwise, you’ll be throwing away a lot of money every day on this type of Internet marketing.

With search engine traffic, it keeps coming again and again without a lot of expenses on your part. You may have to occasionally pay for more search engine optimization work until your site gets up a certain level of traffic. This is usually much cheaper than having to pay for each individual visitor that comes to your site.

Converting More Sales

When you work with a good search engine optimization service, you may also be able to convert more sales on your site. When visitors come to your site, they want to find what they’re looking for. If your site ranks highly for a given search term and then you sell something related to that search term on your site, this will increase the odds of a sale when the visitor arrives. If your site is not optimized properly, visitors might find it for terms that are not really that relevant to what you offer. This leads to customers finding your site when they’re actually looking for something else. When this happens, they will be much less likely to make a purchase or fill in the form that you have to capture their contact information.

Considerations

If you want to take your small business website to the next level, engaging in some search engine optimization can make a big difference. It might seem costly on the front end, but you’re making a long-term investment in the success of your business overall. By the time you’re done, your site may be receiving loads of free traffic from the search engines and your sales may be much better off overall.

Office Supplies Do Not Have To Cost An Arm And A Leg!

When compared to other important acquisitions for the office (furniture and equipment), office supplies appear to require a minimal investment. However, how do you explain the fact that each year billions of dollars are spent on purchasing office supplies only in the United States? While the price of acquiring these basic supplies is rather low, keep in mind that you will need to restock quite frequently. Therefore, when you add up the individual investments dedicated for this purpose in a single month, you will be surprised to learn they are not as cheap as you initially thought.

In order to avoid spending a large portion of your business budget on office supplies, you need to set up a process of managing and controlling the consumption. Managing the supplies should start with verifying your past orders and determining which of the items are absolute necessities and which are simply nice to have. In case you discover items that are present on constantly ordered list, but nobody really uses them, then you can start to eliminate them systematically. In addition, you should re-evaluate the office supplies you are acquiring regularly and see if you can get them for less.

Due to the fact that most businesses have an online presence today, you can save a lot of time and effort when comparing office supplies offers. In short, you do not have to go down to the depot and note down the prices because you can check that out on websites and office supplies portals. Besides comparing and reviewing the offer, you can choose to order the office supplies directly from online sources. In the eventuality that you are making an order online, it is advisable to account for the shipping fee. Nonetheless, take note that most reputable office supplies providers will include free shipping for orders worth a minimum threshold.

If you are happy with the office supplies provider (new or old) and you purchase a significant amount of supplies each month, then you should negotiate a purchase contract. In order to be able to turn the tide of the deal in your favor, it is advisable that you evaluate which of these items you acquire more frequently. Afterwards, focus on getting a lower price or a discount and you will benefit from great savings. As a side note, because the purchase contract means regular expenses and hefty amounts of office supplies, this strategy works optimally for larger companies (with at least 100 employees).

Another method of conserving some of the cash spent on office supplies is to consider bulk orders. Therefore, instead of purchasing 100 sheet packs of paper often, a better approach is to acquire 1000 sheet packs at once. While this is by far the best method through which small companies can reduce the costs on office supplies, there are two crucial aspects worth mentioning. First off, the company must have the necessary budget to afford purchasing 1000 sheet packs (or other bulk supplies). The second aspect implies figuring out if you have the necessary (available) space to store bulk office supplies in a manner that will not negatively impact on the working space.

Be prudent and smart when it comes to amassing savings on your office supplies!

About the Author: Gerard Lee owns a stationary outlet whose mainly involved in selling office supplies. Through his blog he is willing to let people know how they can save money on buying office supplies.