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15 Responsibilities Small Business Owners Can Delegate

Del·e·gate – entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person, typically one who is less senior than oneself.

Letting go is so hard to do. It’s a known fact that most small business owners (myself included) start businesses trying to do everything on our own. What usually ends up happening is that we get burned out in the process.

Let me tell you, I’ve been there, done that and have gotten a T-shirt. For the longest time, I ran around like a headless chicken with a “Superwoman” cape on until I came to the realization that I needed help.

I realized that I needed to “work on my business and not in it”. Eventually, little by little I started delegating tasks to others.

Why Should You Delegate Responsibilities in Your Business?

As stated by Dave Roos in article written on the 10 most common problems for new businesses, the “one-man band” strategy might be a great way to save money at first, but it’s not the smartest way to grow your business and will not lead to success in the long run.

If you are at a point in your business where you want to start assigning and outsourcing tasks to others, here is a list that I have rounded up of tasks and responsibilities that you can delegate:

1.  Social Media Marketing  – Management of your social media pages and platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook).

2.  Web Design and Development – via Small Business Sense (Yep, that’s right, I am now helping small business owners build websites for their companies). More details are forthcoming. 🙂

3.  Marketing   Social media marketing, internet marketing, offline marketing

4.  Promotional and Advertisement Material Designs –  Creating business cards, stationery, logo, brochures, door hangers, etc.

5.  Customer Service – Resolving customer complaints, handling issues, giving information on product and service inquiries

6.  Bookkeeping – Maintaining your company’s financial records and preparing financial records

7.  Computer Support Buchanan Field IT Services can help you with repairing your computer systems, and maintaining your systems.

8.  Market Research – Target market research , demographics, scoping out the competition, trends in your industry

9.  Social Media Profile Designs  – Creating designs for your Twitter, Facebook and other social media profiles and taking note on how to use Canva to design graphics and images.

10.  Accounting Tax preparation services, analyzing financial statements

11.  Administrative Tasks – Making phone calls to customers, scheduling appointments, managing your calendar

12.  Data Entry – Entering customer information into your CRM’s and databases

13.  Lead Generation – Creating free educational guides and whitepapers, press releases, eBook creation

14.  Travel Arrangements – Flight reservations,hotel reservations

15.  Email Management – Checking your email, managing your inbox, sorting email

A Few Tips for Delegating Tasks…

  • Give a trial task or project to candidates before you hire and assign bigger projects to them.
  • Create detailed job descriptions for the tasks that you want to delegate and outsource.  Here are some tips on how to create job descriptions.
  • After selecting the right candidate for your project, communicate with them often. A mistake that I made in the beginning phases of delegating and outsourcing tasks was that I did not communicate enough with my new hires. When you hire someone to work with your company, checking in with them often will  help avoid any confusion with your assignment and ensures that your tasks are completed on time.

Three Websites that you can use to find and hire freelance talent for your projects:

    1. oDesk – is one of my favorite go-to websites for outsourcing projects. oDesk is currently the largest marketplace used for finding freelance talent.
    1. Elance – used by more than 500,000 businesses and is home to more than 2 million freelancers. It is currently the second largest online outsourcing platform.
  1. Craigslistyep….that’s right. I have had luck with finding great talent by posting ads on Craigslist. One thing to remember when posting ads on this site is to require at least a resume or summary of qualifications or portfolio of projects from individuals that respond to your advertisements.

I hope that you enjoyed this list of responsibilities that small business owners can delegate. So tell us, what tasks are you delegating in your business.  I would love to hear from you.  Thanks!

Annika Bansal
 

Annika "The Chick Geek" is the founder of AnnikaBansal.com. Small Business Sense shares small business ideas, tips and resources for independent Entrepreneurs and Small Business owners.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 6 comments
Dina Lynch Eisenberg

Excellent article with terrific tips. I’d only add…1. Contact freelancers to discuss your project before ordering 2. write out what you want and what the freelancer will need in advance so there’s clarity and no delay 3. Be open to the new ideas and feedback that you’ll get from a different perspective. I tell my clients it all starts with learning to be a great delegator. Thanks, Kim for empowering folks to grow

Reply
    SmallBizSense81

    Hey there Dina! You are sooo right about contacting candidates to discuss the project before hiring them to carry it out. Glad that you enjoyed the post. Thanks for stopping by 🙂

    Reply
Gary C.

Great experience sharing, always good to have a real life exemple to makes us think and apply.
I’d like to share with you an article our team at Zenkit wrote on the subject, what do you think ?

Reply
Jenna Hunter

Thanks for the tips about what responsibilities that a business owner can delegate. I imagine that running a business would be more efficient with some help. It could also be useful for an owner to go to a business development training course.

Reply
Nova

I have a new project. This websites will surely be very helpful for me. I’ll try to look for a freelancers here. This is a very useful post for business owner like me. Thanks for sharing this article.

Reply
Chris

Thanks for this! This is very helpful for me to know what my team should be doing in order for my business to operate well.

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