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:
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- oDesk – is one of my favorite go-to websites for outsourcing projects. oDesk is currently the largest marketplace used for finding freelance talent.
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- 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.
- Craigslist – yep….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!
