Business & Marketing advice

TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS FOR BUSINESS OWNERS THAT ACTUALLY WORK

Follow these suggestions to help you manage your time more efficiently – and boost your productivity.

Ever feel like you’ve got too much to do and not enough time to do it? As a smallbusiness owner your time is probably divided by managing all aspects of your company, and you might feel that you’re simply over-stretched. Take a look at these tips that will help you effectively hone your time management skills and subsequently, increase your productivity.

LOG YOUR TIME

If you’re wondering where the time goes, it’s a good idea to make a diary of how you spend your day, logging all the activities you do, and detail how much time you spend doing each one. This will help you identify tasks you spend longer on than others. Look at those tasks and ask yourself how productive the time spent on them actually is. Are you spending too long on activities that don’t produce effective results?

Rebecca Alexander, executive coach at The Coaching Studio, advises, “It’s often useful to compare your tasks from the start of the week with what you’ve managed to achieve by the end of the week. If there’s a consistent gap between the tasks you’re setting yourself and what you’re achieving, it’s time to identify whether you’re setting yourself too much, whether you’re spending time on things you don’t need to, or if ordinary tasks are taking you too long because of a lack of confidence, resources or motivation. Whichever of those three it is (and it might 

be more than one), make a plan for how to tackle it, try your plan out for a fortnight and then evaluate what’s worked.”

TRY THE POMODORO TECHNIQUE

If you’re finding it difficult to focus on particular jobs, try a system that was developed by Francesco Cirillo and based on a tomato-shaped timer that he used to get his tasks completed. Choose a job you want to get done, and tell yourself you will focus entirely on that task for 25 minutes. Set the timer and get to work. When the timer rings, give yourself a big tick and go and take a small break – make yourself a cup of tea, take a quick walk or do some stretching exercises. When you’ve completed four ‘Pomodoros’ it’s time to take a longer break (20 minutes is good). During this time your brain can relax and absorb new information before you start the next round of Pomodoros.

WRITE A REALISTIC TO-DO LIST

Compiling a to-do list every day before you start work is crucial, as it will help you to set clear goals for the day and improve productivity. When you write out your list it’s a good idea to put the items in order of importance – this will help you establish which jobs really have to be done today, and which ones can move over to tomorrow’s to-do list if necessary. Be realistic about what you can actually get done in one day, and perhaps break down larger jobs into smaller tasks to make them less overwhelming. An ambitious list that can’t be completed by the end of the day will be demotivating and sap your energy.

Alexander says, “The one thing you should always include is an ‘Important, Not Urgent’ section. These are the tasks that might be very important in the medium to long-term, such as finding a new supplier, planning next year’s marketing, writing a recruitment plan, but which don’t seem urgent now and so get put off by ‘busy’ work that is urgent, but not that important. Time management experts think we spend far too much time on ‘Urgent, Non-Important’ tasks and less than 10% of our time on ‘Important, Not Urgent’ tasks.”

DELEGATE TASKS

As a small-business owner you have to wear many hats and you might think you don’t have the resources to get others to share the workload, but in fact that could be a false economy. Identify those jobs you’re not that good at and see if there’s a way to offload them to a professional.

“If you try to do it all, you won’t be able to manage your time effectively during busy periods,” says Jennifer Chong, interior design project manager at Feioi. “It’s worth delegating tasks that you don’t enjoy or aren’t good at to professionals who are better and faster than you. This could be accounts, marketing, technical drawings, social media or small admin jobs. Outsourcing these jobs gives you more time to focus on the work you want to be doing and makes your business more efficient. This allows you to take on more work and ultimately will make your business more successful.”

CUT DOWN ON THE MULTITASKING

How many times have you tried to do more than one job at the same time? We’ve all been there – we’ll be in the middle of writing a presentation or report when an 

email query comes in that we decide to deal with right then and there, or perhaps we decide to spend some time during a webinar putting together a spreadsheet.

“Don’t open your email account as soon as you arrive at work,” says Alexander. “If you have something important to do, tackle it the minute you get into the office, and, crucially, before you open your email. That early extra hour can be a golden time to get things done. We tend to think we’ll check emails or voicemails for five minutes, but then we get sucked into whatever those messages throw up and before you know it two hours have gone by and your important task isn’t even started. If you delay opening your email for an hour you will get a huge amount tackled and, let’s be honest, most emails can wait for an hour before you respond.”

A recent study found that multitasking reduces productivity by 40%, so instead of trying to do umpteen things at the same time organise your day into time slots where you can focus on each

IDENTIFY YOUR PEAK TIMES

When do you do your best work? Perhaps you have loads of energy to focus on tasks in the morning, or maybe you have a boost in the afternoon or evening. Therefore, where you can, schedule your most challenging or important tasks during your peak-performance times.

DON’T OVER SCHEDULE

Having an organised plan for your day is the best way to improve your time management, but do remember to allow space for the unexpected. After all, there are always unscheduled tasks that come along and you need to be able deal with them just as efficiently as those jobs you’ve already factored into your diary. Fortunately, by being organised with your time and using some of the techniques mentioned above you’ll hopefully find that you have freed up more opportunities to be spontaneous.

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TAKING CONTROL OF CASHFLOW AND PROFIT

Tanya Hill, Business Coach, ActionCOACH

'Cashflow & profit are 2 areas that can make or break a business – from a one man band through to a multi million pound empire.'

Cashflow & profit are 2 areas that can make or break a business – from a one man band through to a multi million pound empire. Cashflow and profit are the end result of so many different areas in a business and getting more work isn’t always the best place to start. If you have leaks in your pipe, then no matter how much water you pour into the tank to compensate, you still aren’t going to be left with much in it at the end of the day because you are losing it on the way. 9 times out of 10 there is more money to be made out of the T/O you already have just by managing your business more

efficiently.  'If you have leaks in your pipe, then no matter how much water you pour into the tank to compensate, you still aren’t going to be left with much in it at the end of the day.'

THERE ARE A FEW PLACES TO START WHICH COULD ADD EXTRA £S TO YOUR BOTTOM LINE AND IMPROVE CASHFLOW -

• Go through your fixed costs, analyse them, understand them and then tighten them up. Set yourself a 10% challenge by reducing your annual fixed costs by at least 10%. You would be amazed the money clients have saved just by swapping fuel cards for the team and changing accountants etc.

• Look at materials bought against materials quoted - Who controls this? Are you paying too much? Are things being wasted or going missing on site?

• Look at labour costs compared to quoted - This is a big area in the trade world and where lots of money is being lost. I could write a book on this subject!

• Introducing a variation system where variations are in writing so nothing is being left on the table. When they are in writing it eliminates disputes and the pressure to discount.

• Knowing from the word go what jobs will make you money and not get caught up in the glory of a sale – Turnover is vanity we are after the sanity of profit! CASHFLOW IN PARTICULAR…

• Collect in all your debters starting with aged – this might sound obvious, but I see it time and time again. Positioning your clients from the off by letting them know what you expect from them and what they can expect from you sets the relationship up from day one – this backed up by a water tight credit control system will help cashflow with the added bonus of a smoother job which will improve profit and client satisfaction.

• Changing payment terms from 60 to 30 days or 30 to 7 days – if you are tied into your client’s terms and it is an ongoing job – sitting and having a payment meeting at the beginning will help you get some rules in place for regular payments.

• Get all your invoices out on time – again this sounds obvious but getting caught up in the operations side of the business and not dedicating time to, really and truly, what keeps the business heart beat ticking – money. Not getting grip on this is a recipe for the cashflow yoyo effect – not good for anyones sanity!

After digging deep into a clients business we identified that his fuel bill was through the roof - by understanding why - then taking control of project planning and ordering materials in advance so his vans weren’t delivering stuff to sites last minute he saved a huge amount on diesel. The knock on effect was that his teams productivity increased as they weren’t having to wait around for materials to continue a job, so jobs finished on time if not before which increased profits and his team received their bonuses – win/ win!

Just know that if you don’t take control of your business and plug all the leaks you have in your pipe .... You will get the business you deserve!!

5 WAYS YOU CAN OPTIMISE YOUR LANDING PAGE TO WORK ACROSS MULTIPLE CHANNELS

Landing pages are a powerful tool for converting clicks to leads and increasing your conversion rates. As markets evolve and customers choose to access websites from their smartphones, it’s important that your landing page is as up to date as it can be. Businesses that fail to harness this important marketing tool risk losing sales and sending their customers straight into the arms of their competitors.

How can you optimise your landing page to increase those all-important clicks?

1) Compatibility

The most common complaint from customers accessing landing pages is that they are not geared towards smartphones and are “too fiddly.” If you look at the size of a cursor on a desktop screen, it’s impossible for a thumb or finger to ever score the same degree of accuracy. A landing page that has been optimised for a smartphone will take in to consideration the size of the icons and their placement, so your landing page is both uncomplicated to navigate and easy to click without having to zoom in.

2) Speed

Content can sometimes be the enemy. If a customer tries clicks on your website but cannot load the initial landing page immediately, it’s very quickly going to test their patience. Consumers today are known as the “Goldfish Generation” as they have very short attention spans, particularly with technology. You can therefore never be too careful with loading times as cannot assume that all browsers are running on high-performance WiFi. Be sure to step into the shoes of your audience and test whether your landing page can load within a reasonable amount of time when operating on lowsignal WiFi, 3G and GPRS. 

Lee Sturgess Founder & Creative Director, Polar Creative

"The most common complaint from customers accessing landing pages is that they are not geared towards smartphones and are too fiddly.”

Simplicity is always of paramount importance when designing a website landing page. Granted, an interactive graphic may look impressive, but is it really suitable for your customers? If a customer can’t find what they’re looking for within the first few clicks, chances are you will lose their business altogether. Landing pages that are very crowded result in customers clicking incorrect links and causes them unnecessary irritation; and, as we learnt from Point 2, the technological generation do not carry patience in abundance. Calls to action are a critical part of web design for any platform if you want to convert browsers to buyers within the first click. Whether it’s a link telling your audience to ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Get a Quote’, think about what search queries have driven potential customers to be presented with your site and make sure you address their queries within the first sentence to show that you, and only you, have the perfect solution. They should be eye-catching to your audience and stand-out to anyone who is scanning the page. Although content should be kept simple, it also needs to be engaging. It’s your job to convince customers within the first line that they should buy from you. Although offering great prices is a start, it’s important to think deeper. A professional design with links to interesting and thought-provoking content shows that you know what you are talking about and have expertise and authority in your field.

www.wearepolar.com