When you want to grow your business, you need to start off on the right foot. Part of this means making sure you get organized. Of course, if you run a big business with a big budget and lots of employees and time to dedicate to this task, it’ll be easier for you to manage. This doesn’t mean it’s any less important for a small business to do though. Your business’ success depends on having the best tools and the most help possible here. With this in mind, here are a few tips that any business of any size can use.
Define Your Business Goals and Plans
More Business says you should start by writing down your business goals and how you plan to achieve them. Create precise goals, stated in clear language so you can stick to them. Make sure you keep this plan somewhere visible so it can serve as a daily reminder. Occasionally evaluate where you stand so you can make any necessary adjustments to stay on track or to get back on track when necessary.
Integrate Gmail with CRM
Converge Hub says you must have Gmail CRM integration today regardless of how long you’ve owned and operated your business. This business management application is necessary for managing the key areas of your business. These CRMs are more advanced, flexible and suitable than previous models. These broad integrated business management applications can help you with sales, marketing, customer service, collaboration, project management, reports, analytics, and automation. Some of the key benefits that you won’t want to miss out on here include:
- Quickly manage all your Google mails directly from your CRM repository
- Better manage your client and partner relationships since you’ll have a consolidated view of all your email communications directly from your CRM
- Promptly respond to emails since you can do so from a single platform
- Easily collaborate with other team members since you can share Gmail information directly through your CRM
Use Technology to Help You Effectively Focus Your Resources
Most businesses can’t afford to have their own dedicated sales professionals so they hire consultants instead. In this role they’re not only responsible for making sales, but also for managing accounts and sometimes they also have other managerial duties as well. B2B Inbound Marketer says this creates a challenge that you don’t want to add to. In other words, you need to make sure to have technology on your side. There’s no reason not to do so today. Using technology is important because it helps you efficiently optimize your business development process.
A great tool to put to work for your business here is Copper. You can start with free versions of their sales, marketing, and CRM software, then upgrade to a paid version later if you choose to do so. Doing this will help make your business development process more effective in several ways, including:
- Segment leads and customers so you can create highly targeted marketing content and campaigns
- Track your sales activity and follow-ups
- Manage and monitor your sales pipeline so you can continually strive to reach your business goals
- Segment leads and customers so you can create highly targeted marketing content and campaigns aimed directly at them
- Manage and monitor your sales pipeline so you continue striving to reach your business goals
Manage Your Office Space and Storage Too
Even if all your digital records are well-organized, this doesn’t mean that your physical environment doesn’t also need to be well-organized. Neil Patel says this is the only way to make sure that you’re performing at your highest level. In many ways, your company’s organization is determined by how organized your desk is. With this in mind, here are a few tips to get you heading in the right direction here:
- Make sure everything has a specific place and that everything is in that specific place.
- Use vertical storage to improve your workflow and efficiency.
- Store as much paperwork as possible offsite so you spend less time managing your documents, and you still rest assured that they’re safe and protected.
- Consider going paperless. Instead of keeping track of dozens of files and folders all the time, when you go paperless you’ll be able to simply reduce everything to digital scans of just your most important documents. To make this work you’ll need a way to quickly scan documents while you’re on the go so you don’t struggle to keep up with the workload. A great app for this is CamScanner. It’ll allow you to store your files in the app then transfer them to your computer later on when you need to work with them there. You can also share these files with your employees simply by archiving them in a program like Dropbox. This allows everyone in your organization to always be up to date with what’s going on because they’ll have the most recent documents at their fingertips and yet you won’t have to worry about doing extensive file management offline.
Stay Motivated
You need to make sure you and your employees remain motivated to get and stay organized. When everyone is happy with their work environment it will show, and your customers will take notice immediately. This will also improve efficiency and your customers will notice just how well-organized your business is. These are great reasons to continue rewarding your employees in any way that works to keep their morale high. Of course, there’s also software available to help you with this as well (e.g. Advance Systems). The key is simply to find something that works and stick with it.
