Make the decision and outsource it
Your running a business. You have a good product or service but you want to spend more time marketing your business and creating other products. Your concerned with hiring, training and finding someone trustworthy. Sounds familiar? If yes, you should read John Reese’s “What are you struggling with” series offers some answers to this question.
The answer to this question is that you will at some point have to outsource some of your duties if you want to grow your business. The answer to the other obvious question is, no. You will likely not find anyone as passionate about your business and ideas as you are. If you find this person, they will probably want to be a partner and not an employee which does not help you.
Once you get over that idea, which was not at all easy for me, you should see a difference. One of the differences will be that your management duties will become more important as your now managing the needs of your new hire or additional resource (outsourced) BUT the good news is that its no longer each and every customer. This is a HUGE benefit.
While im not an expert, I have had extensive experience in managing tech support call centers on and off shore at the enterprise level. John provides good solutions / resources and I have a few useful tips to add.
- Find companies that offer the services that you are in need of (tech support, sales, executive assistant, developer, etc)
- How much is your time worth?
- Do some math on your existing time allotments for the particular duty in question and get to an hourly figure
- Determine whether it really requires a full-time or part-time resource based on current hours used.
- Consider paying per action (each ticket closed, each sale made, each email answered, etc)
- Process, Process, Process (This will save you a ton of time as your common question and issues will be documented for your resource and will not require your input for every issue.)
- Whatever you decide, you will need to have documented processes for everything that you do.
- Go through every scenario in your business as a customer and as the business owner. This will give you the requirements to develop processes.
- Take these requirements and create clear easy to read and understand documented processes for everything, exactly the way you would do it.
- Meet Weekly by phone or video conference (not chat or email) with your resource for an hour or two for open discussion or to address any items that may have come up that are outside of the process. Contrary to popular believe, Email is not the most effective way to conduct all business. A one hour phone call can prevent several instant messages and emails.
There is no sure fire way to make this transition and some small businesses never make it. Id just say that you will have to make the transition at a comfortable pace. Hand out small pieces of work at a time and then expand it as you become more comfortable.
