Today’s blog is the third in the time management series. Here, we deal with how to delegate marketing activities. In the first blog, we addressed how to identify what activities belong in your marketing funnel (your marketing strategy). The second addressed how to apportion your time for the different activities in your funnel.
When you start out in business, the idea of delegating may seem like a pipe dream. As you build your income, customer base, and stability in the first couple of years, you may be inclined to keep the expenses low.
There comes a time in business when the owner’s mindset will begin to shift. You begin to see evidence that the business is sustainable. You might also begin to realize that your level of involvement in it is not. All those late nights, early mornings, taking all the calls, wearing all the hats – it all detracts from the elusive work-life balance that you hear so much about.
It is in this moment – if not earlier – when you think about how to delegate. The business calls you to do so. But it still may not be easy to let go of the control or think about outsourcing things you feel you can do on your own.
Do you identify with any of this? If so, today we are going to look at how YOU can delegate tasks in your own marketing funnel. If you haven’t done the steps in the first and second blogs, you will want to do so now. Start with step 1 here!
Once you have done the process of visually drawing your marketing funnel, I want you to do a very simple step of circling, highlighting, or putting a star next to any activities that definitely MUST be done by you. At this point, they are attached to you, and you cannot even imagine how someone else could ever do them. Leave those aside for now.
Take the steps that remain and write them down on a separate sheet. Now, run each one through three different evaluations. Put a circle next to any step that you flat out do not like to do. Put a square next to any step that takes you a lot of time to do. Put a triangle next to any step that involves tedious, repetitive action.
Look back at your list and everything you just learned. Anything with a triangle is something that you could easily train someone else to do. You would give them some basic instructions, and they would learn them by repetition. Anything with a square – even if it takes you some time to train a new person in that role – will put ample time back in your day in the long run once your team is up to speed. Anything that only has a circle is something that you are striving to delegate. Once you delegate other things, you may be able to take a harder look at those items.
In another year, if you were to do this same assessment again, you might find that you are in a completely different spot. Perhaps there would be things that you highlighted before that you are now more comfortable to delegate.
Ultimately, delegating non-essential activities frees up time for things that advance the business, things that can only be done by you. Even if you are not at a point where it seems like you can start to delegate, doing this exercise will start to get you thinking about how to delegate when you are ready. No harm in having a plan!