Following up on my Best Practices to Grow Your Consulting Business post from our panel of veteran consultants, here is a bit more discussion around our first Top Tip.
Don’t do everything yourself – Delegate, collaborate, and hire out
Have you identified what you might outsource or bring in additional help to accomplish, to free up your time so you can spend that time most meaningfully?
Stay tuned in to where your time is spent and assess whether that’s where it should be spent. Rigorously think about what can you delegate or hire out. Collaboration also expands your bandwidth, both in terms of helping you with your own deliverables, and, expanding the types of services you can offer.
Our desire for control or cash flow management often pull us in the other direction. To counter that pull, build a team of trusted collaborative partners and affiliates.
Please comment on some of your best successes on prioritizing your time and outsourcing. And about what types of activities are dragging you down in terms of where you spend your time. I’d love to hear tips you can share on how to prioritize and then follow through on what you have prioritized. I look forward to your tips and comments.
Dear Deborah
really a very good input for all of us!
The first thing I outsource for any client is always the content for webpages and prospects.
Thanks for this input and sharing your outsourcing areas Muriel. Outsourcing content for webpages and social media (under your direction) is one of the areas I hear most commonly mentioned as an effective use of time and leveraging the expertise of others. If you can tell us more about what you outsource for client content, that would be helpful to many – to generate ideas of what they might do.
In talking further about this “Don’t Do Everything Yourself” Best Practices tip with fellow panelist Jan Robertson, Jan discussed how critical it is to build a team of collaborative Partners and Affiliates. Figure out what you’re best at, and enjoy the most, and for the rest – to outsource. Also to work with others who have complementary skills – ideally as partners or affiliates. Doing this has made a huge difference in her business, and has been critical in her being able to scale her business.