Tips for Small Businesses Who Are Thinking Of Outsourcing

Some tasks or projects might be worth outsourcing so that you can focus your efforts on growing your business.? Manage your prospects, clients, and sales using a simple CRM and sales tracking like Base.

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Many small businesses find that outsourcing certain tasks can make their life a whole lot easier than:

• Doing the task themselves
• Hiring full-time staff to do it

Perhaps you?re in need of some help in an area outside of your comfort level or expertise. Or maybe outsourcing something specific could free up your time to drum up more business or improve your work/life balance.

The internet has made it easier than ever to outsource as it presents many places to find skilled help. ?Outsourcing can offer you a cost effective way to get extra help occasionally or on an ongoing basis.

There are many crowdsourcing sites, freelance job bidding sites, online classifieds that have work for hire sections, and some companies that are willing to take on one-off tasks or entire departments and run them for you. Whether you outsource call center management, IT support, marketing, bookkeeper, or need help with another area, the goal is to make life easier for you and your staff while maintaining a seamless experience for your clients.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Carefully research vendors before signing an outsourcing agreement. A Google search can be very revealing, especially with freelancers and outsourcing agencies. If hiring someone online, consider doing an interview first. You can do this by phone or even by Skype if meeting in person is not practical.
• Consider doing a small project or a limited trial before you trust someone outside your company with something major that could have a big impact on your customers.
• If you?re concerned about the financial end of things, you could opt to use an escrow service who holds the money while the deal is being executed. This could help put the provider at ease as well as help you safeguard your interests. One? job bidding site that matches buyers and providers and offers escrow is Elance.
• Write a detailed project brief and make sure that it is well-understood before proceeding.
• Have a contract drawn up so that everything on both ends is in writing. Cover everything from what?s expected, what?s being paid, how and when it will be paid, and so forth. You can find sample templates online. Here is one example of a work for hire template that may or may not help you. (Disclaimer: It?s a good idea to have your lawyer review contracts before signing them.)
• It may be prudent to ask for delivery in milestones, depending on the project at hand. Milestone deliveries can help you intercept something that?s being handled the wrong way early on.
• Review the impact the outsourcing arrangement has had on your business after a few cycles. This can help you analyze whether or not the arrangement is working for clients, help you decide where streamlining might need to happen, help you determine if it this arrangement is helping you better manage your business, and help you see if the outsourcing individual or company is delivering what you need or not.

There are many pros and potential cons when you outsource something. It?s often difficult for small business owners to let go of something that has been their ?baby?. But the right outsourcing arrangement could improve your work/life balance and could be a great way to begin to take your business to the next level.

Dana Prince writes for Future Simple?s Growth University. Dana blends her passion for entrepreneurship with experience in software licensing sales, product management, online marketing, and SEO writing to run Dana Prince Writing, a web writing agency that creates optimized content that helps websites succeed.

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