In business, to free up time one of the best ways is to delegate tasks and/or responsibilities to an employee or contractor/ service provider.
That may not be successful as you’ve probably experienced.
There’s a big difference between delegating and what I call ‘abdicating’ when it comes to passing on tasks or outsourcing to service providers.
Take this scenario for example…
If you were to hire a part time ‘marketing manager’ for your business to promote it cost effectively and provide a great ROI, would you know what questions to ask the potential employee in an interview?
If you aren’t educated in marketing to know what KPIs are relevant and important, or have clear expectations of what ROI is achievable from marketing, you can see that this hiring the marketing manager would be a challenge and risk.
Here’s a simple definition of the two - delegating versus abdicating…
When one doesn’t know the performance expectations of the task/s being delegated to another, that’s abdicating, not delegating.
When one doesn’t know what performance expectation is realistic and achievable from delegating, the success is often unlikely to be achieved.
The Biggest Expense of a Business
When success isn’t achieved, the number one reason is usually due to assumptions.
There can be assumptions about the ease of success of the tasks being delegated, about the level of understanding of the person/service provider’s knowledge or competence, about the likely success level that can be obtained and about how much the cost will be to obtain the level of success.
All of those points and a whole lot more cost many businesses hundreds of thousands, and even multiple millions in lost sales every year.
Marketing is probably the number one topic where there are assumptions brought about through abdicating.
The important question becomes, how can one avoid abdicating and start delegating more effectively?
The answer is to know what the outcome can be obtained from what you’re asking someone to do.
If you were to hire an accountant or bookkeeper, you’d know from your own experience what tasks they should be able to do and the time it should take to do those tasks.
It’s the same with anything you want to delegate.
Search Engine Optimizing or SEO is one service where results often aren’t achieved due to inexperienced service providers that businesses use.
Unfortunately, if one doesn’t have any knowledge on topics they are asking someone to do, they will lose a lot of money finding out what they don’t want, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will find out what they need to know.
The way to avoid abdicating with tasks, to avoid expensive education ‘lessons’ is to start by learning more yourself about the topic you are asking someone else to carry out.
Know the results, measured by figures that are achievable.
How to Replace Ignorance with Knowledge
Knowledge is acquired by learning and learning can take place by finding answers to questions. Knowing what questions to ask is the solution.
Start with questions such as;
- What exactly needs to be measured in order to determine the effectiveness of the person being given the task/role to?
- What is a reasonable result that can be achieved from this task they are carrying out?
- Can the task be measured in such a way as to provide a dollar result or ROI?
If you employ someone at a lower hourly rate to carry out a task you currently do, if they can do it in 80% of the time you take, for 60% of your hourly rate then that would be a good ROI measured in dollar terms.
With advertising it’s more complicated to know the questions, but here’s one that can help you.
Calculate your Allowable Acquisition Cost per Client.
If a client is worth $1,000 a year, then there is a percentage of that income would you could afford to pay to ‘acquire’ that money.
10% is a good rule, however many marketers would debate that.
This figure has stood the test of time for 27 years in my own businesses that have spent millions on advertising since I started measuring Acquisition Cost and ROIs.
20% may be a reasonable figure for many businesses and some marketers would say much higher given the ‘Lifetime Value’ of a client. I like to consider the yearly income generated, not the Lifetime Value, because in business you can’t afford to fund marketing that requites years in order to create a profit ROI.
Understanding what questions to ask about the likely performance outcome, that is achievable and measurable for the person you’re delegating to is the key.
For marketing its best to research online to learn all about performance expectations, talk to service providers about their specific recommendations, or better still a business marketing mentor who can educate you on performance expectations around marketing.
The key to remember when you’re considering passing on a task and responsibility of success to an employee or another service provider is for you and them to be very aware of your expectations and discuss it with who you are delegating to.
This way the goal you have it known by both and it’s agreed upon up front.
Not having this conversation leads to disappointment, difficult conversations later and the loss of potential thousands of dollars and weeks or months of time.
Reflect on about everything you’ve ever delegated before and the outcome achieved. If you weren’t happy with the results, were you delegating or abdicating the tasks and responsibility for its success?
Knowing what you don’t know, you don’t know about what you want to delegate is to first step. Talking to a mentor is a good place to know what you don’t know and can save you a many thousands of dollars and weeks of lost.
Tim Stokes
Author Bio: Tim Stokes is a 36 year experienced business owner and builder of 7 in service industries. In 1997 he began mentoring business owners in all aspects of business growth and lifestyle success with results published in national magazines. He’s no accountant, but he brings a fresh, very practical, intelligent point of view to growing businesses that his principal clients enjoy. He’s authored 12 books and The Academy of Business Mastery business management course with its systems and management tools. He’s respected for his contribution to clients of accounting firms who see the results. Tim believes the most important figure in businesses is the net profit percentage and specializes in increasing it with a full suite of time-proven strategies. Visit Tim's website to learn more about him.