Running a business requires doing many things at once, from payroll and accounting to hiring and marketing. But for many small to medium-sized businesses, building in-house teams for these business functions is not feasible, much less cost-effective.
Fortunately, outsourcing these essential functions is very well possible and highly effective. Outsourcing allows you to get more things done without having to build and grow a team of your own. With that, here are some of the top areas of business that you should consider outsourcing:
1. Payroll
Ensuring that people get paid on time can be a challenge in and of itself, especially if you are a small business with only a couple of people working in HR or accounting. If this is the case for you, plenty of payroll solutions can take this essential business function out of your hands.
Furthermore, most payroll outsourcing companies can take care of things like tax services, tax credits, paycheck options, and more, allowing you to save time and money from having to do all of these things yourself.
2. Sales Prospecting
If your business relies on sales prospecting to gain new clients, outsourcing this area is a great way to save time, money, and effort on building a prospecting team on your own. Apart from that, you also have the assurance that the team you hire already has trained SDRs; you don’t have to hire people, train them, and hope for the best, not knowing if they are really good at prospecting or not.
Moreover, outsourcing gives you the advantage of flexibility. Compared to having your own team, you have the choice to drop the service when you need to as opposed to having to fire people, which is rarely easy to do.
3. Cold Emailing
Sending out cold emails to prospects is often a tedious process. Even with email automation tools in place, they still need human supervision to ensure that your emails are getting delivered to recipients’ inboxes (and not just their spam or promotion folders) and people are actually reading them.
Outsourcing cold emailing is an excellent way to get this tedious task off your hands. More importantly, you gain access to the work of professionals that already have the experience and skills required to send highly personalized and highly effective email copies.
4. Accounting
For many small to mid-sized businesses, accounting is one of the most difficult areas to establish, let alone master. Some even attempt to do their own accounting, which often leads to financial problems and inconsistencies down the road. But even with a lone accountant on your payroll, it may not be enough to ensure that all of your accounting needs are met, especially in the process of scaling your business.
That said, consider outsourcing to a third-party accounting company or a freelancer. They won’t be a permanent part of your payroll, but they can deliver just as efficiently as an in-house accountant.
5. Administrative tasks
Another common pain point for many businesses is the hassle of accomplishing administrative tasks. Things like inbox management, calendar management, and social media management can take a lot of time and effort. And if you don’t have someone on your team whose job is to take care of all of these tasks, they are likely bogging down the employees that do get saddled with them.
Outsourcing administrative tasks are fairly easy. All you need to do is hire a virtual assistant with general office skills like inbox and calendar management. Furthermore, hiring a VA instead of an on-site employee is far cheaper, with rates going as low as $10 to $12 an hour, depending on the complexity and quantity of the jobs you need to get done.
6. Customer Service
VAs can also take care of customer service tasks, such as replying to emails, answering customer queries, and taking inbound calls. If you outsource this function, you can take the stress off your existing employees and make your customer service more efficient.
However, be careful about the person or agency you hire for this area. Of course, they would represent your company on your behalf. You can easily find the right person by being thorough with your screening and hiring someone with a good track record.
These are just some of the business functions that you can outsource. In fact, you can outsource almost every area of business except for critical management functions. Nevertheless, this list should give you a good idea of what you can outsource to make your business more productive, efficient, and consistent.
