I’d like to introduce a friend and fellow biz colleague – Tonya Sowles. She’s an awesome business consultant – helping people with answers to their business challenges. Along with our “all things Geek to English”, we wanted to pause and focus on an important element for your business… because if you don’t have it, you could be draining $$.
Tonya tackles Transforming Productivity into Profitability.
Let’s Talk about Productivity
Productivity often is used synonymously with efficiency and busyness. All three things mean you’re doing something. But busy or efficient at doing the wrong things doesn’t mean that you’re productive or profitable. Many people confuse the idea of movement with achievement.
Productivity that leads to profitability isn’t about getting more things done. It’s about getting the right things done. It is about getting the essential items for your overall mission/strategy done consistently. According to Brent D. Peterson and Gaylen W. Nielsen, workplace consultants,
“Much of the work that people do doesn’t achieve results… Across all the organizations we have studied, about half the work that people do fails to advance the organizations’ strategies.”
Do you have a day packed full of appointments or tasks? Do you feel like you are always in motions? When you get done with your day, do you feel like you have accomplished something impactful to reach your goals?
Things happen by creating new products, creating new systems, reaching out in different ways. It’s a lot faster and easier to do what you know, but it is not always the most effective. It also comes back to that statement that just because you are efficient doesn’t mean you are effective. Productivity in your business is about doing effective things to make things happen in your business. So, it’s really about getting the results you want in your business with less time and effort.
Are you doing anything to reach the goals you’ve set for yourself and your business? If you’re not, you need to look at how you’re using your time.
Why Do We Want to Increase Our Productivity?
Why do we want to make sure that we are doing more things that make a difference?
- When you do things effectively, you create more free time to do the things you enjoy.
- You can accomplish tasks easily and frequently.
- You’re going to decrease the stressors in your life.
A recent example from a client
This entrepreneur has huge visions for his company but has minimal staff. In the traditional way that he had done work, everybody has to hustle to serve their customers. We started implementing automation through the CRM using call center software and email automation that created automatic workflows. So when he began servicing a client group, emails were sent out based on the templates’ dates or actions automatically without any additional staff time after the initial setup. The company had been servicing clients with 10 to 100 employees. The first time we introduced this automation, they were able to service over 300 employees. By the end of the year, they’ve serviced a group of over 1,000. In the same amount of time as they did a group of 100.
We introduced tools that took busy work, sending emails, dropping texts, creating reminders, and notifications out of the day to day operations for staff. This freed up hours to close client sales that made money.
Think about the possibilities to create automation to free up hours every day or even 1 hour.
Reframe and Rework Your Productivity
When you’re thinking, “I’m swamped,” “I’m super busy,” but don’t feel like I am effective. Or I’m doing all of the little things, and none of the big stuff is getting done. You’ve got to reframe and relook at your productivity. Think about those goals and accomplishments you have for your business. Break it down, think about each month. Ask yourself, “What are the milestones that I need to meet to reach those goals? What systems do I need in place? What tasks do I need to accomplish because it cannot be automated, cannot be outsourced, and cannot be delegated?”
Create a plan for your day/week
Get to the heart of what you have to do to reach those goals and strategies. Then you need to plan out your day. You need to get a clear vision of the big stuff to get done today or this week. Every business is a little bit different depending on the cycle of how often you need to schedule the big stuff.
Set limits for your time
When is the time that you are working on the big stuff? Set limits for your time. If you have a lot of meetings in a day, honor those time limits that you set. Do not allow other people to take away your productive time. You have to protect that with everything you have.
Once you start planning out your day, protecting your time, and utilizing the tools that make sense, you will learn how to transform more to more of the big stuff in less time.
Make productivity a habit
It’s essential for productivity to make it a habit and a part of your routine. Focus on what your goals are, what it is that you want. Put in those milestones, those big rocks of what you need to do to make that happen.
To make productivity a habit, you need to:
- Focus on what is important to you and what you want.
- Look for the best tools for the job. Look for the best things to transform your goals into reality.
- That’s going to be different for each type of productivity.
- One of the best things you can do is look for a mentor. Look for someone who is where you want to be. Someone who has the skills, has the company, has the
- system, has whatever it is that you want in your business. Then model how they do it.
- Find a course, a workshop, a seminar.
- There are books.
- Coaches and consultants can help you model after what that mentor is doing.
- When you’re looking at books, seminars, coaches to model what they’re doing, look at what technology they are using. There are gazillions of different tools out there to use to make you more effective in your business. But not all tools are as useful for every industry or every business.
So, if you’re modeling your productivity after a mentor, find out what tools they use. Do they use project management software, like Asana or Trello? Do they have an all-inclusive CRM that allows them to project management, email, time tracking, etc.? What works, what have they tried, and why? Your situation may be different, and another solution may result in greater productivity.
Manage your energy
Finally, when trying to maximize productivity to create profitability, managing your energy, not your time, is critically important. Think about when you are in the zone to strategize for your business and create new systems. Is it midday, is it morning, is it evening? Protect that time accordingly. Schedule your tasks according to your energy levels, the big stuff when you are firing on all cylinders.
Productivity is vital to create and improve profitability. With small changes to make productivity a habit, you can transform increased productivity into exponential profitability growth.
Tonya regularly holds workshops on a variety of topics. Check out her website, or join her on Facebook.
