better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

How To Grow Your Business

20 March 2011

The message in this post is simple: You need to delegate in order to grow.

Easy to say…but hard to achieve perhaps?

I was munching a cheesy toasted sandwich this week with my friend Julie from JobHop.co.uk which is a cool site for people who want to make a move with their career, or for employers who want to find people. I’m not an affiliate, but I like what she does so am happy to give you the link.

Anyway, we were talking about how to grow a business and she reminded me about the need to delegate – in fact what really struck me was that this is the second time this year I’ve heard the same phrase.

After I’d heard the words in January from Andie, one of my co-Directors at Centred Development, I decided to delegate a chunk of the PR work for Job Hunting 3.0. So, I rang my marketing colleague and delegated six writing tasks to him. He drafted the pieces and I polished them, instead of me thinking about drafting them. Progress was made and some of this work helped to propel the book up into the top 5,000 on Amazon, which has delighted the publisher. (Sub 10k gets you lunch, sub 5k gets you a knife and fork to eat it with).

Would this have been achieved without me delegating the work? Probably not…it would still be sitting on my list of things that ‘I will definitely get done tomorrow’. Or maybe the day after.

As you think about the week ahead, ask yourself what you need to delegate in order to grow a bit? I’ve been surprised how little bits of help all add up over time, so a good place to start is any simple task that you just never seem to get round to doing and which you need completed.

Remember: If you really want to grow your business, delegate tasks to people, so that you have more time to do those things which will take you forwards. These include selling, product development, marketing work, meeting contacts, networking and following up enquiries.

And if you have any brie-filled toasted sandwiches that need eating, you’re welcome to ask for my help…!

Tags: business, tip