The Big O – Being organised!  

Any improvements you make to your business processes will relate directly to your clientele numbers. Which of course relate directly to your balance sheet. It’s simple: being more organised equals more profit.

Conversely, a lack of organisation costs your business money. For example, ever been to a coffee shop where it took forever to place an order, an eternity to get your coffee, a lifetime for the wrong slice of cake and then, incredibly, you had to wait to pay them? I bet you didn’t go back!

That shop has lost your patronage and most probably that of your family, friends and colleagues. How many dollars per month does that add up to?  

If the café had a better level of organisation at each step of the process, dollars could get attracted, not repelled. For example, the business will benefit hugely from an efficient ordering system and a physical space set up to suit its purpose.

Read on to find areas in your business which may benefit from being better organised.

Meetings

Whether it’s a Skype call or networking at the coffee shop, you’ll benefit most from an organised approach. Have a check list for each meeting.

Do you really need to attend, or is it simply a ‘feel good’ meeting?
What do you want to achieve? Have clarity about your purpose and your desired outcomes of the meeting.
Know how long you are prepared to spend in the meeting.
Ensure you have a reliable system for taking notes, and highlighting actions.

Customer follow up

You’ve heard it before: retaining a customer is far cheaper than attracting a new one. Here are some ways to help with client retention:

Create a schedule of how many times per year you contact each type of customer.
Detail how you contact them and what you aim to gain from the contact.
Set up a reliable reminder system, so you don’t miss anyone.
Don't be put off by a perceived need for fancy systems, when simple tools like an Excel spreadsheet or Outlook calendar can be very effective.

Email

Here are some basic strategies for being organised and taming the email beast. You may have heard them all before – that’s because they work!

Do not let email control your day. Instead, handle email in blocks by scheduling set times throughout the day to read and respond to them…and stick to these times.
Set up folders for emails on the same subject/project. In a perfect world this system will mirror the system you have for hardcopy documents.
Dedicate 15 minutes at the end of each week to delete or archive actioned emails.
Your Inbox should be for current projects or tasks waiting to be done and should ALWAYS have room for incoming mail.
Separate business and personal emails, preferably with two different addresses.
Repeat after me: “I do three jobs each morning before I open my email”. It’s a great way to start a productive day.

How many of the above tips are you currently implementing? Do you have any other tips for being organised that have worked for you? Share your experience below.

Roz Howland, organising expert, helps you be one too! As a Professional Organiser Roz assists individuals and businesses to achieve their goals by being better organised. When you are organised you can achieve anything.

26 Jun 09

Print this item

10 comments | Add your own 1 2 | Next» View all»

very good as usual Ros. Keep it going Ben Kelly from Cairns
Good advice Roz! "Back room" efficiency makes all the difference in the viability of a small business. Like many people my income comes from face to face time spent with clients. If I'm spending 20 hours with clients and 20 hours on paper work my hourly rate effectively gets cut in half! Something worth thinking about! Wendy Hanes from Melbourne, Aust
I like “I do three jobs each morning before I open my email”, though I do glance once when I open my computer to see if anything critical arrived during the night from the other side of the planet.
In fact, I seem to recall a book titled "Never do email in the morning"... Nathan Zeldes from Jerusalem, Israel
I heartily agree with Roz's recomendations.
I would like to add this: If everyone would spend a small amount of time at the end of every week clearing their desk and work space, the world would get more done with less effort. Kathi Burns from San Diego, California USA
As always Roz your advice for the seemingly obvious (but not always so) is fabulous. It's the simple organising tips that go a long way to actually being organised and maintaining it. Love the clean up of the emails at the end of the week - It's a great start to a relaxed cluttered free mind weekend! Julie Zullo from Brisbane, Australia
I'm in the architecture industry, and it has always amazed me that almost every firm I've ever had any contact with has been amazingly disorganised! They may have a fantastic QA filing system, but they still can't get to a meeting on time or even remember that there was a meeting they were meant to be at!
Then again, it does make it easier for me to create that 'point of difference'! Think I'll stick this up on my wall! Bek from Brisbane

10 comments | Add your own 1 2 | Next» View all»

Add Your comments

Preview comment

Name

Website *

Town / city and country

Email (never sold, displayed or given away)

* This will link your name to your site. So please avoid self promotion elsewhere! We delete spam, disrespectful or off-topic comments.