A short guide to help contractors grow through micro outsourcing
Read time – 4 minutes
Last week, I had a conversation with the owner of a flooring company. He is an owner-operator who is looking to expand into a new county but is struggling to find the time to build out the marketing for it. He has done all his own marketing up until this point and has reached his capacity.
Sound familiar?
Mirco Outsourcing is the answer
Just like when you bring on part-time helpers for field work, you can apply the same concept to marketing and admin work.
The flooring company owner doesn’t need a brand new website (theirs ranks well) or a full-time marketing person or agency (Yet..), so he can hire a freelancer who specializes in website landing pages to build out the new pages to target the new county.
This will keep the owner free to work on high-impact items and lead to better landing pages being built faster (assuming the freelancer is good) since the person is a specialist and is solely focused on this task for him.
I like how Justin Welsh summarizes the concept: “Micro-outsourcing means tapping into the world of freelance specialists to manage specific, recurring parts of your business.”
Additional examples: you could hire a designer to create your social media posts for the month, a Virtual Assistant to handle your email inbox, or a video editor to edit a recent project video.
Even though these people might only work a few hours a week for you, they will improve your business because they have specialized skills, and they’ll cost a fraction of a full-time employee.
Mico Outsourcing: The Strategy
1. Create a list of all your tasks.
Look at your schedule from the last 4 weeks and write down all the recurring tasks you see.
You may see:
- appointments
- set up jobs
- calls with clients
- calls with the job foreman
- answering emails
- sending insurance docs
- sending contracts
- payroll
- invoicing
- check website traffic
- Instagram posting
- Google ads check-in and more.
Identify the ones of the highest importance that you will own. The ones you are good at.
Typically, for contracting owners this is selling or running the projects. Sales and project management are roles you can hire for, but for now, let’s focus on the little tasks that will help move you forward.
Below is a short list of responsibilities I made for a Virtual Assistant role for our painting client:
You will notice that most of these are small tasks but help in the following way:
- Clarify responsibilities for the VA
- Improves handling and organizing of new leads
- Improves project coordination, ensuring all the small details are accounted for.
- Frees up the owner/manager for higher-level tasks.
2. Find the people
Ask other contractors and people you know for referrals. Look at freelancing websites like Fiverr and Upwork. Give them a small task as a trial and see how they do. Also, check out LinkedIn.
3. Create standard operating procedures
Create a document in Google Docs/Slides and screen recordings (use Loom for free 5-minute screen recording videos) that show exactly how you want the task executed.
Example: 5 questions the virtual assistant for the painting company must ask:
Confirm how the freelancer should communicate with you: phone, messaging, text, or email.
This may feel like more work initially, but once the guide is set up and you find the right helper for the tasks, it will increase output and efficiency and will allow you to focus on more important tasks for your business.
The Results
- Our painting client hired a VA to answer inbound phone calls, inbound leads, emails, invoicing, and misc. admin.
- This freed up an estimator for more appointments and more sales calls.
- Hired freelance writer to write and post blog posts.
- Posts were more frequent and had higher quality.
- Hired freelancer to send cold emails to get leads.
- It brought in a whole new segment of opportunities. The owner-led cold email was inconsistent with a haphazard strategy.
- Hired a videographer to film and edit a painting project.
- Better looking video created faster.
- Hired an editor to take existing videos and turn them into videos for the website and YouTube.
- Reusing current content into something new fast.
- Ran a design contest on 99designs.com for a new logo.
- Received over 50 quality submissions. Chose a beautiful new logo.
Bottom Line
Your company may not be ready for a full-time marketing or admin person, but don’t let that stop you from the fractional solution. Look for recurring tasks that others can do well so you can focus on the big picture.
