Do you feel as though you are doing many different tasks in your business and they all seem to serve different purposes? Do you contact a single customer or client for multiple purposes or have to go to different ‘lists’ to get the names of people you want to promote to or contact? If your business operation seems disjointed or as if there is a great deal of redundancy or gaps—it may be time to pull everything together and try integrate all your work efforts toward a single, cohesive goal.
Integration is a key component of an efficient business. Consider how you can integrate both your efforts and the systems you use as you operate your business. I find that it helps to have a mission or an ultimate goal so that one can evaluate all the activities based on whether or not they help to further the mission or not. For example, if you develop an e-mail newsletter, ask yourself how it fits into all the other elements of your business. You should be promoting the same products or services in all of your marketing—not promoting one item on the web site and another in an e-mail. Everything should be connected together so that you are sending a consistent message and NOT confusing your prospects, clients and customers.
When you sit down at your work space in the morning (or whenever you get to work), look at the tasks you are doing and ask yourself if they all fit together. Are you back-tracking or sending an e-mail to someone about one thing and then leaving a phone message about another. People will want to work with you if they feel you are organized and efficient and that you make the best use of your time. If they are getting different messages in different ways at different times, they will get confused and take their business elsewhere. Not to mention, your time will be better spent if you integrate your efforts and operation as well.