I just read this excellent post by Richele McFarlin about the importance of responding to business communications promptly, and I couldn’t agree more. No matter what business you are in, responding to business communications promptly is an important practice that must be made a priority. If you find yourself constantly overwhelmed by a deluge of telephone, email, and other messages that require a response, it may be time to reevaluate some things about your home – based business.
One way that you can deal with a volume of business communications that has gotten larger than you are able to comfortably manage is to rein in your workload. Some home – based businesses are small by choice because the owners of the businesses realize that they have a limited amount of time to devote to working. The owners of these businesses take care to only take on as many clients and projects as they can comfortably handle during the time that they have available. This strategy can keep the volume of your business communications in check by reducing the number of people that are trying to communicate with you.
The other way that you can respond to (no pun intended) an overflow of business communications is by doing the complete opposite of what I have just suggested. Grow your business bigger in order to handle the increased demand for your products and/or services. It’s great to be in demand, and if you feel like it is the right time for you and your business to make the leap, do some research and planning to see what you would need to do in order to accommodate more clients or customers. You could increase your work schedule, hire others to help with tasks that you feel that you can delegate, automate parts of your business, or do anything else that makes sense for you and your business.
Photo by alvimann on morguefile.com.