The first thing they teach you in business school is to focus on what you do best. As trivial as this may sound and no matter how much it makes sense, the fact is that almost nobody really implements this mantra. You can find this problem in any organization from the top blue chip giants down to the smallest businesses. It is no secret that most businesses spend 80% of their time on 20% of their customers. And if you keep digging you will just find more and more of these absurd 80-20 ratios. You may find that 80% of your advertising budget is only bringing in 20% of your sales or perhaps will discover that 20% of your customers contribute 80% of your sales (in which case you have an opposite problem of potentially spending too many resources on the lower profitable 80%).
But you will probably find that you yourself suffer from the fact that 80% of your time goes on things that just don’t justify your attention and position while spending only 20% of your time on what really matters – growing your business. In order to achieve this you have to clearly define what aspects of your business are growth generators and what are simply logistics. You will want to focus most of your attention on growth and can easily leave logistics to someone else.
Obviously we don’t mean abandoning the logistical issues of your company as these are very important, but if you can find qualified people or good outsource services that can do a good job, you will be able to focus your attention on things that simply can’t be outsourced or delegated.
One of the most common mistakes many online businesses make is that they try to develop everything from scratch wasting time and effort on things that can be done much easier by using existing products and services. A good example for this is with companies trying to create their own shopping cart and payment system. Especially since there are some great services available on the internet which can easily be implemented in any website. First Data Independent Sales goes one step further by providing a complete API programming kit and provides a secure payment gateway script to integrate into any website allowing customers to make online purchases. With professional merchant account services such as the one provided by First Data Independent Sales, you can save time and truly focus on what you do best.
