Six Small Business Management Tips for Print Shops

Managing a small business involves wearing many hats and focusing on many different aspects of a business. Thankfully, there are tips. solutions and tools that can make this job less stressful and lead to a more successful journey.

A print shop has so many moving parts that effective management is vital to success. Check out these tips to help guide you:

Delegate More

To successfully run a business, one person can not wear all hats. There is no way that one person can do all tasks efficiently and effectively. This means shop owners need to rely on other people to complete many of the tasks. Hire the right people, then take the time to properly prepare and train them. Then, let them do their work while you focus on other tasks.

Set Quantifiable Goals

The daily grind can easily overshadow your bigger business goals. Those day-to-day management tasks like sales calls, inventory keep up, customer service, printing projects, and keeping your budget under control can distract you from your long-term goals for business expansion or other bigger picture goals. Set quantifiable goals. For example, if you want to increase your customer base, make a goal that can be measured and implement strategies to attain this goal. Revisit this goal and track it.

Leverage Business Data

Data can seem complicated and overwhelming. But, it can offer beneficial insights that can be leveraged to make your processes more efficient. Employee productivity, sales leads, types of products sold, shipment reports, and other data can be valuable. In shopVOX, you can gather data on dozens of reports so you are in the know of what is happening in your business. Once this data is gathered, analyze it and then make the changes needed for more efficient processes.

Watch out for Shiny Object Syndrome

Shiny Object Syndrome is essentially the disease of distraction. While you may be motivated and energized to run and grown your business, distractions can get in the way. Distractions are often thought of as social media feeds, lunches with friends, or getting caught up in gossip. However, for motivated entrepreneurs, these distractive shiny objects are usually things like new opportunities, new products, or new marketing strategies. This chasing after change after change, strategy after strategy. and so on can cause issues like wasting money, confusing staff, and inability to finish projects. So be aware of these patterns and practice redirecting your focus to creating systems that work and then let them work.

Automate for Time Management

Thanks to technology, automation is easy than ever. Automate as much as you can to free up more time for yourself and your employees. Put systems in place for proofing, projects, invoicing, and other areas. In shopVOX, you can automate quotes to jobs, jobs to invoices, invoices to QuickBooks or Xero, and many other areas of your business. Take advantage of these to save you hours a month.

Take advantage of technology

Obviously, as a tech company, we love technology. We know how powerful and life-changing technology can be. Technology has transformed how businesses are run. If you have not jumped on the technology wagon, it's a great time to start. Technology can allow for automation as stated above, as well as better organization and management. There are apps for recruiting, email marketing, accounting, financial management, and even project management. As a shopVOX user, you can manage your sales leads, quotes, jobs, customers, invoices, employees, and inventory - then integrate with many other apps for even more automation and effective time management through Zapier.

For more management tips and other ways to enhance your business, download our new eBook: