Can You Buy Time

Ali Bagley

How many times do we hear the words ‘what do you do?’ Whether that is said by someone else or even what we ask ourselves in our heads.

The response is typically in detailing what your business does. A few of us are good at that, others are … how can I put it … not so great. The person posing the question more often than not will just switch off half way through your explanation or will forget within moments.

Ultimately your answer should not be about the specific tasks you perform, but rather the results you achieve.

It’s not what you do it’s what you deliver

So, let’s change the focus from what you do to what you deliver. Chances are if you’re an entrepreneur or managing director, your answer would be a long one, after all you are all over every aspect of your business and all roads lead to the boss.

The majority of, if not all business owners or senior executives, have 2 piles of work on their desk. One pile is probably a small one. It consists of the jobs you like. The tasks you’re proficient at. Often the ones that you think no one else can do.

The other pile, usually much larger, is at the side of the desk. It has been pushed to one side because these are the tasks that you keep putting off. That pile of documentation is ever-growing, ultimately representing the core of your tension and frustration. It becomes your ‘Stress Pile’.

Every issue on your desk is a time bandit, and you can’t buy more time. Or can you? Let’s see. . .

Can you buy time?

What can you do to reduce that stress pile? The straightforward solution is to complete the tasks. Clear them from your workspace so that you can focus on your preferred activities: the ones that generate income for your business. However, this requires time, time that you may not possess or that encroaches upon your personal life and time with your family.

Is it possible to assign any of these tasks to others in your company? Evaluate the individuals within your organization who could handle these duties. Do they possess the required abilities? Will it be as time-consuming to train them as it would be to complete the tasks yourself? Are you a solo entrepreneur without a team to delegate to? An alternative you may not have thought about or dismissed due to perceived cost or complexity is outsourcing to external professionals.

Entrepreneurs breathe a sigh of relief when they outsource operational tasks that consume their time and energy. Common functions that are frequently outsourced include administrative, payroll, human resources, marketing, and public relations. By delegating these tasks to external experts, business owners can focus on the core aspects of their enterprise, without being bogged down by the daily grind.

Growing Your Business

But what about buying time to actually GROW your business. What about investing time in the development of your business? By securing contracts that will boost your revenue and ensure the longevity of your company, you can create a strong foundation for future growth. If you are doing that then your stress pile may include any of the following:

• Research how to find and access private and public sector contract opportunities
• Develop a library of case studies and evidence for use in bids for those contracts (social value, environment/sustainability, carbon net zero, policies and testimonials to name just a few)
• Deconstruct the ITT/RFQ/PPQ requirements for an opportunity you have identified
• Analyse a specification for that opportunity and develop a response storyboard
• Write, edit and review the technical responses to the opportunity
• Manage the bidding process to make sure everything is compliant, on point and high scoring
• Post submission review for future bids

Bidding is about growing your business. It is about answering that question, ‘What do you deliver?’ to an audience who are interested in what you can deliver for them and those opportunities are a fantastic way to grow your business.

If you haven’t yet considered bidding for contracts to grow your business then be advised that the activities above will land in your stress pile when you do!

Winning bids takes time and investment, skills you may not have personally or in your team, resources who are not available to take away from fee earning work to develop bids.

So, what if you could buy in that time and expertise? Have an external team available as and when you need them to take on that work winning activity. Freeing you up to get back to the little work pile you like doing and that probably earns you money now. Or just to come in and upskill your team so you can keep bidding inhouse?

Take our Supercharge Your Business Growth with Winning Bidding Strategies quiz to see how bid ready you are and to get a free personalised report on how well you are doing and what support you might need to do better.

https://kindridgesupercharge.scoreapp.com

Our job is to help you to get the s**t off your desk, to give you back time to focus on being the boss, Dad, golf partner, spa buddy etc., whilst we win contracts for your business.

It all begins with a simple conversation . . . 

https://calendly.com/kindridge/letschat

And by the way, when we are asked what we deliver this is our answer:

‘The time to do what you need to do; the skills you need to win that contract and the freedom you want to reclaim the things that matter. All while you and your team focus on business at hand’