The One Man Band Sabotages Your Client Communication

Ever heard of the term "The One Man Band"? Well, I don't know who this "man" is, but I can tell you that he will set you up for failure.

If you look at most of the books out there on running a small business, or becoming an independent sales consultant, they're trying to make you a master of everything. And, I think that is ridiculous. Because, if you are doing both money generating, and non-money generating business tasks, you will find that you are not mastering anything. You're not an American Idol star, you're really a One Man Band, a mediocre generalist, who is probably over worked. And the only beat you hear, is your head beating against the wall wondering why you can't attract enough clients. Why do that?

I'm also seeing a major trend picking up speed in my client's lives. Regardless of whether or not they're doing well financially, more and more tension is popping up between their professional and personal lives. They are spending more precious business time handling non-money generating details and activities. Adults are moving from one personal crisis to the next. And, when I ask them, "So what did you do this week to build your business", all I hear is a deep, "Sigh....".

For a lot of self-employed professionals, things are getting a lot complicated. Longer sales cycles, clients in different time zones, global competition, never ending technological changes and vanishing trade barriers have created a new business model - the globally integrated business. The new global business model didn't exist 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, work was a place you went to and it was defined by time lines. We knew our competitors well; frankly, we had dinner with our competitors and their kids played sports together. If they weren't across town, they weren't far and we could study them, speak their language and understand their moves.

And, this new way of doing business leads to frustration because on one end of the spectrum you have self-employed professionals that are loosing business to overseas competition and they are panicking; trying to save their sinking ship without a plan. On the other side of the spectrum you have businesses who are growing too fast. In either case, there is no time to plan or reflect because basically things are out of control.

So, from my experience, one of the number one reasons for businesses failing during this time in history, is because the business owners are spending time in their business, instead of working on their business. And, not knowing the distinction here, is costing you clients. Let me put it this way: spending your business hours on something that you can have done for you, for $30 - $40 per hour, just doesn't make sense.

Look at these two activities and tell me which one makes you more money: You could be spending time building a high-trust relationship with a client and closing a sale, or waiting on hold to figure out when a late shipment will arrive. Here is another example: You could be talking to a prospect to understand their immediate needs, or you could be opening up the mail and reading it. John Dudek says it better, "Take the stuff you do great and that have the greatest impact, and do only those activities. Don't do anything else." Well said John.

When you finish reading this article, I need for you to make a list of the organizational tasks that you can pay someone else to do for you. Consider hiring a virtual assistant or high school student to help you recapture those non-money making hours to be strategic, speak with new clients, close more sales, make more money ' or whatever you're really good at. Those hours are precious and irreplaceable. If your time is worth $80 or $8,000 an hour, it's just plain silly to spend several hours a day doing something that you can delegate, or outsource for the equivalent of $15, $20 or $40 an hour.

My final thought to leave you with is this: every time I outsourced an activity, my income grew exponentially. I'm not just talking about an incremental increase in revenue, but a catapult to a higher profit margin. If you feel like you are becoming a human 'doer' instead of a human 'being', then you need support from a team that you can outsource work to.