Although there’s a bit of luck involved with selling on Amazon, much of your success rests with how you manage your time and skills. And if you’re looking on ways to improve your productivity, then keep reading because FeedbackExpress has seven ways you can better yourself.
1. Automate as Much as Possible
Are you pricing products manually? Switch to a repricing software to handle that for you. Are you writing out emails for feedback and reviews by hand? Stop. Software can do that for you. And are you fulfilling each order by yourself? Bad idea. It’s time to get FBA involved.
2. Organise Your Data into One Location
Google Drive can be an incredibly powerful tool because it can do so much: spreadsheet, word doc, slide show, etc. It’s also cloud-based so you can access your information from wherever you are in the world (and can feel free to go on vacation without missing a beat). You start off with 15GB of free storage, which is plenty for you to work with for your files. If you’re looking more at project management tools, Trello, Asana and Basecamp are three really good choices.
3. Keep Your Customers Up-to-Date
This tip has a two-fold effect.
One, telling your buyers about what’s going on helps keep current affairs fresh in your mind. It can be easy to get bogged down with other aspects of work, but if you get in the habit of telling your buyers what’s going on, it also helps you to keep tabs on your own to-do list.
Two, it frees up your time by automating the email process. If you use a tool like MailChimp to handle your emails for you, you can spend that time in other areas and improve your productivity.
4. Learn When and How to Delegate
If you keep growing successfully, there’ll come a time when you need to hand off some of your work to others. Recognising when that point is differs with every seller, but investing in extra help can pay handsome dividends. You’ll also want to know yourself and your business well enough to know what kind of help you’ll need.
Do you want an assistant to take on marketing and advertising for you? Or maybe accounting? Whatever it is, identify the areas that don’t need to be done by you and can be easily handled by someone/something else.
5. Regularly Measure Your Own Performance to Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
Imagine your first part-time job. You likely had regular performance reviews where your manager told you which areas you were doing well in and which ones you needed to pull up your socks in. You should do the same with yourself. Take regular stock of how you’re doing so you consistently have an objective idea of your efforts.
Some people like the pencil-and-paper approach while others prefer digital tools, like RescueTime, to do so. Whatever works best for you, do it so you can see what areas you’re wasting time on and how to trim the fat. It’s always okay to take a Facebook break, but just make sure it’s not so long it eats into your efficiency.
6. Make Your Business as Border-less as Possible
The more you can divest yourself of geographical tie-downs, the more you can increase your productivity. How? Several ways.
- You can take your business with you anywhere in the world. You won’t have to worry about things like running errands or going to appointments because all you need is a laptop/mobile device and an internet connection.
- You can work with talented help who live anywhere in the world by using the cloud. One thing to keep in mind is time zone differences, but no matter who you talk to in the world, you’ll be able to find at least a couple of hours that work for both of you.
- If you use a good inventory management software, you can easily copy and paste information from one marketplace to another instead of having to physically transfer goods or create new listings each time.
- Lastly, use a fulfillment service so you can have orders placed and delivered from anywhere in the world.
7. Use the Five-Minute Rule
If you can do something in under five minutes, do it right away so it’s done and over with and you don’t have to worry about it later on. This usually involves minor things, like replying to an email or answering a question online. Alternatively, you can identify things that take five minutes or less and schedule them in different chunks throughout the day so you don’t feel like you’re getting bogged down in mindless minutiae.
