Time is money, or so someone says. As a business owner or executive every day is filled with decisions that represent opportunity cost. Fear of loss versus need for gain.
Doing it yourself versus paying someone to do it for you Really, it comes down to what your time is worth.There truly is an opportunity cost to everything you do when you always have more than one thing to do at once.
Let's illustrate this with an example, I'll even plug a great company in the process.
Should you change your own oil? Yes, changing your own oil is cheaper than paying someone else to do it. No, you shouldn't try to save money by changing your own oil. For the 2+ hours it would take you to do it yourself you could be driving your business forward.
You could be focused on your GPCT exercise, a topic we discussed in Growing your business - Building your GPCT. The benefit from that time spend can outweigh the $13 you 'saved' changing your oil. And you won't ruin your shirt taking an oil bath either. Do yourself a favor, find the nearest Jiffy Lube near your favorite lunch stop and kill two turkeys with one arrow.
The same principle applies to decisions in your business. Should you do your own accounting, outsource, or hire an employee to do it? You probably know how to do your own books, that doesn't mean it's a good idea. There are simply more valuable things to do with your time.
You probably know how to sell your services, that doesn't mean you should pick up the phone and hammer out a couple hundred cold calls. Your accounting department knows their stuff, hopefully your sales people do too, (If they don't, read 6.1 Tips for More Sales). If you've spent your time wisely surrounding yourself with fantastic resources like I have at our inbound agency, you can then spend your time on really important stuff while they execute.
This isn't ground breaking material, I know. The funny thing is not all departments inside most businesses are treated the same way. We've found that while many companies will employ multiple sales people and multiple accounting resources they'll try to do their own marketing. Spending $500 on on paid search is out of the question but paying a sales guy to make cold calls and do walk-ins all day isn't measured the same way.
The business owner tries to manage small campaign efforts and make marketing strategy decisions instead of doing what he does best. They spend their time trying to figure out what keywords to compete for, how to interpret their web traffic analytics, and writing content for their website. This simply isn't the best use of their time, and instead of spending to get it done right they spend their time doing it wrong.
As an inbound marketing agency we run into prospects all the time (mostly due to our inbound marketing assessment process) on uber tight marketing budgets. They simply don't have the budget for lead generation, social media, exceptional web design & development, etc. They'll spend $10,000 per month in salary to their sales staff but don't want to spend $1,000 on marketing.
The point is there's an opportunity cost to doing nothing too. It's not only the cost of your time compared to the cost of paying someone else to do it for you, it's the true cost of lost opportunity. It's true, you get what you pay for. Paying for nothing, gets you nothing. Shortcutting marketing efforts by trying to do it yourself or hiring unqualified resources gets you what you pay for.
The next time you're considering how to develop your business, consider the following...
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You get what you pay for, and doing nothing costs a lot
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Your time is worth more than the cost of paying others
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You'll pay 3x more in the long run by not doing it right the first time
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Opportunity cost is the most costly cost of all
If you're wondering how you can start making better decisions and driving better results you do have a choice. My advice: talk to any reputable marketing company about how you establish goals and a timeline for success. All we ask is that you include a our agency in your consideration!
