Is Email Ruining Your Small Business Productivity?

Email can be the best friend of a small business owner or it can a major drain on your time!

Email can be invaluable tool designed to keep you in constant contact with your customers, employees, suppliers, and more. It can also be a distraction that pulls your attention away from the business of running your business efficiently.

If you find yourself being pulled into the email abyss with a never ending flow of messages flowing in and out of your mailbox, there are a few rules that can help streamline your communications and keep you focused on running your business.

1. Set aside a few dedicated times during the day to respond to emails
2. Limit the time of each email session to keep your business moving
3. Prioritize your responses so time critical emails are done first and less critical ones can be done at the end of the day
4. Clean out your subscriptions. If you don't need to read it or you automatically hit the delete button, it's time to unsubscribe!
5. Setup an email hierarchy so higher priority emails are sent to dedicated folders (e.g. sales) and less critical ones are set to your personal email (e.g. the latest photos of your sister's kids)

Keep to these simple rules and watch your daily productivity increase along with your profits!