Business Time Management for Technicians

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘When it rains, it pours’, and in the Tech industry, this is often the general rule rather than the exception. It could be that a recent operating system update caused a problem for a lot of your clients, or perhaps some of your business clients all need to update their CRM software, or perhaps the newest version of a popular gadget came out and you’re summoned to help everyone figure out how to use it. When Windows 8 came out and everyone wanted the latest (but perhaps not the greatest, depending on who you ask) operating system, there were a lot of users who felt rather lost, and they needed support right away. Often, however, you’ll notice lulls in the work, and what you do with those time periods is an important factor in your business success. Here are some basic business time management tips to help you manage your business time through thick and thin.

Prioritize Your Tasks

Sometimes you don’t exactly have a deadline for certain tasks, and they’re completed when you get to them. In other words, they’re not particularly time sensitive. If you can prioritize your tasks in such a way that these tasks fill in the slots between time sensitive tasks such as appointments or prearranged scheduled jobs, you’ll be using your time in the best way possible. It’s often a matter of discipline and avoiding procrastination, along with good scheduling. This is a good method of time management whether you’re very busy or only have a few jobs going at the moment.

Avoid doing preferred tasks over time sensitive tasks, as you’ll often find that leads to being backed up with work, getting jobs done at the last moment, or missing deadlines altogether. Also, if you put off one client who has a deadline to work on a task you prefer doing instead, for another client who doesn’t have a real deadline, you’ll end up losing their respect, as they’ll see you can’t be dependable, and you’ll likely lose their business as well. Prioritize your tasks, and your business will thrive.

Make the Best Use of Downtime

It’s inevitable that there will be occasional lulls in your work. It could be that the work coming in has been easily covered already by your team, or by you if you work on your own. It might be a lull after a lot of maintenance has been done for a lot of your clients, and they’re all set for a while now. How do you manage your downtime? Do you kick back and enjoy the break? You could. Maybe it’s time for that vacation you’ve needed for some time now, and now would be the best time to get some vacation time, perhaps with your family. If you don’t feel the need for it, and you would rather not take a break just yet, how can you make the best use of this free time?

You could perform a basic self examination of your procedures, your workflow, your business management, and your methods of doing paperwork and invoicing. Is your CRM software doing everything you need it to or do you need to look for something else, exporting your database to another system? Are your advertising methods still doing their job or do you need to brush it up or expand it more? What about your toolkit? Do you have a USB Drive toolkit already? Are all your tools updated, or are you missing a few? Perhaps now would be a good time to search around for that app you saw that you could have used with a dozen clients when they all had the same problem.

If you’re satisfied with that self examination, turn towards your business offerings. If you’re a web designer, are you keeping up on the latest web development tech, specifically regarding the platforms or languages you specialize in? Maybe you could spend some time improving your skills in that area. As computer technicians, we need to stay on top of Tech news and be able to comment on current events in the Tech industry. If you don’t have a couple of Tech feeds updating in your RSS reader, you might want to take some time to set that up, and be sure to add Technibble to your list.

Could you possibly expand your offerings? Perhaps someone asked you if you could perform a certain service, and while you’ve done it before professionally but lately just do it as a hobby, maybe you could consider brushing up on it and offering it on a full-time basis as a service offering. For technicians, perhaps that could be moving into web development or consulting work. It could even be a move from basic residential focus to business clients, and a lull in your work could signal the need to make such a move.

Don’t Overschedule Your Time

When things get really busy, you’ll need to exercise caution when it comes to your time. Don’t schedule so much in that you have no transit time or break time during the day. If you overschedule, you leave yourself open to the risk of not being able to cover many of your clients or customers who you’ve made appointments with, whereas if you leave yourself a little extra time for each service call or task, you can be sure to get to all of them and not leave any of them hanging. Inevitably, if you have competition in your community, you might see a few potential customers calling them instead when you inform them of your booked schedule, but it’s better than overscheduling and not showing up on time or at all, and losing your scheduled customers to the competition as well.

Just be sure to prioritize your tasks, be balanced, avoid procrastination, and beware of overscheduling, and you’ll find yourself making much better use of your time. If you have any business time management tips as a technician, drop a comment below!