I think one of the most difficult thing for anyone who is a business owner, creative or has built a product, service or something from scratch is the idea of handing over anything. It’s the dreaded word….
Delegation!!!
Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about delegation and providing tips, insights and ideas of how as a business owner you can delegate to an online business manager. Today, let’s talk eMail. For some it’s the heart of communication for their business, but at the same time can be the worst thing about the business.
You might be thinking how could I possibly hand over my eMail? How would my Business Manager (OBM) or Virtual
Assistant (VA) possibly know how to answer the emails? The purpose of working with a OBM or high end VA is to have them manage those tasks that are sucking your time and focus. If you are spending 3 hours answering eMails how do you have time to connect with clients, or brainstorm new ideas?
A few tips for delegating your eMail:
- Provide access to a mailbox you can both access – There’s some great web-based eMail programs available and most of them are free. I recommend and use exclusively Google Mail (Gmail). It’s flexible easy to use and both you and your Online Business Manager can access the mail box. I’ll write another post about some of the great things you can do with Google Mail.
- Provide Guidelines – The majority of your email will be similar in nature. So you can provide standardized templates for how to answer the majority of questions. Also provide what kind of actions you like your Business Manager to take such as, Follow all Twitter Request and then delete, or Ignore and Delete All Incoming Facebook Requests.
- Let us know who’s important. – Everyone has key clients, vendors and colleagues that you want to make sure receive the right treatment. Supply a list of key personnel, friends, clients and vendors etc that are important to you so we can keep and eye out and treat them accordingly.
- Build templates for common questions – This makes it more efficient, and easy to answer the most common questions and the customers will always receive the same information.