Of the many tasks on your plate, which one is most important to your ability to earn a paycheck and serve the customer? Which one, if left undone, would mean financial ruin and bad customer reviews—whether an imminent shut-down or a slow death?
You probably know that task already. If you don’t, look at your title: Are you a salesperson? Then you must sell. Are you a manager? You have to manage. How about a customer service specialist or a writer?
Somehow, you have to focus on doing what your job title says—if you are to survive the business jungle.
You Don’t Have to Hire in Order to Delegate
Move your primary task off to the side. Now consider the rest of the pile. Many or most of those tasks can be delegated elsewhere—but that “elsewhere” doesn’t necessarily require a person. Many tasks can be automated, saving you time and money.
Consider these possibilities:
Zapier: Zapier’s easy-to-grasp user interface and expanded list of connections to applications enlarges your list of possibilities. For example, say you would like the option of copying the contents of an email to OneNote or Evernote. Invest a minute to tell Zapier you want to make that an ever-available possibility—and you never have to cut, open, paste and close again.
Mozy: Backups can save not just minutes or hours, but days of time. Your database is likely the most valuable property your company owns. It absolutely must be backed up securely. Moreover, this service can keep a network of users synced in real time. Now that is valuable.
Hootsuite: Social media is important and is essential for engaging with customers online and spreading your brand message across the web. Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media accounts from one central dashboard. Not only that, but you can schedule posts ahead of time and use the analytics capabilities of Hootsuite to measure the effect of your social media strategy.
MyBlogU: Would a quick and easy way to get fresh ideas and stage interviews with topic experts be helpful to you? Check out MyBlogU. This new tool brings writers and publishers together in a way that provides benefits to both. All you do is post your request. You don’t have to chase after responses. A sister tool (both are from SEO guru, Ann Smarty) crowdsources and shares your content.
These ideas aren’t exhaustive by any means. If they serve to help you see the value of automation, this article has served its purpose. Once you begin noticing tasks that could be handled via automation, you’ll get excited about the potential. You may still need to hire help, but you can get more out of that assistance with automation.
Culinary Connection, a school for chefs, was growing so quickly they were having a tough time keeping up on the administrative end. Automation, allowed them to maintain relationships with all of their students (prospective, current and past) and allowed them to provide world-class service to them all. You can do that too.
