You’re getting ready to hire an Online Business Manager and have measurable goals to work towards. Once you have your vision in place and a clear picture of where you want to be in 6 months to a year or more, you’ll want to have smaller measures of success in place to ensure you’re staying on track. This will help you know how you’re going to work with your OBM. These smaller goals may be things like having a new shopping cart system fully functioning in 2 months, or completing 5 guest blogging opportunities over the course of 6 months.
By having these smaller goals in place, the overall goal doesn’t seem so daunting. In addition, it allows your OBM to monitor how things are going to keep you on the path of success.
Now that you have your long-term and short-term goals defined, you will be able to see which projects you can outsource and which you will be responsible for.
What to Outsource
As mentioned before, the projects you should be focused on are things that only you can do, such as; creating a better connection with your customers and subscribers, building strategic alliances within your industry, expanding your reach to get your brand to new markets and planning for future growth. While you are working on these growth projects, your OBM and other staff can handle the rest.
Your Team
At this point, it’s time to hire your team. If you have worked with contractors in the past, this may be pretty simple. If not, you might want to focus on hiring your OBM first, and let them handle locating and hiring the rest of the team.
This doesn’t mean you have to have a large team. Depending on your business needs your team may consist of your OBM, a virtual assistant and perhaps a web designer or graphics person. If you only need graphics occasionally, you can have the names of reliable designers on hand for when you need them.
To get the best service possible, you need to hire the right people for the job. If you need book covers or website images created, hire a graphic designer. Your OBM may be techie or your VA may be able to design graphics; however, often it’s best to work with someone who specializes in a particular area. It may take your VA longer to do the work essentially costing you as much or more than going to the right person the first time, or take them away from other important tasks.
Communication
To ensure work is completed in a timely manner and to your specifications, you must be a good communicator. Even if you just work with your OBM and they work directly with everyone else, you need to be able to explain exactly what you want. When they can clearly see your vision & what you want accomplished, they can quickly get to work.
Work with your OBM to create an Operation Manual for your business. This manual would outline how to handle customer support questions, sales, discounts and refunds. It would explain when you want to be directly involved with the decision making and when your OBM can take care of things.
It might outline what your preferred colors, design styles, website templates, writing styles, etc are so you don’t have to explain it more than once. It can even include a predetermined amount of money that your OBM has permission to spend on outsourcing or other things without needing your approval. It can also include time-saving templates and scripts that are used regularly and all the step-by-step processes needed to complete various tasks in the business.
It can take at least 6 months to have this Standard Operating Procedures document completed, however, once you have this manual created, your OBM will have the tools and information necessary to hire and train your staff. And once the work is done this centralized how-to manual will be there to make your life and the teams as simple as possible.
The OBM’s job is to make things easier for you. Shifting from the worker bee to the queen bee mindset is the quickest way to make positive changes for you and your business.