Five Reasons a Creative Project Manager is Crucial to Any Business

Five Reasons a Creative Project Manager is Crucial to Any Business

Why a Creative Project Manager is Crucial to Any Business

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business world, creativity is becoming an increasingly important factor for success. As a result, the role of the project manager has evolved to include a focus on creativity and innovation. A creative project manager is essential for any project, regardless of its size or scope. Here are five reasons why:

  1. Encourages Innovation

A creative project manager is responsible for encouraging innovation within the team. They create an environment that fosters creativity and encourages team members to think outside the box. This can lead to new ideas and solutions that would have never been considered without the guidance of a creative project manager.

  1. Ensures Effective Communication

Effective communication is crucial for the success of any project. A creative project manager understands this and ensures that communication channels are open and transparent. They facilitate communication between team members, stakeholders, and clients to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

  1. Manages Resources Effectively

A creative project manager is responsible for managing resources effectively. They understand that creativity requires time, money, and other resources. They allocate resources appropriately to ensure that the team has what they need to be creative and innovative while keeping within the client’s budget.

  1. Encourages Collaboration

Collaboration is essential for creativity and innovation. A creative project manager understands this and encourages collaboration between team members. They create opportunities for team members to work together, share ideas, and build on each other’s strengths.

  1. Manages Risk

Every project comes with risks. A creative project manager is responsible for managing these risks effectively. They understand that creativity requires taking risks, but they also know how to mitigate those risks to ensure that the project stays on track.

In conclusion, a creative project manager is essential for any project that requires creativity and innovation. They encourage innovation, ensure effective communication, manage resources effectively, promote collaboration, and manage risk. Without a creative project manager, a project may lack direction, creativity, and innovation, leading to failure.

Do you have a project that needs a creative project manager? If so, contact me for a free chat to see how we can keep your projects on track! Email me at info@itaskvirtually.com

Customers – Are They The Gatekeepers To More Sales?

Customers – Are They The Gatekeepers To More Sales?

Customers – We Want Them – We Need Them

Are customers or the customer service the gatekeeper to getting your customers coming back for more? What or who stands between your business and more business? Customers? Maybe, but the real answer is the “what” — customer service. We all want them and we all need them and we want them to keep coming back to our business, right? So what is it about some companies that have clients raving about them? What is the one simple trick companies use to keep their customers coming back for more products or to purchase other services?

Is Your Company Known For Its Customer Service?

Have you seen a decline in your business lately? It could be due to the quality of your business’s customer service. Customers or your customer’s clients could stray from a business and it could be solely due to the quality of the customer service they’ve been receiving.  And why is this? Is it that life is just too busy to take the time to care? Or is it the lack of training in businesses upon hiring? In my opinion, it’s both.

We need to also train the younger generation and remind the older generation what it is to pick up the phone and call a customer, or how to speak to the customer in a very real engaging professional manner. Texting and emailing can sometimes be misconstrued in how it comes across.

Customers and clients can tell a genuine CSR, (customer service representative), or one that is flip and basically just can’t wait to get off the phone and end their day. As a result, customer service has become an issue, so much so, there are companies out there that handle these issues for a fee, as reported in this March 2017 article by USNews.com entitled: “Should You Pay Someone to Deal With Customer Service Issues for You?” by contributor, Susan Johnston Taylor.

We get it, life is busy, we’re all busy. Providing good customer service is or should be number one on your employees’ list. Good customer service is hard to come by these days. The foundation of a company’s success in this crucial area is adequate training of your employees. 

Can Your Business Get Customers Coming Back?

Now we know that the one trick that keeps customers coming back for more, is quality Customer Service. Whether we’re at the store or ordering something online, customers and the service we give or receive is there. Therefore, my question to you is, where has good customer service gone? Quality customer service is paramount to any business.

Over the years I’ve seen a decline in quality customer service; business to consumers and in business to business. Either the product is late or the service is bad. Is it due to the electronic age of cell phones where people are not engaging, they just text or email everyone? People used to communicate more with each other. I see so many young people today who do not know how to mix and mingle, as we used to call it, at networking events.

What Business Owners Can Start Doing Now

In conclusion, businesses that recognize this will include customer service training in their best company practices.  In fact, Susan writes: “Dealing with customer service has become such a headache that numerous businesses aim to take over this task – in exchange for a fee.”. So, do you really want to pay another company to deal with customer services issues instead of taking care of it in-house?

At iTask Virtually, we take the quality of customer service seriously. Click on the Contact pop-up to the right for your free 15-minute consultation today! 

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Is the Virtual Assistant Industry Just for Small Business?

Is the Virtual Assistant Industry Just for Small Business?

The Virtual Assistant Industry and Large Businesses – A Great Mix.

Is the virtual assistant industry just for small business? Nope! The virtual assistant industry is not just for small businesses. The virtual assistant industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. In fact, according to an article in Entrepreneur magazine, it’s grown in 2001 to over 50,000 in 2015.

Large companies are recognizing the value of the virtual assistant industry.

What do these numbers show us? It shows us that people are not “freelancing” anymore. They are making a verifiable full-time business out of it.

traffic-843309_640With the internet that has shrunk the world with a tap of the keyboard and the enter button, the world and all businesses are at our fingertips, literally. Are the days of the daily commute grind, tall office buildings, smog-filled high rises, buses, trains and pedestrians coming to an end? If statistics are any indication of what’s to come, then maybe so.

Companies of all Sizes are Looking to the Virtual Assistant Industry.

A lot of business owners from small, one-owner type companies to the large 1,000+ employees are looking to expand their staff to the virtual assistant industry. Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to a business owner of a large company outside of New York. Their reasoning behind wanting to hire a virtual assistant is that their own office manager and administrative assistant were overloaded with work and instead of bringing another employee on board they wanted to go virtual. So, in this case, for them, it was more financially beneficial to hire someone in the virtual assistant industry.

The reasons large companies may opt to hire someone in the virtual assistant industry are many. One reason could be due to an employee who is on a leave of absence. Another reason may be for a one-time project that needs to get done.  One-off projects don’t warrant hiring a full-time employee. This is not to say that companies won’t hire a long-term virtual assistant, definitely, a lot of businesses contract other more long-term projects as well.

“Most people in the virtual assistant industry have specific niches and some have more than one skill they can offer.”

Let’s say a company needs to look off-site for someone who can do some research for images for their marketing materials, website or blogs, looking for an Online Business Manager that specializes or offers research would be an excellent choice. Same thing for wanting a website, the company should search within the virtual assistant industry for someone who offers WordPress websites. Project management is another area where a specific virtual assistant can be immensely helpful. The Project Manager Virtual Assistant can usually get the project started, get the team involved and give proper direction as to the scope and deliverables of a specific project while never having to step foot in the office which may be located in another state.

You may also want to read: https://itaskvirtually.com/10-smart-ways-a-business-owner-can-outsource-to-a-virtual-assistant

If you’re a large company and need some assistance in any area of work, looking to the virtual assistant industry is not a bad idea. Take a look here and see if I can help. We’re always available for a free 30-minute consultation on any upcoming business needs your company may have.

Just One New Year’s Resolution Can Increase Your Profit!

Just One New Year’s Resolution Can Increase Your Profit!

Happy New Year!

Ugh! The thought of making another list of New Year’s Resolutions can make some of us cringe. So, I thought I’d make just one New Year’s resolution this year.

Did you know only 44% of Americans made resolutions in 2015? And of that probably 1 in 3 abandon them by the end of January? So I decided to ditch the list and come up with something different and at the same time increase my profit.

Just yesterday I was going over the past year and making a plan as to how I was going to make this year better professionally. I’m sure all of you were inundated with everything from emails to Twitter and Facebook posts on New Year’s Resolutions, from how to keep them, to the lists to make, apps that remind you about them and what to do when you fail at keeping them, etc. It was this that prompted me to want to write this quick New Year’s post.

Making a list of resolutions can lead to a lot of negativity because when we don’t hold up our end of the bargain and don’t keep to a promise we made to ourselves, guilt sets in, and we get down on ourselves. Who wants that guilt trip immediately into the New Year? Not I and I know you don’t either. Entrepreneurially speaking, when you’re in business for yourself, failure is not an option and neither should be “good enough”.

So here’s what I propose we do instead. This one thing is all you have to do and I know you will have a great, guilt-free year. Day by day you’ll notice a difference in your outlook and your self-confidence. I wouldn’t call it a New Year resolution; I’d call it a shift in perspective because this doesn’t have to anything to do with a list. It has everything to do with our daily perspective.

Here it is; go the extra mile. We’ve all heard it before, but do we actually do it? Every day we are committed to doing things: projects, reports, schedules, meetings, emails, etc. Sometimes we are so pressed for time that “good enough” becomes our best. Don’t let that happen this year!

 

As Zig Ziglar once said, “There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.”

 

How will this affect your profit? Simple, when you go the extra mile for your clients, they notice. In return, you will gain not only an increase in your self-confidence but also an increase in the loyalty of your customers. People want to do business with people they like, know and trust.

So if you have a project you have to oversee, is it running well? Or is it just good enough to get by? Take that extra few minutes, clear your head, focus and think about what’s in front of you. Ask yourself, “What can I do that takes this from “good enough” to great? If you apply this one thing with each task, you’ll feel great, you won’t feel that you did just enough to get by.

Being professional means going that extra mile, doing your best. So this year, rise above the crowd that makes lists of resolutions and keep it simple. Make just one New Year’s resolution – go the extra mile.

 

 

Stats from an article written by Mona Chalabi – a lead writer for FiveThirtyEight. (http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/only-44-percent-of-americans-made-new-years-resolutions/)

10 Smart Ways Business Owners Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant

10 Smart Ways Business Owners Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant

The 10 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Outsource the Projects and Tasks They Hate Doing

As a business owner, you probably have a to-do list that encompasses a lot of little details that are holding you back from the larger more important and demanding projects. Below I list 10 ways the virtual assistant industry can improve your productivity by outsourcing to different virtual assistants.

Most business owners are always running late to meetings, forgetting notes and forgetting to reply to those important emails.

If you’re nodding your head as you’re reading this, then I believe it’s safe to say, as a business owner, you are overloaded with work. Look at your watch, is it 6:30 pm or close to? If you are still sitting at your desk, it might be the time you look into the virtual assistant industry. Being overloaded is not only bad for your health by causing you stress, it’s keeping you from accomplishing the things that motivated you to start your own business in the first place!

Successful Business Owners Delegate

Successful entrepreneurs know they can’t do it all. In this article, I’ve listed 10 essential tasks that any entrepreneur/business owner can outsource. By hiring a virtual assistant you don’t have to be in the office. You can work from your home. a coffee shop or be on vacation. Knowing that some of those pesky dreaded tasks are off your back and are being done will reduce the stress that’s been building up over time. Hiring a virtual assistant like iTask Virtually, LLC, sets your mind free to think of ways you can drive your business forward. Click here for the definition of a virtual assistant.

Ten ideas how the virtual industry can help business owners
  1. Project Liaison between you and other team members. This is a great task to outsource to a virtual assistant. Once you’ve initiated the project, the virtual assistant can manage the team members and the flow of information and keep you updated with daily or weekly reports.
  2. Email Management/Filtering. This is one task that can get any business owner feeling overwhelmed. Your dedicated virtual assistant can filter the important need-attention-now emails from the less urgent ones. They can also set up autoresponders.
  3. Book flights and hotels. Do you travel a lot for your business? A virtual assistant can make all those arrangements for you.
  4. Set-up and manage Social Media Accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Youtube. We all know that having a presence on social media is a must when running a business in today’s technological world.
  5. Call clients and book appointments. Not only does having a virtual assistant do this save you time, it makes you look more professional too.
  6. Transcription service, such as transcribing voicemail, video or audio, podcasts etc. Typing up these notes can be very beneficial when reviewing for meetings, etc.
  7. Client/customer follow-up. For example, a virtual assistant can send out thank you emails, happy birthday emails or cards, etc.
  8. Research can take a lot of time; why not let the virtual assistant do the research for you?
  9. Create a WordPress site, write and manage blogs.
  10. Press Releases. Write and distribute them.

I can go on listing ways hiring a virtual assistant can help your company grow but I think the ten I listed will do for starters. Remember a virtual assistant is just that – virtual. They remotely assist you so there are no overhead costs weighing you down.

Don’t be tied down to things you’re not sure about or don’t have time for, outsource it to a virtual assistant that knows how to manage the details behind the scenes for you. Create the time and space you need to get your company looking professional and keep that forward momentum flowing. Try it today! Click on the Set Appointment tab on this page and let’s talk about freeing up your time!
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