The concept of an online business manager has been relatively new, but nevertheless, it is already taking hold. This individual offers support to your online business virtually, managing workflows and handling day-to-day operations. This gives you the opportunity to manage your online business, guide your online business, and create strategic plans that will shape the future of your online business. In this article, I will discuss the ins and outs of how to become an online business manager.
In order to become an online business manager, you must understand the basic principles at work. First of all, most entrepreneurs are extremely busy, juggling between several different tasks, many of which are both time consuming and expensive. As such many entrepreneurs find themselves missing deadlines, tasks that have been delegated but never received approval for, or tasks that go completely off the entrepreneur’s plate. Managing these various aspects of a business can be extremely taxing, to say the least! Therefore, the ability to efficiently manage time and effectively manage multiple tasks is absolutely essential.
The second fundamental principle that you must understand and adhere to if you want to become an online business manager, after managing your own work processes, is the concept of people management. It is very important that you become skilled at managing your people. If you can’t manage your people, then you will be ineffective as a leader, and ineffective leaders are terrible at managing people.
Many people fail at managing their people because they let them get involved in day-to-day activities. For instance, many entrepreneurs spend too much time interacting with clients and customers, rather than managing their staff. It is imperative that your staff stay relatively untidier than your customers, so that you can keep the focus on your project management. You will also need to ensure that you have a good project management strategy in place, and that you execute this strategy throughout your team.
Most online business managers also use email marketing tools and applications, to communicate with their team members. An effective email marketing strategy should include the following tasks: scheduling tasks, informing subscribers of completed tasks, sending out regular email alerts about task progress, and tracking how busy your team is. Email marketing is also a great way to stay in touch with customers, so that you can gain valuable feedback and build customer loyalty.
Another key principle to becoming an effective manager is following your own business model. Some online business managers choose to implement their own project management, while others opt for a hybrid project management or an invoice fulfillment service. Project management allows online business managers to maintain the focus on their business goals, while also making sure that their team members are aware of what is going on within their department. Hybrid project management allows online business managers to combine traditional project management tasks with the specific requirements of certain business models, while invoicing customers and fulfilling orders.
The main drawback of hiring a virtual assistant is that the assistant is not supervised. As long as the project management process works, the online business manager will be able to hire someone who is more capable and knowledgeable than the individual who was hired. Since all work is completed on a collaborative basis, the level of trust between the manager and the assistant is not always established, so there are many cases where the project management and follow up processes do not work out. For example, if the assistant fails to meet deadlines or deliver work on time, the manager might lose some or even all of the money that was invested in hiring the assistant.
Becoming an online business manager, does require that you make a commitment to hiring qualified individuals. If you find that you are unable to hire a full-time manager, then you may have to resort to using a virtual assistant or hiring another capable individual on a short term contract. However, once you have established yourself by successfully managing your projects and providing a high level of customer service to your customers, you will likely find that hiring additional managers becomes much less painful and more cost effective. In addition, you can hire one manager to oversee the major projects while you focus on other aspects of your company.
