An online business manager can make a huge difference to your ability to grow and scale your business. This blog looks at 15 reasons to hire an OBM in your business and I’ve broken it down into five main areas of planning, people management, marketing, project management, and general support.
As your OBM, I will provide spreadsheets, reports, plans and proven methods for tracking and metrics to help you in the five main areas detailed above.
1. Business planning
An OBM is so much more than an additional hired admin resource. Your online business manager is someone who can help you with strategic business planning as well as getting down into the detail. Involve your OBM in planning and strategy sessions so they can help you deliver your vision.
2. Financial planning
A successful business needs strong and thorough financial planning. That means creating annual budgets, updating forecasts and reviewing the actuals against the plan to identify where things might be going stray. Use your OBM to help prepare to report if you don’t have a dedicated finance resource.
3. Sales planning
As with financial planning, you’ll need detailed sales plans. Breaking down your sales figures by product, geography, customer type and so on will help you to more quickly identify any poorly performing territories or product lines. Hire an OBM to help analyse sales data to improve your decision making.
4. Recruitment
An OBM can help you to grow your team by handling the recruitment process which can be very time consuming. That includes everything from writing job specs and advertisement, to interviewing and on-boarding new employees. Along with planning and identifying when to start the recruitment process so you find the new employee or freelancer to start when needed and not when you’re drowning in task overwhelm.
5. Staff management
As your business grows, managing people can take up a lot of time and energy. An OBM could handle resource allocation, people development, training and even managing disputes or disciplinaries as well as the general admin such as holiday and absence tracking. If an HR expert is needed then this can be outsourced in an efficient manor via the OBM.
6. Staff communications and motivation.
Your OBM can be a great asset when it comes to keeping you in touch with what’s going on with your staff and keeping your staff in touch with what’s going on strategically. This is a really vital element of your business that you cannot afford to neglect as your people are your greatest asset – keeping them informed, motivated and feeling valued.
7. Marketing strategy
A spray and pray approach to marketing isn’t going to give you a return on your investment. Take the time to formulate a clear marketing strategy. Many OBMs have a lot of experience in business development and marketing so take advantage of this to create the optimal plan for your company. If this is not their area of experience then they are able to work closely with your marketing department or ensure a marketing plan is adhered to, tasked out, and actioned.
8. Competitor analysis
It’s vital to know what your closest competitors are doing. An OBM can do thorough research on your competitors and find out where they are getting great results and where you are best placed to do a better job than them.
9. Social media management
Whether you like it or not, most businesses, especially startups need a social media presence. This activity can be a huge time sap, not to mention energy. If social media is your nemesis, it makes sense to outsource it. A clued-up OBM could get you trending on TikTok or influencing on Instagram rather than limping along on a platform where your ideal audience isn’t very active. Measuring metrics to ensure you are getting an ROI on your SM presence.
10. Project set-up and Management
One of the biggest reasons why founders hire an OBM is for their experience and exceptional project management skills. Taking a project from start to finish requires attention to detail and diligence. Your online business manager is able to set up projects from scratch and ensure nothing is missed, in the finer details of the project. So will make sure you get everything working well from day one.
11. Project resourcing
If you are starting a new project, you are likely to need additional resources and you may require skillsets that you don’t currently have in-house. Your OBM can source the right people at the right rates to help your project run smoothly utilising your team of employees and freelancers as well as using personnel they’ve worked with before should a gap in your company’s skillset arise.
12. Project reporting
Once your project is up and running, you’ll need regular, accurate reporting against tasks and deadlines to make sure everything is on track. Again, this is another activity that can often be undertaken by the online business manager. By using your project management tool or implementing their favourite PM tool they can ensure no task is forgotten, missed, or assigned to the wrong person.
13. Sounding board
It can be lonely as a company founder, especially if you have junior staff members. Hire an OBM to be your sounding board, sense checker and someone to simply chat with so you don’t have to carry the weight of all the thinking yourself. They can also keep you on track with the growth of your business. if you tend to be someone who finds it hard to stay on track.
14. Work/life balance
Your OBM can help take the strain when the workload is too high. Avoid burnout and get a sensible work/life balance by bringing in someone at a manager level who you can trust and delegate important jobs too.
15. Mental health first aider
Your OBM will get to know you and your staff well. They can act as a safety valve if the pressure is becoming too much and intervene to ensure that mental well-being is kept a top priority in your business.
Have you ever thought to hire an OBM? What tasks would you like to pass over to an OBM?
I’d be happy to talk through your business circumstances to see if you could benefit from working with an online business manager. Email zoetheva@yahoo.com or complete my contact form.