Consider a questionnaire and team members to help you with business overwhelm

Have you considered a questionnaire and team members to help you with business overwhelm?

 A simple checklist-style questionnaire can empower you and your team to work through what's causing the overwhelm and move past it.

Using this simple set of questions can help you solve your own challenges at work, so that you can accomplish more in less time, do your job better, and find relief from overwhelm.

Here's a simple a questionnaire to help you deal with business overwhelm.

• What's overwhelming you right now?
• What can you do here-and-now to stop the feeling of overwhelm?
• Why do you feel overwhelmed?
• What's causing the problem that's created the overwhelm for you?
• Who can you rely on to help support you through this challenge?
• What needs to be done to correct or work through the issue?
• What tools can you use to facilitate the solution?
• What else do you need in order to gain access to these tools?
• What action can you take next to move you closer to solving your issue?

After going through the questions and talking it over with your team (if you have one), you may find that you need additional help to stop the overwhelm in your business.

Every business has those essential people, systems, and operations to use when things need to get done. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, or if your team members are, it likely means it's time to get some qualified people, systems, and solutions in place.

What sort of team members will be essential for the daily operation of your business so that things can run more smoothly? Well, it obviously depends on what type of business you run. This information is based on digital and service provider models.

Customer service representatives

If you're running a small or micro-sized business, you may know the overwhelming feeling of having many responsibilities and tasks to take care of.

When you log into your email or check your messages, you see a tangled snarl of customer questions, requests, and complaints. This is enough to make any business owner want to rip their hair out in frustration.

But we all know that customers are the lifeblood of your company. So if yours are displeased, they're more likely to go away and that means you really need someone to step in and field their questions and solve their issues quickly.

What will it take to get this in place? Some basic training.

Your customer service person or people should become familiar with the following:

• Your products and/or services and the details of each
• Your order process
• Possible problems that can go wrong and how to fix them
• Common scenarios that your customers may not be familiar with

You may not be at the point of having an actual training manual for your business, but putting together a plan to create one could be one of the best things you ever do for your company.

Ask your assistant to create a database as new questions come in - with the question and any answers you can give.

This creates a set of rules and procedures that will help your assistant find answers in the future and easily serve your customers.

It creates a reference to find answers when you aren't around to respond to questions and problems.

It's a way to build consistency and integrity into your business, so you can deliver better service to your customers, no matter who is performing the service.

Administrators or Virtual Assistants

You need admins to make sure all of the small but essential details are taken care of in your business. These people deliver functionality to your daily operation.

In the old days, we used the word secretary to describe an administrator, but now administrative assistant or virtual assistant is the preferred term.

What do admins do?

Just about everything, including database management, communication with clients and vendors and any other relevant parties, and basically all office-related tasks.

An administrative assistant can serve in any necessary capacity. But you'll want to outline the daily tasks that you expect this person to take care of.

Because this is such a broad and generalized job title that's open to misinterpretation or a mismatch of talent to the need, you should be very specific about your job requirements before selecting someone to take on this role in your company.

For example, you might decide that you want your admin assistant to handle daily bookkeeping. But if this job proves too large based on recent growth then you might change your mind and decide to hire a full-time or part-time accounts payable / accounts receivable person instead.

In my business, my VA (virtual assistant) turns my designs into a zipped file for the customers, uploads that file to where the customers will be able to down it, sets up the sales page, sets up the product in my shopping cart, and adds a short email sequence to the autoresponder that is triggered after the purchase.

Designers

Depending on the type of business you run, a designer might be an important role to fill. For example, if you are in charge of producing any type of digital or printable product (eBooks, planners, etc.), it might be worth considering hiring a professional designer to design these for you.

At a minimum, you will want to hire a designer to turn your ideas or written content into something that matches your brand and looks like a quality finished product.

Maybe you don't need to hire someone and can just use private label rights products. These are pre-made products like eBooks, planners, and other digital designs that you buy the rights to use as your own. You can even edit them if you want, to keep them "on brand".

Either way, this is an important function for your company if applicable to what you sell.

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Service providers

A service-based business should have experts who are proficient at what they do and can deliver to meet or exceed the client's expectations.

Is your business marketing? You might start as a marketing copywriter, and then decide you want to expand and offer a full suite of services. This can include needing a project manager, web designer, graphic designer, branding expert, print advertising specialist, and web copy creator.

The number of service providers that you need will depend on your rate of growth. Maybe you only have the occasional use for these experts. If you're a small business owner, it's always good if you can rely on other professionals who promise quality work, so that you can refer them when necessary.

I've personally hired from Fiverr or via word of mouth from within my business community to fill these roles.

Marketing and communication experts

Marketing communication is one of those things that every business owner thinks they can tackle on their own in the beginning. But it's also the last priority on the list when it should be a daily function of your business if you want to keep attracting new customers and growing your business.

If yours is a very small business, you can hire freelancers to help you develop marketing campaigns and launch digital products if those are your needs. A bigger business might decide to bring on a full-time marketing assistant or even a handful of communication experts of this kind.

Other types of important roles will depend on your business. You might need teachers, coaches, trainers, videographers, or any other number of experts.

The overarching idea is that you want to at least have an idea of where to go and who to hire for these roles before the order backlog becomes overwhelming, so that you can continue to grow your business and bring in the money.

Do you think the questionnaire and any of these team members would alleviate you eeling overwhelmed in business? Let me know in a comment.