A vote of confidence: Who spends more time clearing out their inboxes, scheduling appointments, or drafting invoices than actually doing important work?
Each day we spend our time crossing off task after task on our to-do lists, only to find that we haven’t accomplished much. We feel tired, drained and unable to focus on the most important tasks.
These tasks are often called “busy work”. It creates the illusion that you’re always busy and has a lot of work to do. What if these tasks could be eliminated and you could spend your precious time on work that really matters?
We recommend automating time-consuming and draining tasks.
Automating simply means turning a manual process into a computer-controlled operation. The best part about automation is that all the tools you need are at your fingertips. Automating busy work can be done quickly to make space for more important tasks that require your full attention and dedication.
Today’s post will share 10 time-consuming tasks as well as suggestions for automating them, so your team can save time and do the most important work.
1. Send weekly and/or daily project updates.
Instead of writing a weekly or daily progress report in Microsoft Word, you can use your project management tool’s notification software to send a report to your team on a daily and weekly basis.
TeamGantt’s simple daily project notifications let you know what has been done, what’s next, and how far you’ve come. The settings can be changed under your account settings.
2. Request a progress report.
Do you have a task that must be completed? You can request a progress report on either a weekly basis or a monthly basis.
Boomerang, a Gmail plug-in, allows you to easily schedule important messages and email reminders with just one click. It’s a great tool to schedule recurring progress updates from your coworkers.
TeamGantt takes it one step further and removes email from the equation. You can send an email to any member who has been assigned to a task to request a status update.
3. Potential customers are welcome.
Your customers will be more likely to trust you if there is a personal and genuine connection. How better to make a good first impression than to greet your customers with a warm greeting?
Intercom is used to create an automatic welcome message that appears when a user signs up for a trial of TeamGantt. It’s a great way for customers to know we are available to help them with any questions or concerns they may have about the app.
4. Send marketing messages.
Marketing is basically communicating the benefits of your product and how it can help your customers. Regular updates are a great way of building a close relationship with your customers.
However, it can be time-consuming to send marketing messages to a 1000-user mailing list. This is why we recommend email software to help you design and schedule your emails and bulk-send them to everyone. This is why Intercom, Mailchimp, Drip and Mailchimp are all great options.
Tip: Although we recommend automating publishing and scheduling your marketing messages, the content should be written by you and your team.
As we mentioned, you want to establish a strong relationship and treat your customers like intelligent people. It’s easy to sense laziness in an email. This is why it’s important that you are as honest and authentic as possible. Even if it means spending an hour writing the best email.
5. Ask your customers for feature requests.
It’s a good idea to create a forum for customers who have questions about your new product or app.
