Ok so over the last month I’d set myself some pretty big goals… What were they you ask?

1. Product Completion

2. Hire a virtual assistant

3. Auto-responder email scripting for post launch.

While I haven’t completed all of the tasks (the first one is reliant on other people and is still underway) I’ve made some great achievements and come across some great ‘productivity apps’ online!

Firstly I’d like to give a big welcome to Megan, my new virtual assistant! Megan has been on board since midway through last week, successfully getting the job ahead of over 50 other applicants.

Within 1 day of posting a position description for a virtual assistant on www.onlinejobs.ph I received over 25 application. That’s more than 1 an hour! I also posted the position description on oDesk (freelance workers for hire) but I found Onlinejobs was better for my needs in this instance.

About 7 made it through the pre-selection test and questionnaire and gained an interview on Skype and shortly after I offered Megan the job and she accepted, the rest, as they say, is history!  Please send your special welcome to Megan in the comments section and help make her feel welcome!

If you haven’t already guessed, hiring someone the right way can be a lot of work but I expect it can also be very rewarding. I now have someone who can work full time in my business 5 days a week! That’s more than a 500% productivity increase. In fact last Friday Megan got through as much work on 1 task as I would usually have done in a week! But more importantly it will leave me more time to work ON my business rather than IN it.

The other thing I found was that most of the people who applied were willing to start work the very next day. Recruitment online is a much faster process than my experience with it offline but then again that seems to be true for most aspects of doing business online!

Email scripting is coming along nicely. I’ve got about 10 in place but they need a bit of tweaking, and I’ve continued to do more training modules myself as well as provide training to Megan.

The only thing that needs a push along now is my product launch which is still lagging 🙁

So what are these productivity apps?

The first I’d like to introduce you to is Rapportive!

Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox. Its a free add on for   Firefox,  Safari,   Mailplane, and  Chrome browsers and works by identifying your contacts in Gmail (google email) and bringing you information about them. It can link you to their facebook, linkedin, twitter profiles and bring you basic information such as image, location, and job role instantly.

I’m guessing its called Rapportive because it is reporting on rapport. Or is it supportive of rapport? I don’t know!

Rapportive is extremely powerful for business who want to know their customers and provide better service. For instance if one of my customers email me and they are on my auto-responder list it will show me which list they are on (I can identify the type of information they are after), where they are located and even link me to their social media profile.

Instantly you can know who your customer is meaning you can deliver better and personalised customer service in response to their email. Imagine it as like a mini report that says who your customer is and what they like – for every customer.

It was also very handy during the selection stage of recruitment. I could get a good idea of the character of the person who was applying for a job with me.

Rapportive only takes a few seconds to return the information and even lets you add notes instantly on their Rapportive profile adding a new instant dimension to customer relations management. I highly recommend this browser add on and the makers of the software have gone to great lengths to protect peoples privacy at the same time. Any information returned is information that is already publicly available.

Check it out for yourself. Click here to Add Rapportive to Gmail

Stay tuned:

I came across another great productivity app that can help your business but you’re going to have to stay tuned for the next part. In the mean time please share with everyone in the comments section below about some great productivity apps that you’ve come across! Don’t forget to give a big welcome to Megan!

Nick

This entry was posted on November 27, 2011 at 7:21 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Reviews by Nick 4 Comments