How WORKetc Can Help You Become a Delegation Pro

There are only so many hours in the day to do every single task that needs to be done. That’s why effective and efficient delegation (CRM Task Management) is a skill that every entrepreneur needs to learn.

That’s the hard part: learning and mastering how to effectively and productively delegate tasks. There are three basic questions that you need to ask yourself in order to identify whether or not you need to delegate a task:

1. Am I the best person to be doing this thing?
2. If not, then who else could be doing this thing?
3. If someone else was doing this thing, then what could I be doing instead to grow my business?

Asking and answering these questions should become second nature; a mental reflex like breathing or walking. You don’t need to remember, you just do it.

Fortunately, once you get past the hard part, WORKetc CRM task management makes the next few steps a whole lot easier.

Super-fast Delegation in Gmail and Outlook

One of the very first things that people do at the office is check emails. With WORKetc’s Gmail and Outlook add-ins, you can start assigning tasks while you’re emptying your inbox.

With the Gmail gadget, you can turn any email into a new contact, sales lead, support case, project, or task. These items can then be assigned to any employee or workgroup (except for leads) without leaving your Gmail inbox. The Outlook add-in works the same way.

With these two integrated features, you can immediately delegate and assign tasks as soon as you read an email.

Let’s say a new client sends you an email asking for a short bio they’ll use in an upcoming article about you and your business. You can quickly create a task called “Send Bio”, assign it to your secretary, and attach the original email to the task so your secretary has all the details they need.

Finally, remember to set deadlines on any delegated tasks. You can do this by clicking the checkbox next to “Deadline” on the Create a Task pop-up, setting a deadline date, and setting a deadline time.

Taking Advantage of Workgroups

To answer question number two in the three basic questions mentioned above, you need to know who can do what tasks effectively. By grouping up your employees into workgroups, identifying which people to assign a particular task to becomes quicker and easier.

You can, for example, create a workgroup called “Content”, to which you assign any content-related tasks for your company website that you need to delegate. Or you could also create a “Developers” workgroup that can handle all of the code-related issues that you need handled for your company’s app.

I touched on workgroups just recently, but for posterity here’s how you can set one up in WORKetc. Simply mouse over the Contacts tab on the main toolbar and click the “+” icon next to “Workgroups”. You can also easily add or remove people to workgroups via Contacts > Workgroups and clicking the workgroup you wish to edit.

Do note that you can’t assign leads to workgroups. These items can only be assigned to single contacts.

Tracking and Following Up on Delegated Tasks

The more tasks you delegate, the more you need to remember to follow up on.

For example, if you delegate five tasks each to five people every Monday, you’d have a total of 25 tasks to follow up on each week. Multiply that by four to cover a whole month, and you’re following up on 100 tasks.

Remembering to follow up on all of these tasks can be hard if all you have to rely on is your memory. With WORKetc, there’s an easier and more efficient way to do it: smartlists.

Check out the screenshot below. Let’s say Terry regularly delegates tasks to only three people: Grace, Justin, and Laurel. She can simply create a smartlist that filters for tasks she created and includes Grace, Justin, and Laurel.

This smartlist will let you quickly view all tasks you delegated to these three people. You can then slice and dice the smartlist data further by sorting it according to priority, status, deadline, and more.

By keeping an eye on task progress using WORKetc’s CRM task management, she can also quickly see which delegated tasks are on track and which are not.

For example, if towards the end of Terry’s day she sees a task that she created yesterday, with a deadline for tomorrow, and delegated to Grace, but it’s still stuck at 0% progress, she can quickly follow up with Anne and start a discussion thread asking why she hasn’t yet worked on the task. If Terry requests a response from Grace on the discussion she can make sure Grace sees her follow-up questions.

To make the process of reviewing and following up even faster, you can turn these smartlists into bookmarks, making them accessible immediately with one click from anywhere in WORKetc.

After creating the smartlist, simply click on the star icon next to the smartlist name in Reports > Smart Lists. This will add the smartlist to the bookmark tab, which is accessible from anywhere in WORKetc and lets you review your delegated tasks anytime you need to, with just one click.

You can also use tags to track all tasks you’ve delegated. This can be particularly useful if you delegate a lot of tasks to a large number of people every day.

First, create a “Delegated” tag in Settings > Tags and set it to show up on Tasks. When you delegate tasks at the start of your day (whether through Gmail or Outlook), add this tag to all delegated tasks.

You can then create a smartlist that filters for all tasks that have the “Delegated” tag, bookmark it, and use it to track all tasks you’ve assigned to others. This way, you help ensure accountability.

How do you use WORKetc CRM task management to track and follow up on the tasks you delegate? Share your tips and tricks with the WORKetc community below.