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Many business owners have an executive assistant. It’s simply common sense.
As the primary driver of your business, your time is best spent on high-payoff activities like participating in leadership meetings, improving processes that ripple through the company, and networking—not on low-payoff activities like expense reports or managing your inbox or calendar.
That’s why many business owners have an executive assistant who takes routine tasks off their plate, enabling them to grow their businesses.
So it’s surprising more companies don’t embrace departmental assistants.
A departmental assistant is essentially an executive assistant who supports an entire department—whether that’s marketing, sales, finance, or any other cohesive team in your business.
Let’s look at why this role is worth considering, and the potential payoff.
The rising need for departmental assistants
According to Gallup, 64 percent of employees were given additional job responsibilities last year, while 42 percent of companies reported budget cuts.
When teams are pushed beyond capacity, it results in missed opportunities, slipping client expectations, and top performers starting to look elsewhere. This is backed up by another Gallup poll, citing 68 percent of U.S. workers are either unengaged or actively disengaged.
Traditionally, businesses might respond by adjusting their targets and dialing back their goals. Of course, that could have a negative ripple effect across the organization.
Or, they could try adding more key hires to the team. But that approach often adds a significant expense that compresses already pressured margins.
Forward-thinking business owners are taking a different route: supporting overloaded teams with a shared departmental assistant.
Research shows knowledge workers spend 41 percent of their day on low-payoff activities. If a departmental assistant could take even a fraction of that —let’s say 1-2 hours a day—off your team members’ plates, imagine the time they’d gain for business-driving activities that move the company forward.
Departmental assistants in action
One reason I have so much enthusiasm for this strategy is that we implemented it in my business, WorkBetterNow.
Our sales team was at maximum capacity, and the need for a new hire was imminent. That would have been costly, time-consuming, and the ROI wouldn’t be realized for months.
While we waited to make that hire, we hired Paola to serve as our sales department assistant, taking over important but low-payoff activities so our sales reps could focus on driving revenue. The results have been outstanding.
Freed from low-payoff tasks, our reps had more time to follow up with clients, reducing our sales cycle by 21 percent. Further, we were able to hold off on hiring a new sales rep for 6 months due to Paola’s support of our team. And not surprisingly, the timeliness and accuracy of our data and reporting has improved by having a detail-oriented administrative professional handling those duties instead of our sales team.
Ultimately, we accelerated revenue and delayed additional costs, while also keeping our salespeople happy—a win-win all around.
Another example of departmental assistants fueling growth is at Eastman Cooke, a full-service NYC-based commercial construction firm. On a recent episode of my podcast, Great Talent, Great Business, their CEO Peter Morandi told a story about how his estimating department doubled their output.
The construction projects they do typically cost millions of dollars. Each proposal involves multiple phases, subcontractors, and detailed material estimates for each proposal, and the margins are razor-thin. An inaccurate estimate could wipe out their profits on a project completely.
Facing increased demand on their estimating department in 2023, Peter added assistants to their estimating department—freeing estimators to ensure the company is putting out winning and profitable bids. Further, estimate accuracy has improved to the point that they’ve almost eliminated nonbillable change orders—safeguarding their margins and reputation.
Take action
So, where do you begin?
Start with one department that’s under the most pressure. For us and many other companies, that would be sales. A departmental assistant gives your sales team more time for revenue-generating activities without adding a new sales rep.
On the other hand, there could be departments in your business, like finance or operations that are creating costly bottlenecks. Wherever your team is buried in admin, a departmental assistant can relieve the burden and boost performance.
If it sounds like a high-risk experiment, it doesn’t have to be. In each case I shared above, the departmental assistants were remote nearshore professionals—proving you can access highly skilled support that helps your business grow without breaking your budget.
Sometimes, the smartest move you can make as an entrepreneur isn’t a dramatic restructure. Rather, it’s a simple shift in how your team is supported. Adding a departmental assistant could be the hire you’ve been overlooking, but one that could drive significant impact.
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Rob Levin
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