About Roberta E. Eastman

Executive Entrepreneur and Your Worlds Business Development Consultant

What makes me qualified to help you?

As a veteran and leader within the service industry with hands-on experience, I gained an understanding from a customer’s perception on how they wanted to be treated.  Plain and simple, consistently!

I passionately shared with those I've led, teamed up next to and had been led by, a story and belief of building a business foundation, one brick at a time.  This story changed department and company cultures, processes and produced dramatic top-line results. 

• Customers were positively impacted by experiencing consistent and efficient processes. 
• Associates mindsets went from treating customers’ as deadbeats to stepping into the customers’ shoes.
• Sales associates set clear expectations for customers’; reaching compatible solutions for the company, the customer and themselves.  
• Bad debt, days of inventory and up-sell metrics turned from cost-center to profit-center.
• Call center, sales and back office associates worked together to reach a common goal, as a team, instead of against each other.
• Processes were automated and adopted throughout the company, reducing work flow transition from weeks to days.

I was nominated for, the Presidents Club Award, at U.S. Cellular, “Seizing the Opportunities Presented by Change". When change occurs, if we take that change and seize the incredible opportunities it presents, we experience life as we have never seen it before.

I know what it feels like to be afraid of the change. But, when I look at what it has allowed me, such as, the creation of the life style I choose to live, the change itself empowers you.

Having held leadership positions within the companies I had worked for led to a huge payoff and advantage for me. I was able to transfer the value I provided customers, associates and vendors in my past life, to all that I come in contact with now, in my own business.

They had provided the best leadership training available to their management teams, such as, Maximum Achievement and Peak Performance by Brian Tracy,and Steven Covey, Situational Leadership, American Management Association, Myers-Briggs, Behavioral Interviewing and Wilson Learning. All I had to do in return was give back with excellence, through demonstrating the leadership they had taught me.

By giving back, I was able to the lie the foundation I needed, to create The Customers Corner. And today I help others prepare, anticipate and seize the opportunities that are presented by change to them. What a great opportunity and journey it has been.

During the experience and transition of moving from corporate environment to entrepreneur I learned first hand that most of us as humans, become so engulfed in our work and business that we do not take time out to experience the relationships, partnerships and friendships that we could value. We simply create acquaintances and move on.

I was attending Executive sessions that provided insight on transitioning from employee to entrepreneurial life. In these sessions were Leaders from marketing, sales, Vice Presidents, and Account Managers from various industries within Fortune 500 companies.

As part of the practicum, we were told to contact every one we had ever worked with and ask them who they knew, if they could help and refer us to any person that could assist us. Well boy oh boy, it was that same feeling you get when you are just starting out in business and someone says, go market yourself. Yikes!

We all had the same reaction and discussed in depth, how in the world we were going to pull this one off. We didn't have relationships with people we had worked with. What we had done in the past was work at a pace of a hundred miles a minute, working 60 hours a week and when we left for greener and bigger positions, we left the people who had been our colleagues behind.

The burning question we all had to ask ourselves and overcome was, "How can we reach out and ask someone to help us when we haven't even kept in touch, we don't know these people?"

The result and lesson was: It would have been less painful if we had stopped and taken the time to build a relationship with the people who had crossed our paths in life then, instead of having to face our perceived fear of reaching out now. Update: This lesson was probably one of the best in my life. And believe me there have been plenty, daily in my case.

The people in my life are different now, and it was no one else's responsibility to make that happen, except for mine. Tip: Take the steps today, even if baby steps, to teach people how to treat you, remove those who drag you down, and cherish those whom you can give back to.

In a study conducted about why people return to their jobs after staring a business, showed 70% of people go back to being an employee because they don't know how to handle the mindset change needed to transition from employee to business owner, and they experience a lack of socialization. When I read the study I thought, then this is the time when relationships are most important and this is especially true for solo-entrepreneurs.

To build loyalty and retain relationships, you need to keep in touch. These experiences drove my vision to share my education, expertise and experience to help others learn the power of loyalty in relationships with themselves, customers, vendors, associates, strategic partners and most importantly family and friends.

Now years later I continue to build and grow a Virtual Business Development business, whose mission and vision focus on bringing people together to share their best service recommendations, insight and business intelligence to improve the level of customer service that we provide as business owners and to raise our own standards of acceptance, as a customer, to that of service excellence.

The Customers Corner specializes in partnering with growth oriented business owners to peel back the onion of their business and extract the value in Business Operations, Administration and Customer Service Management. We help you convert and avoid the mistake of building a business on one-time transactions instead of long-term relationships.

We create foundational relationships by converting your business contacts and touch points to peak levels of loyalty. We extend your reach by managing your business operations that create an efficient and consistent environment for you and your business.

SUMMARY

I have extensive Customer Service and Administration Manager experience in customer satisfaction, process improvement, revenue generation and associate development. Demonstrated strengths in start-up and consolidation projects. Consistent record of success in execution of project management, cost reduction, workforce/workflow transformation and metrics management. Pragmatic and results oriented leader.

I have been naturally driven to evaluate situations, identify gaps, obtain resources and implement streamlined processes. This process achieves satisfaction methodically while creating consistency and efficiency in business operations.

As a life learner, I have earned the title to of VA and a GVA within the Virtual Assistant Industry; a VA is an entrepreneur; manager and technical person who partners with other professionals providing Strategic Planning; Consulting; Office and Project Management.  

A (GVA) is a Graduate Virtual Assistant.  We are an elite group of professionals who have achieved the highest standards of integrity, experience, training and ethics.  We welcome the opportunity to partner with entrepreneurs, small business owners and other mobile professionals who won’t settle for less than the finest.  You may verify my credentials through Virtual Assistance U.  I was the first awarded a scholarship out of 46 entries through a collaborative effort between IVAA, (International Virtual Assistant Association), which I am a member, and VAU (Virtual Assistant University).   

Now that you have spent time getting to know us, contact us today for your FREE consultation. We would enjoy starting what we call a foundational relationship and getting to know you better, call today.