Managing Your Virtual Assistant Workload
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Managing Your Virtual Assistant Workload

When you are a virtual assistant, especially when your practice is becoming full, you spend a lot of time juggling your schedule so you can fit in all the needs and requirements of all your various clients.

As you become more and more busy with client work, it is often easy to forget to schedule in time for the workload associated with running your own business. Tasks such as keeping up with your book keeping and invoicing, making time for your marketing activities and getting outside of the front door to do some networking often fall by the wayside.

If you let these things get away from you, they can quickly become the downfall of your business. I mean, there’s no point in working your fingers to the bone if you aren’t invoicing your clients, or lose track if you’re being paid on time. If you stop marketing your business, what happens if you lose your main clients? With marketing it takes a long time to build the momentum back up again. And if you have stopped networking, a lot of your old contacts will simply assume you have gone out of business. Not a great impression for them to have of your business.

The following series offers some simple steps that you can schedule into your working week to effectively work on your business so that it remains healthy and robust.

Schedule your email.

Whilst you may be monitoring email for your clients and have to collect this regularly during the day, collect your own business email just twice a day and deal with all enquiries in batches.

Sort your emails.

Hands up who has an inbox with more than 10 emails in it? If you have, it can be a huge waste of time trying to find what you are looking for and the clutter can be overwhelming. Have files for incoming email and set up rules for all mail that can be dealt with later so that it goes directly to those files.

File your emails.

In a similar vein to the last point, have a filing system for emails that have been dealt with. When you have replied or dealt with each email, file it away or delete it.

Create email templates.

If you answer an email to the same question more than once, create an email template so that next time you are asked the question, you already have an email ready to send out.

Back everything up.

If you’ve ever deleted something accidentally or suffered a computer crash, you won’t need to be told about this. Back everything up at least once a day. I use Carbonite and it automatically backs up my whole system everyday at 6pm. Then if I lose something or my system dies, I have a copy of everything easily accessible online.

Book keeping and invoicing.

I’d recommend allowing time on two days of the month, about two weeks apart, for paying all your bills, inputting all your expenses, raising all your invoices and checking payments have been made.

Do your filing.

In addition to your client files, have files for everything related to running your business. Then set aside time each week to file everything you have dealt with that week. I use the last half hour on a Friday for this.

Create checklists.

Have checklists for every process in your business. For example, when you take on a new client, have a checklist that prompts you to check you have received back the signed contract, you have sent your Welcome Pack, you have set up an appropriate email address, you have their stationery, etc. This saves time and prevents things being forgotten.

Check and update your web site.

Check your web site is up to date and current. Set a side time, perhaps once a month, to check all the information is current and add anything new your clients and prospects might find useful.

Writing your newsletter.

If you write a newsletter, be it weekly, monthly or whatever, try to write in blocks. It can be hard to find a quiet time to sit and write but when you do, often you feel like you could write for hours. Do it when you feel inspired and then split the content over several newsletters.

Writing your blog.

The same writing advice applies here as it does to newsletters but with the added bonus that you can schedule your posts for in advance. I’m actually writing this on the 30th October but you’ll be reading it weeks later!

Social networking.

If you have a profile on sites such as Ecademy and LinkedIn, it’s easy to spend hours each day on and off the site responding to requests to link. Set aside some time each week for social networking and respond to invitations then. Also user this time to seek out new connections of your own, join and post to groups, etc.

Review your marketing activities.

Set aside time each month to review your marketing activities. How many enquiries have you had in the previous month and where have they come from? Have a look at what is working for you and what could be improved.

Keep on networking.

This is often the first thing that gets dropped when you become busy with clients work. I know; I’m guilty of it myself. But when you suddenly disappear from groups you have been a regular at, often the assumption is that you are no longer in business. Accept that networking is part of the ongoing development of your business, choose one or two groups that you will remain a regular at and keep going. Even if you are not looking for more clients, you will still establish relationships that you will benefit from later on.

About the Author:
Justine Curtis is the director of
My Virtual Assistant Limited which is currently expanding across the UK with a team of virtual assistant licensees and founder of the UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and passes on the benefits of her vast experience of the VA role to aspiring and progressive virtual PAs as a co-founder of the VA Success Group. Justine is also a co-founder of Academy for Online Business, a company devoted to helping self-employed professionals and entrepreneurs to build their own online business empires.

 

In The Spotlight:

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Affordable Web Sites for Virtual Assistants

It’s a bit of a given these days that in order to be taken seriously in the business world, you need to have a web site. When hearing about a company or service for the first time, how many of us head off to the “www.” to find out more? We all know that when work “virtually” in particular, we need to have an online presence, a web site. After all, we don’t have a shop front or an office building to impress our potential clients so our web site is our “shop window”, our opportunity to display our expertise and professionalism. Or is it?

It’s amazing how many virtual assistants don’t have a web site. There can be many reasons, or should I say excuses, including ‘a web site’s too expensive’, ‘I want to see if I get any interest before I spend a lot of money on a web site’, ’it’s too hard to get someone to update it’, ‘I don’t know anyone who can build me one’, ‘my brother/cousin/friend said they’d make me one, but they haven’t done it yet’, the list of reasons why a web site could be missing from your marketing armoury is as endless as it is senseless. It’s also absurd when getting your web site up and running is as easy and inexpensive as this.

You need to have a web site to run a ‘virtual’ business; it’s as simple as that. And now it’s as simple as it is cost effective. Web sites from the UKAVA cost from just £245 for everything you need. We even and include a years free hosting and an advert in the UKAVA Directory. Now there’s really no excuses for not getting your web site underway today!

Find all the information here: http://www.ukava.co.uk/html/web_site_design.html

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If you have any questions or topics you’d like to see covered in a future issue please get in touch.

 

 

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