File your emails
Similarly, have a filing system for emails that have been dealt with. When you have replied to or dealt with each email, file it or delete it.

Sort your emails
Do you have 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.

Schedule your email
Although you may be regularly monitoring and collecting your clients’ emails during the day, collect your own business email just twice a day and deal with all enquiries in batches.

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

As you become busier with client work, it is often easy to forget to schedule time for the work associated with running your own business. Tasks such as, keeping up with your bookkeeping and invoicing, making time for your marketing activities, and networking, often fall by the wayside.

If you let these things get away from you, they can quickly become the downfall of your business. There is no point working your fingers to the bone if you are not invoicing your clients, or if you lose track of whether you are 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 work effectively on your business, so that it remains healthy and robust.

Don’t forget to show gratitude. If you have found an outsourcing partner that is more interested in getting it right than just getting it done, you’ll want to hang on to them. These people will foresee obstacles and devise solutions before they even occur. When they do have challenges, they present them with potential solutions and a recommendation.

When they do go that extra mile, don’t forget to thank them. It’s up to if you want to send flowers, cash bonuses or bottles of champagne, etc. Often a sincere thank you is all the appreciation they need.

One thing to be aware of – outsourcing is addictive. There’s something oddly satisfying about that lovely soothing feeling that comes when everything is just getting done, effectively and efficiently and without any effort from you.

About the Author:

Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant http://www.my-va.com and founder of The UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers – sign up at http://www.ukava.co.uk. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and is delighted to be able to pass 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. If you are thinking about starting a virtual assistant business, visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk

Manage your virtual team effectively.

Once you decided who you want to work with on a regular basis, make sure there is a system in place to effectively manage your team. Staying in regular contact with your virtual team is vital, especially because you’ll rarely, if ever, see each other. It is important not only to be in contact when there’s a new project to pass on, but on a regular basis to keep them up to date with what’s going on in your business. This way they will be aware of up coming projects and your clearly defined goals for your business so that they can assist you more effectively.

Decide on which means of communication work best for you and arrange how often and when you will communicate.

Be clear and concise in your delegation.

Something you will learn from outsourcing your test projects is how to delegate effectively. If you don’t ask for exactly what you want, chances are you won’t get it.

Good outsourcing companies will have a format for gathering this information, or will ask very specific questions in order to get all the detail they need. However, in the first instance be clear about the result you want to achieve giving as much detail as possible, any direction about how you want that to be achieved and give your project budget or time allowed, and your deadline.

Look for outstanding communicators.

The secret to a successful virtual relationship is excellent communication. If the company is in a different time zone, or takes days to respond to your messages, you may have problems. If you’re outsourcing a test project, do they ask sensible questions for more clarity, or guess and get it wrong? Communication is key; make sure it’s prompt and effective.

Look for professionals.

Look for companies that have been around for a while and that have a proven track record. Is there a portfolio on their web site, are there genuine customer testimonials. Whilst start ups can be equally good, if the business is established, they have obviously established a solid business model and are likely to be around for some time to come. Once you’ve established a great relationship, you don’t want to be looking for an outsourcing partner all over again in a few weeks time because the one you chose set their rates too low and went out of business.

Invest in your outsourcing education.

If you’ve never outsourced before, or you’re not sure what you can offload to someone else, experiment. Invest a small amount of cash in outsourcing something small. If you don’t have anything small, make something up. If it’s admin, get someone to put all your business cards into a spreadsheet or database, if you’re looking for design work, get someone to design a logo, if it’s proof reading, send over a short document with deliberate minor mistakes. You get the idea. The point is to see what works for you, and to get used to letting go.