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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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A website that is “me” focused.
While back in part 1 of this series we talked about personalising your website, don’t spend all of it talking about yourself and how wonderful you are? Although your visi¬tors need to know a bit about you, what holds their interest is the knowledge that you understand their problems and issues and have ready-made solutions that resolve those problems. Your visitor will always ask, “WIIFM?” (What’s In It For Me). Answer that question by making your web site about your visitor, not about you.

If you are not sure how to WIIFM your text, hire a professional sales copy writer if you can afford it or try the following format:
Do you struggle with getting your VAT return in on time, we offer a full book keeping service which means that your VAT return will never be late again and you will save expensive fines and a whole lot of stress.

Replace the italics with their pain followed by your solution and the bold italics are your WIIFM.

In summary: Your web site can function as an attractive online brochure, or it can be a client-generating tool to help you grow your business. As a virtual assistant, you need to generate clients from your website in order for your business to be successful, make the necessary changes and you will get more clients online.

About the author:

Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant Limited 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