If you have children at home during the summer holidays and are trying hard to balance work with your parental responsibilities, have you thought of using the services of someone else to take your calls and answer your e-mails?
It can be disconcerting when a client calls you and you know they must be thinking "what is all that noise in the background!" Not only that, it sounds unprofessional.
There are companies around who will take your calls (for a minimal fee) and e-mail your messages to you so that you can return calls at a quiet time which suits you. This is not a service provided by Virtually 247 although I know from the amount of calls I get it is a service which is sought after and needed by many.
(See my video outlining services which are offered by Virtually 247)
I do however manage e-mail accounts for people when they're on holiday as, after all, it wouldn't be a holiday if you're constantly checking your Blackberry in case a client needs you. If anything urgent comes up which I am unable to action for a client's client, I make sure I have their authorisation to interrupt them at a pre-arranged time (although this doesn't happen very often).
Other tasks which can be carried out by your Virtual PA or VA whilst you are in the pool or lazing around on the beach are:
- updating your contacts database
- clearing out your in-box
- electronic filing
Let's take one at a time:
Your Contacts Database
Crucial to your business and so easy to manage when up to date but how many times have you looked at a pile of business cards from networking events or post-it notes with names, contact numbers and e-mail addresses, thought "I need to do something about those," and pushed them out of sight? No way to treat your future prospects! All you need to do is mail them to your Virtual Assistant who can upload them into a database so they're ready for your next mail-merge or Em-mail Newsletter, and update your Outlook Contacts.
Priotitising E-Mail
We all know how it feels when you return home to an in-box full of enquiries, unwanted offers, mail from friends or kids' friends' parents which somehow find their way to your work account. Some will obviously go straight into your deleted items folder but others, although not required again, will contain information which needs to be transferred to calendars or forwarded or copied to others. Your PA can sort all of these for you so, and probably respond to most, so that you only need to deal with the prioritised mail (moved to an appropriately-named folder of course).
Electronic Filing
If your VA has access to your PC, or you have a shared electronic workspace, it's a great idea to ask her to set up folders (ensuring of course she names them appropriately and leaves you a hard copy list of what is contained in which folder so that you don't waste time trying to find files on your return).
If you haven't yet gone away on your well-earned break, I hope this blog has given you some food for thought and that you will feel more organised and less daunted when you get back to your office. If, like me, you have already returned, I hope you are coping and perhaps you could implement some of these ideas before you next travel!
Read more from the Virtually 247 Blog:
Utilise Online Organisers To Help Save You Time
1 comment:
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