‘”Woosterizing”
One of my favourite clients coined a term that I wanted to share.
Woosterizing
I think it is a really neat term. What is Woosterizing? Continue reading
The 12 Days of Christmas
You could be singing this song this time next year, if you partner with Prime Admin Solutions
On the first day of Christmas, my VA did for me
gave me more time for my family
On the second day of Christmas, my VA did for me
formatted my report
and gave me more time for my family
Happy Father’s Day – How often do you see your kids?
A 2010 survey by Career Builder on work life balance for working fathers who are the sole breadwinners in their family reported that “close to four- in-ten (37 percent) of working dads said they spend two hours or less with their children each work day. More than three-in-ten (35 percent) reported they missed two or more significant events in their child’s life due to work in the last year”. Continue reading
Why it makes sense to hire a professional
Some business people think it’s cheaper to hire a high school student to come into their office and do their email campaigns and other admin tasks. I’d like to present one example of why it sometimes can be a false economy.
I had a call this week from a lady who owns a little store who was totally panicked. She had hired high school students to do office work for her while she was out front selling. She trusted them to do their jobs and found out that her mail campaigns hadn’t been going out, that when they were sending messages, they were taking a very long time to send them out.
After a short conversation I was able to calm her down and offer her a solution to her problem. I gave her a service to sign up for an account to send email campaigns and when she gets her account set up, she’ll be forwarding me the information to import her list into the mail service and send out her email blast.
Sometimes it is more cost effective to pay a little more to someone who is experienced and professional versus an inexperienced high school student. This is one of them.
Some thoughts on Selecting a Virtual Assistant
I keep seeing blogs and articles in Google News Alerts about starting a virtual assistant business. They talk about how if you have a home computer, you can be a VA.
This concerns me, especially around areas of confidentiality. If you are looking for a virtual assistant, this should be one of your main questions to a prospective service provider, “what procedures do you take to ensure confidentiality of my data?”. The computer is a big one. Is the computer only used by the VA or is it a shared family computer in the kitchen or dining room? Do the Virtual Assistant’s children (and their friends) have access to it for games, surfing and Facebook activities?
For example, Prime Admin Solutions does the following:
- My computer is password protected and only I know the password.
- Our internet connection is protected by a firewall.
- I have a locked shredding box and only I know where the key is (many VAs like to say they are paperless, I readily admit that I am not, I don’t feel that you can proofread properly on screen, and when I receive instructions by email, I like to be able to print them off to check off and refer to while I’m working, saves time from switching between my email program and back to my work).
- My office is in a room of my house that is only used for my business.
- Only I have access to my computer.
- Does the VA take his/her laptop to a wireless hotspot to do your work or is it done at home?
Just a few things to consider when you are looking for a Virtual Assistant.
5 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help Consultants
Whether you are a marketing consultant, a manager consultant, business consultant or market research consultant, a virtual assistant should be an integral part of your business. My accountant has a saying, “stick to the knitting”; in other words, do the parts of the job that you make the most money at and delegate the other stuff.
Here are some ways that a virtual assistant can help you:
1. Document formatting
If you work on a hourly billable basis, drafting a document and having your virtual assistant format it for you allows you to move on to other financially lucrative work.
2. Contact Management
Give your business cards to your Virtual Assistant to enter into your contact management database. Consider using an online service such as Zoho CRM, Sugar CRM or SalesForce.
3. Meeting Prep
Your Virtual Assistant can help with reservations, room bookings, catering orders as well as meeting materials. Your VA can coordinate back pre-work (if necessary), preparing name tags, agendas, tent cards, evaluation forms and other documentation.
4. Après Meeting
Your VA can take the flip charts from your meeting and transcribe them into a Word, Excel or Mind Manager document. Do you have meeting participants fill out evaluation sheets? Give them to your Virtual Assistant to compile and prepare a quantitative and qualitative report. Was the meeting recorded on tape or digitally? Again, your Virtual Assistant can transcribe this for you into a form you and your clients can work with. Take a FedEx, UPS or Purolator waybill addressed to your VA along with packaging material to your meeting. After the meeting package everything up and drop the package off at a courier drop off location (for example, Staples) on your way home and have it shipped to your virtual assistant.
5. Invoicing
Your VA can prepare your invoices and send them to your clients on your behalf as well as following up on unpaid invoices.
Why a consultant and not an assistant?
Many in my industry call themselves Virtual Assistants. So why do I call myself a Consultant you may ask? People have said, “but don’t you just type and file and stuff?”
Well, the short answer is “yes and no”. Yes, I type, transcribe tape, prepare spreadsheets and all that kind of work, BUT I can also act as a consultant. A brain storming partner if you will. I take the time to get to know my clients’ businesses so I can help them much more efficiently.I advise on social media strategies and in the admin area, sometimes come up with ideas for projects that the client may not have thought of.
For example:
Chris Greaves (chrisgreaves.com) contacted me several months ago. He responded to a letter I had recently sent to him. He was kind of skeptical – he wasn’t sure I could help him. He had several Microsoft Word macros / add ins he needed help with testing to ensure they would work. He took a chance and sent me a cheque for five hours of my time. I was able to test his programs and give some input on how they worked, made suggestions to add to documentation and he was sold.
One program in particular, a one-click index program is able to save the user HOURS of time creating an index in Microsoft Word. I spread the word amongst the virtual assistant industry and several were interested. I also took the liberty of sending an e-mail to the Board of Directors of Microsoft in Seattle as well as a Canadian ex-senior Microsoft Executive (and yes, we got replies). I also drafted a press release for him and provided him with sources to submit the press release to.
So, as you can see, some Virtual Assistants do more than just type. When I was in the corporate world, I had one manager in particular who would occasionally call me in to chat to ask my opinion on some issues. If you are a consultant and you had a really outstanding assistant when you were in the corporate world and miss having that person to bounce ideas off of, consider Prime Admin Solutions.
Let Prime Admin Solutions be your extra set of eyes, extra pair of hands and most importantly, another set of ears.
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