You’ve most likely invested a lot of time and resources in streamlining your client work delivery. You are using a CRM tool, and you are in a fortunate position where you don’t need a huge number of active clients. This means that it is all quite manageable, and everything should be organised, shouldn’t it?

So why are you feeling the overwhelm? Why are you still drowning in your emails? Why do you work stupid hours to catch up with your to do list? Why do you only deal with clients reactively? Why are you still missing opportunities by not following up with warm prospects on time?

These questions have likely meant that you’ve then said…

“My life would be so much easier with a VA”

Would it actually though?

Most people automatically think that a VA is like a fairy godmother. Someone who can make their life so much easier with a wave of their wand.

Which they can.

As long as some very important things are in place…

Aka your systems and processes.

If you can’t give step by step instructions for a system that works perfectly, you’re setting your VA up to fail, and it’ll be because you don’t have ALL systems in place and your workflow is sporadic at best!

Let’s face it, if you’re having to fire fight constantly, how is a VA going to come in and help?

Think of it like this:

You get in your car, type a postcode in your satnav for a place that’s a good 3 hours drive away. You set off, when all of a sudden, your satnav says turn left.

So, you turn left.

Over the next 10 minutes, there’s a load of quickfire instructions that you follow to the letter.

15 minutes into your journey and you have no idea where you are. But it’s ok, your satnav knows what it’s doing. Until it randomly switches off. No problem. You pull up Maps on your phone, pop the postcode in and away you go again. Expect the instructions are said in a different way than you’re used to. Expected, it is a different system after all. What’s not expected is that is now say’s your 4 hours away… How strange

3 ½ hours later, you’re getting close to your destination. But you forgot to put your phone on charge. It dies on you.

Ah. Problem. What are you going to do now? You start panicking until you remember an A-Z in the glove box. Not ideal, but a workable solution. You pull over and plot your route to your destination.

After quite a few wrong turns, you finally make it. 5 hours after you set off. The weird instructions and different systems have made what should have been a straightforward, 3 hour journey turn into a cross country adventure.

This is how most VA’s will feel when trying to complete the work you want them to do when you don’t have systems and processes in place.

So what do you do?

You spend time putting processes in place and get the right systems to deal with what needs doing.

There’s 5 key areas I tell everyone to start with:

1. Notifications – disable ALL notifications on your devices. Just keep your phone ringtone on. If that sounds too radical, try it for half a day and see what you actually get done. You choose when you want to check your inbox or a message (Whatsapp, Slack or LinkedIn), not when the message demands your attention. This way, you won’t get distracted when you’re in the middle of something.
2. E-mails and inbox – this is information processing only, NOT information storing location. E-mails either get ACTIONED, STORED or DELETED. If actioned or stored, then archive them. You can always retrieve anything from your archive folder, but they are out of your sight and mind.
3. Task list / actioning place – have a designated tool to combine all your activities such as Trello or ClickUp. These work well as you can send tasks directly to them without leaving your inbox.
4. Contact management – have a designated location for all your relationship management activities and information storage. Use the likes of Capsule or Pipedrive to build context around your contact (not just become a glorified phonebook). Where did you met them, what services they provide, do you have any mutually beneficial relationship with them, are they your referral partners etc. This is also a place where you can store your sales pipeline and keep track of the progress.
5. Storing information – if you use Microsoft tools, then utilise OneDrive and SharePoint, if you are Google user, then use Google Drive. Do not mix and match storage places. keep everything in one place for clarity.

The main aim is to have one location for one set of process. E.g. your task list cannot be in the inbox in the form of unread e-mails (or flagged/labelled e-mails) AND on your Trello board.

Once you have a clear workflow which explains what happens to any piece of information, you will be in the position to outsource your admin tasks. This way you can get maximum out of the hours you invest in the virtual assistant, instead of letting them flounder around trying to figure out what you may want them to do.

We’ve all seen the grandeur of what can happen if your systems and processes aren’t right, even to large established businesses like the post office, which we can all learn from.

If you want to identify the best way you can streamline your internal systems or would like to find out how you can make your existing systems more efficient, then Time Assist offers a complimentary and no-obligation mini-audit of your systems.