Five 5-minute jobs you didn’t think to delegate
As Virtual Assistants, we work with a vast range of different clients, and the tasks we do vary a lot too. But there are some tasks which take only minutes to do that our clients outsource to us too.
Now you may think ‘I can just do that myself’ or ‘it takes longer to ask someone else to do it than if I just do it myself’ and you’re right, sometimes it might take just as long, or longer, to type an email to ask us to do something than just doing it yourself, so why do our clients delegate these 5-minute jobs?
It’s all in the detail – and that matters
Firstly, these tasks are sometimes regular ones, for example turning on an out of office. A tiny task that it’s so easy to forget to do, but the impact could be clients who think you are not replying, or prospects who go somewhere else.
Or how about sending the cinema listings for the week to your friends? We often so neglect our social lives and leave planning things to the last minute, so for one client who has (had!) a weekly cinema get together with friends, we’d send them over the week’s cinema listings – this was actually simply set up as a templated email and we had a diary note each week to send it, taking literally seconds but hugely helpful for our client, and her friends.
Here are a few more ideas of 5-minute jobs to outsource
Sending an invoice
- We have a contractor we work with, and when their client accepts their quote, it’s one click to convert the quote to an invoice, and one to send it. We then update their Project Management System with the invoice number. Doesn’t take long but means that they have a clear picture of their financials, who owes what and they don’t need to be distracted by having to dip into the invoicing systems – or spend valuable family time doing the paperwork.
Tell your appointment you are running late
Yes you could just call them yourself, as when we made the appointment we put their phone number in the diary appointment after all, but how easy is it to jump in the car and hit the fast dial with our number instead of having to find out your diary, find the number and call them? You might also need to be slightly economical with the truth on the reasons for being late – and that’s easier to ask us to do!
Sending a reply to an email
- Sometimes clients ask us to send emails on their behalf – or this might often even be an email, telling us who to send an email to and what to say. This might sound like madness but again, if it takes you out of your zone, then staying in focus and delegating is important. It might be that sending the email from your VAs email account is important, as they can then deal with the reply for you – especially helpful if it’s about arranging a meeting or sending information – you don’t need to be involved in everything.
Checking your LinkedIn
- We have clients for whom we log into their LinkedIn accounts and accept and decline connection requests on their behalf. Another very quick job to do yourself you’d think but easily forgotten and with us all receiving messages via phone, social media, email and WhatsApp it can be easy to miss something and that connection could lead to big things!
Setting up a zoom call
- Again it doesn’t take long to log into your account and set up a call, in fact I just did that for a client and emailed the link out, which took a grand total of 2 minutes but again, it can be a faff if it means you have to take your mind off other things.
So you see, these might be five minute jobs – or even less – but as a busy business owner you know only too well that the small details can easily be forgotten, and this can lead to poor customer service, missing leads, distraction and overwhelm that are so easily avoided.
We can take care of all the little things, along with the bigger things – give us a call to find out more on 07814218142 or email joanne@joannemanville.co.uk
I have also created for you a few handy guides:
- 30 ways to use a VA
- 30 ways to use a VA – coaches guide
- Delegation checklist (how to decide what to delegate!)
I hope you find these useful.