Business Support

Email Management

Do you often feel overwhelmed with the amount of emails you receive and worry you might have missed something? When you are out and about in meetings and networking it can be hard to keep up. We can manage your inbox, flagging anything important and responding to frequently asked questions. We can also delete the things you don’t need to see! For many clients this is a weight off their minds. We LOVE a zero inbox!

Appointment Making

You’re developing your staff, meeting with clients, growing your business – you don’t want to be stuck at your desk playing email-tennis trying to set up meetings. We can take care of that for you, calling or emailing people back and getting that important appointment confirmed in the diary, making sure the opportunity isn’t lost.

Diary Management

There’s more to arranging meetings than just making the appointment. There are also room bookings to make, hotels to book, travel to arrange, paperwork to prepare. If you are meeting someone for the first time, we can also do some research on them for you. We’ll also make sure you have travel time booked in the diary, so you don’t run from one appointment to the other, and schedule in time for you to have some lunch! Whatever you need to make sure your day goes smoothly.

Travel Research and arrangements

Travel is a big part of any business owner’s day whether this is locally by car, nationally or even overseas travel. We can help prepare your itinerary, plan your journey and the best possible routes, research and book flights and/or hotels and book a restaurant so you don’t miss a meal when you arrive.

Meeting Preparation

You finally got that important meeting in the diary to see that ‘ideal client’ and explain how you can help them with your latest offering. But it’s not just a matter of turning up and having a chat, there’s preparation to be done. Whether it’s find out the stats on their company, preparing a presentation, researching the people who will be attending or planning the best way to get there and where you will park, we can help you get ready and make sure you’re prepared when you arrive.

Collating or preparing meeting papers

It can be very time-consuming preparing papers for meetings, whether that’s a performance review with one of the team, a board meeting or a conference you’re attending. We can help with preparing templates, collating information from team members, chasing outstanding data, drafting the report and emailing the packs to your members.

Board Support

There is a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes in preparing for Board meetings – there’s creating an annual cycle of business, drafting the agenda, collating information for the reports, preparing the meeting packs, distribution of papers, drafting of minutes and chasing up actions for starters! These are all things which a VA can take care of and we can even attend the meeting and take the minutes for you! If you are chairing or attending a meeting AND taking the minutes, you won’t be fully engaged in the conversation – you are there as a contributor, so contribute.

Templates

We love templates. If there is something that you often do more than once, it’s a waste of your valuable time if you don’t have a template for it. Whether it’s schedules for newsletters, letters, questionnaires, board meeting agendas, spreadsheets or anything else, we can take the work you have already done and get templates set up for future use.

Credit Control

It is not only time consuming but also can be a rather unpleasant conversation to have with your clients, when they are behind on their payments. We can help chase the payments, send reminders, resend invoices and help you ensure you keep your cash flow in a healthy place, so you can be assured that there is enough money in the bank to pay yourself and your staff a wage.

Job Specifications/Job Descriptions

Your hard work is paying off and business is booming, now it’s time to start taking on staff. Where do you start? You firstly need to know exactly what role you are recruiting for and what that person will be required to do. But it’s not just about recruitment, many businesses we know and have worked with in the past didn’t have job descriptions or job specifications for their existing staff. This makes it difficult to assess their performance and also for them to know if they are meeting expectations. We can talk to you about what you are looking for, what the skills and personal attributes are that you need and draft these for you. Make sure you have the basics in place and then you can recruit, run and grow your team with success.

Recruitment

Recruitment isn’t just about a job description, there are many things that need to be done before you’re welcoming your new member of the team through the door. We can help by advertising the role on job sites, reviewing applications, shortlisting, conducting screening interviews, arranging interviews and providing feedback to candidates. How much time would this save you? We can also then send out a job offer letter, make sure they have signed and returned their contract, prepare staff handbooks and even liaise with your IT team to make sure they have everything they need ready for their first day.

Team Onboarding

It’s so exciting to be bringing new members into the team, your business is growing, and you’ve interviewed some GREAT candidates, you just can’t wait to get them started. BUT you need to onboard them properly to make sure they have everything they need to get going and to make the right first impression. Contracts, induction, setting up email addresses and system access all takes time. Don’t get bogged down in the admin, get your team on board and look forward to starting work with them, while we take care of the rest.

Contact Management/CRM

Is your email marketing list GDPR compliant? What did you do with all those business cards you collected at that last event you attended? How do you monitor your leads and follow up to ensure you don’t miss any opportunities? All of this can be handled by a good CRM system, and it doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive. Send those business cards to us and we can have them updated in your CRM in a jiffy! Want to know whether your marketing efforts are paying off? We can also help you log the source of your leads, so you know which marketing efforts are paying off, and which aren’t! We can even take this to the next level and arrange any 1:1s that might be useful.

Research

Research can be very time consuming so can be the ideal thing to delegate to a Virtual Assistant. We’ve researched everything from venues for yoga retreats and weekends away to CRM systems and content for presentations. We’ll research online and make the phone calls and then present our findings back to you in an easily digestible way so you can use the information right away. What research could you delegate today?

Office Management

We don’t just work virtually; we occasionally work on site with clients too. It’s easy when you are busy with clients and doing the day job to let paperwork catch up on you – especially when you work from home. By bringing us in for a day can make all the difference. We can start with the filing and then help you to set up new systems and processes to streamline your workflow – we can help you be better organised and ready invite the world into your space again!

Proofreading

When you have spent ages writing your next newsletter or blog, or even your next book or marketing brochure it can be really hard to spot those little errors that can make all the difference in making the right first impression. Using a VA with proofreading skills can give you the assurance that your brand is making the right first impression and that it reflects the amazing and professional business that you run.

Copywriting

Do you feel like you are going around in circles trying to write copy for your website, your blog, your marketing literature? Sometimes it can really help to have a second pair of eyes. We can help re-write or re-word your existing materials to give them a fresh new feel, or given a few pointers, draft something for you to approve – let us help you get started, or help you get that project finished!

Corporate Events

Event planning is a great thing to be involved in, but it can be very time consuming. We’ve helped plan team meetings, board meetings, conferences, award ceremonies, garden parties, race days and lots of other events. We can help you by issuing invitations, researching and booking venues, liaising with and answering questions from your guests, arranging speakers, AV, lighting, gifts, flowers and much more besides. We will have regular update calls with you to keep you in the loop and report back when it’s all arranged. We could also come and help on the day – manning the registration desk and welcoming guests if you need us to (also see events page).

Marketing/Design

Are you a creative person? Not everyone is, and that’s OK – we all have our strengths. If you just can’t get what’s in your head onto paper, you are not alone. That’s why we have a fantastic designer on our team who can help with flyers, posters, social media images, booklets and practically anything else visual. We can make your ideas come to life. Get in touch if there is anything we can help with.

Blog Writing

“Every business needs to be blogging to help their SEO” that’s what everyone keeps telling us isn’t it? It is important to keep your website up to date, but blogs can also be used in your newsletters and on your social media to ensure you keep your followers engaged. However, it’s not always a quick and easy thing to put together unless this sort of thing comes naturally to you. By giving us a short brief, ideas of a theme and a few pointers we can pull together a regular blog for you that your readers will love.

Gift Selection and Ordering

It can be really time-consuming sourcing gifts can’t it? Whether it’s thank-you gifts for clients, Christmas hampers or the CEOs birthday, we can source gifts for you, make the purchase and even get them delivered in time for the special occasion. We can also remind you when those special occasions are about to come around again, so you have plenty of time to get organised.

Mailshots and Letters

Whilst so much is now done online, emails just don’t have the same effect when they land in your inbox as a letter. With the resurgence of traditional mailings, we can help you to prepare and send thank you letters or cards, invitations to an event or Christmas cards and gifts. We can also prepare templates for your letters and create a mail-merge with your chosen recipients.

Online System Management

Are you ready to move on-line? If you are looking to move from a manual filing system to cloud-based storage, we can help set up and organise this for you. Perhaps you already got online storage but it’s not working for you – we can help re-arrange your folders and files in a more efficient way so you can find what you need, first time every time.

Spreadsheet & Form Creation

We all love a spreadsheet, don’t we? We can help pull together your data in an easy to use way or create a form to gather information for you. Whether it’s event feedback, client testimonials or invitations to a dinner there are lots of ways that we can help you be more effective through creation of spreadsheets and forms. Just ask!

Project Management

Whether it’s co-ordinating an office move or simply having someone to make sure you write and send email newsletters every month, we can help with your project management. From drafting the schedule, co-ordinating the parties involved and ensuring tasks are delivered on time through to delivery and evaluation, we can support you with projects large and small.

Identifying Tasks to Outsource

If you are overwhelmed with work but are unsure how to start delegating or even what you could delegate here’s how we can help:

Download our guide to outsourcing ’30 ways to use a Virtual Assistant’;
Read our business support case studies;
Try our quiz to help you decide what type of support would be best for you;
Book a 1:1 and we can explore what tasks you do on a day to day basis and suggest how using a Virtual Assistant can take off the pressure;
Book a consultation day where we can spend time with you and help you identify what you can outsource