Learning how to manage multiple virtual assistant clients is a skill every serious new or aspiring VA must have.
Virtual Assistants usually work with many clients at the same time. Once your business is established and you want your business to grow, you’ll need to have and manage many clients instead of working with just one or two clients. Juggling clients can be exciting, exhausting and overwhelming especially when you are first starting out. To manage multiple clients, there are things you need to do to make it work well for you and your clients. Everyone has techniques that work best for them, so I’ll be sharing 7 tips that have worked very well for me for almost 5 years.
7 Tips To Help You Manage Multiple Virtual Clients As A Virtual Assistant
1. Organise And Prioritise Tasks
It can be overwhelming if you are not organised and start working with multiple virtual assistant clients. It is important to make a list of tasks you are handling in order of urgency. Don’t just complete random tasks that are not urgent. Double check with your clients to find out when they need their project so you can adjust accordingly. You can organize and prioritize based on tasks or clients, it’s up to you. Take time to organize your workload, assess and plan out your day before you start any work. Make a schedule, not just for clients but for your own business too and avoid distractions. One mistake a lot of virtual assistants make is not scheduling time to work on their own business. That’s a recipe for going from feast to famine in no time.
2. Be Clear With Timelines And Deadlines
Let your clients know how much time you need for tasks and projects. As much as possible, hold them to the agreed timelines in order to honour the relationships you have with your clients. Last minute requests from a client can throw you off schedule for all of your other clients who may be respecting your deadlines. Set healthy boundaries for turnaround time, deadlines, work hours, day off, phone calls and whatever else and stick to them.
3. Automate As Much As You Can
Managing multiple virtual assistant clients and working in your own business will lead to overwhelm and burn out in a short time. Automation will save you time and energy.
There are numerous things you should automate in your VA business some of them are client bookings, invoicing, email and social media marketing etc.
This is important because automation essentially duplicates you in your business. Once you automate things to go out at specific times, you will be freed up to do other things and focus on client work. Even while working with clients, you need to automate things in their business.
4. Make Use Of Technology
Technology can help you with time management, communication and tasks on your task list. Find the technology that suits you and learn how to use it well. For example, you can sync up your calendar so you know what’s going on and who is doing what. There are time management and project management tools like asana that can help you keep track of everything. Your client can also see work progress from their end, you can assign tasks for your clients or team members etc without the need to call everyone individually.
I can hear you asking “assign tasks to clients?”
Yes. There are some tasks you might need to complete that require specific information from your client. For example, if I need to design an ebook for a client with content provided by the client, I’d need that content from the client. With a project management tool like asana, you can assign the task of providing the content directly. That way, clients can see if they are delaying the project.
5. Work At Your Best Hours
As a mum, virtual assistant and virtual assistant coach, I must pick my battles. I only work at the time of the day when I function best so that I can effectively get work done. For me, this is mostly at night when my family is asleep and I have some quiet and good internet. You can also work in sprints like 3-4 hours and then take time off or you can work mornings and then again in the evening.
If you have a virtual assistant business and a 9-5 job, you also need to schedule your best time to work. For you that might be weekends, evenings or 1-2 hours at night. Find out what works for you and complete client work.
6. Realise That Saying “NO” Is Necessary
Don’t fall into the temptation of taking on more clients than you can handle. Sometimes, you should say no to extra work from a client you already have or taking on another client if you feel you have enough work. You can hand off extra clients to another VA or get an associate or virtual assistant subcontractor in to help. This might feel like you’d be losing money but if you say yes to everyone, it will show in your work. Imagine disappointing multiple clients and delivering less than ideal projects. That’s a setup to lose all your clients.
If a client is reluctant to walk away when you are unavailable and willing to wait, a better way to deal with it is to start a client wait-list. That way you can always fill up available slots whenever you let an existing client go.
7. Be Proactive And Communicate Clearly
Communicate regularly with your clients for the ongoing task you have in your schedule for them. Work out details for upcoming tasks and find out if there are other things they need done. You can use this to get more work from clients and build a better client relationship. This way, you can make more money with the clients you already have.
Final Words
It’s not easy to manage multiple virtual assistant clients but if you follow the above tips, it will be a lot easier. Manage your time, get organised and prioritise based on what is urgent, communicate clearly, and automate as much as possible. All these will help you achieve a smooth schedule and you will be able to keep all your clients happy and glued to your business.