New Year planning with a Virtual Assistant

People are on the wind down to Christmas and many aren’t planning as far forward as the return to work in the New Year.  Now is the ideal time to be looking ahead and getting a jump on their competitors.

Here are my top tips for planning ahead and entering 2010 ahead of the game:

1. Plan your marketing activities in advance.  If you find social media to be time consuming or you find it difficult to commit to each week then sit down at the beginning of each month and set yourself some objectives. If you use social media to promote your activities, a lot of it can be automated.   Once you have those objectives, plan your activities around them.  Write a whole series of blog posts and schedule them, set up co-tweet to promote the blog posts, drop some teasers on your facebook fanpage to encourage people to keep checking back.
2. You may already have a CRM system (customer relationship management) in place.  Do you use it to its best advantage?  When was the last time you spoke to the people on it?  Do you regularly keep in touch with them? It’s often easier and more cost effective to get repeat business than it is to hunt for new business.  Look at new ways of reaching your customers and clients if you don’t already do so.  If you don’t have a CRM in place, then get one and start checking in with customers regularly.
3. “If you always do what you have always done, you’ll always get what you always got!“  Are there new products or services that you can offer? What do your competitors offer that you don’t?  Now is the time to start looking at some of these areas and how you can adopt similar into your business.  Ask ex-customers why they switched services/products, ask existing customers what they think you could do differently, you might find that changing your service or adding an additional range is a simple step that you never even thought of.

We often get into our routines and find them difficult to break out of and “thinking outside of the box” is not always as easy as it sounds.  Sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes so my top tip for 2010 … ?

Get a Virtual Assistant!  If your hourly worth is £80, why are you spending time at your desk losing money? A VA will cost approximately £20 an hour, so instead of looking at that being a £20 expense, look at it being a £60 saving.  Whilst you are on the phone arranging appointments, chasing money, or trying to work out auto responders for your newsletter signup you aren’t bringing in £80, you are losing £60!

You can call me on 0844 500 8201 or email me for a no-obligation chat about how I could help you and your business.