As an owner of a busy business, you’re always in and out of the office, at different meetings, in different countries, always having to be in a million places at once. This is where you rely on your magical assistant to organise and control both your private and professional life. It needs to run like a well-oiled machine.
You have back to back meetings, so you pick up the phone or email through what needs to be done and the calendar is updated with your whereabouts so everyone is in sync. You both have the same access to the one calendar so you won’t ever be double booked and you can see everything clearly for the week ahead.
Your emails are also linked so when you are at those meetings or away on business, your assistant knows when to take over and deal with those emails and clear out the junk. You can also be left confident that when you click your calls across to call forwarding, that your assistant is dealing with that too.
Your assistant can send you across all of the documents and presentations that you need for those meetings, as well as any travel tickets or booking details. Your assistant booked everything for you so again, you are both in sync with where you are supposed to be and what exactly you need with you. Everything is good to go. You work well as a team.
It’s also your wife’s birthday while you are out of the country but that’s fine because that’s also in your linked calendars. You can rely on your assistant, so you pick up the phone on the way to the airport and state what you need. The card and present are then looked after and delivered to your home address. And gift wrapped so everyone is happy.
Whilst you’re sitting on the plane, you can make some notes and you then have a few research projects that you need taking care of whilst you are away. You leave a voice note on your smartphone and send it across to your assistant. You can rest assured that the projects will be ready in a portfolio for you when get back, either on your desk or at home for you.
There are meetings to be scheduled, calls to be made to prospective clients and reconnecting with old clients. That is all taken care of and your assistant updates your shared CRM systems so when you come back you have an up to date list scheduled and details of what has taken place. You can flick in and out of your calendar to see how the following week is shaping up too. But that’s okay as your assistant emails you an up to date list at the end of each day detailing business activities.
You’re looking to drive the business and you’ve been working together on your target lists. Your assistant can compile a new database for you, chase up new leads and seeing as your emails are linked, she can send mail-outs on your behalf. You can dip in and out to see an overview of emails sent and the response chain. You guys are always in sync. Another thing taken care of.
You’re also looking to arrange a family holiday. You have been away quite a bit lately so you need some family time. So you send another voice note across to your assistant of what you would like. Or you can leave them to it as they know you and the family and they are always on top of the greatest deals available. They’ll check the calendar, put some quotes together for you, you agree and they will book it and take care of it all. They’ll even book you in online and order the airport taxi.
When you finish your meeting and you need your minutes typed up, seeing as your assistant was covering the business side so they couldn’t make the trip with you, you recorded the meeting. So you just popped that across on email and by the time you get back to your hotel that night, the notes have already been emailed back for you to have a read and refresh your memory. You can work on what needs to be done next and your assistant has already emailed it across to everyone that attended the meeting. But you know that already as the emails are linked. We like efficiency.
You’ve been busy off-site carrying out all of those quotes that are on the system so now it’s time for invoicing. You need to keep on top of this as it’s cash flow which is a necessity. So you pop on to the CRM, tick all the quotes that you’ve now carried out and your assistant now arranges the invoices and sends them off via email. No one uses paper anymore do they? They’ll also scan through for any overdue invoices and give those a reminder. They also have access to the business accounts so they can tick off any paid invoices to and reconcile everything ready for the accountant.
You’re in a different country so you pop on to a zoom call with your assistant at the end of the week for a catch up of what’s been happening, the progress that’s been made and new to do lists to work on. It’s nice to see each other’s faces and get prepped for the week ahead. You guys are so busy but it doesn’t have to always be email or voice note. It’s good to stay connected.
Having an assistant is an invaluable asset to your business and in order to be successful. While you are physically working within your business and out of the office, they are there taking care of your daily business. There are not enough hours in the day to carry out all of these tasks effectively and you will head for burnout if you try. Your business will never grow.
In an ever changing, fast paced and fiercely demanding world, there is less physical interaction between colleagues. It is quicker to send an email or pick up the phone as we want immediate responses, rather than having to leave your desk, take the lift up to the third floor and actually go and speak face to face with a colleague. It is quicker to dial their extension for an instant response and you can move on to the next task quicker.
With such advances in technology, and according to the Office of National Statistics; by 2020 over 50% of the population will be working remotely, it is crucial to any business to have the right lines of communication and processes in place to manage this effectively. Whether that be via Skype, Zoom, CRM’s, shared access and with using video conferences to pull in all the partners around the globe rather than the cost of physically flying them all in.
As long as the lines of communication are and open and clear, you work hard together as a team and you both have an understanding of each other as people, how you fit, what is expected and how those two pieces of jigsaws fit together, you can continue to grow your business effectively and profitably with a trusted assistant.
Now that we have concluded on this text, we would like to point out that we all knew where the business owner was. Please can someone tell me the location of the assistant whilst they were carrying out these tasks? Was the assistant an Executive Assistant or a Virtual Assistant?
We’ll never know.
Moral of the story; it is the lines of communication that can confine a business, not a location.