The Isolated Entrepreneur

Forbes magazine has a great article out about incompetent assistants.  Whether you work with a virtual or in-office assistant, it is important to hire one that makes you look good and relieves you of your workload - not adds to it.

If you work for a virtual assistant, you can authorize them to be able to sign a letter for you. It is best to do this in writing stating exactly in what circumstances the person can sign. It is important to note whether the person can sign checks, authorize credit card purchases, or sign legal documents on your behalf.

Read “Signing a Letter for Someone Else” to view the proper format your assistant should use when signing a letter on your behalf.

Are you planning on attending a conference?

It is important to look at the conference brochures or websites as soon as it becomes available.

Most conferences have an early registration deadline which can save you money.  But, more importantly, is to arrange your hotel accommodations as soon as possible.  The block of rooms reserved for the conference attendees at a special rate are usually sold out long before the early registration deadline.

I highly recommend making room reservations as soon as possible to lock in at these rates - even if the final list of participants for the conference is not final.  It is very easy to change the names of the people staying in the rooms or cancel a room at a later date.

Usually conference registrations are non-refundable, so it is best to wait until you have a final list of participants.  If you are bringing several people to a conference put on by an affiliate or vendor and one of the people you registered cannot make it, get in contact with your account representative.  They may be able to reimburse you the money even if the policy is not to give refunds.

If the conference is held in a popular travel destination such as Walt Disney or cities such as Savannah or New York, remember to book your travel early as it fills up quickly during peak seasons.

For those businesses that use trade shows to make sales, take a look at NASE’s new Success Skill Seminar, Can a Trade Show Boost Your Business.

If you attend trade shows as a participant, you might currently make travel arrangements and then forget about the show until you get there.

If there is a specific goal you have in mind, you might want to do a little preparation.  (Many of these activities can be done by an assistant.)

There is something you an do besides obtaining a list of vendors and speakers participating and circling the ones you are interested in.

For example, if you goal is to evaluate software that meets a certain need in your company, try to eliminate some of the vendors prior to the show by:

• Create a list of criteria the software must meet in order for it to work for you.
• Check out the websites of the different vendors.
• Contact the vendors and ask questions.
• Evaluate the software using demos.

Once you have eliminated some of the vendors, contact the ones that made it to the next round and let them know you are going to the conference.  Find out if you can setup a meeting to talk.

A great tool when working with a VA is instant messenger (IM).

It’s like walking down the hall of your office to check if your assistant is in. You can instantly tell if your VA is available to talk or if they are busy. You can leave a message to have them call you when they get a moment.

With IM, you don’t have to open your email client, enter an email address, and write the message. You just click on their IM name and type the message.

Some IMs have additional features such as audio chats, multiple-user conferencing, file sharing, etc. If you are both on MSN (now Windows Live Messenger) and on a Windows PC, you can access each others computer remotely with a click of a button and edit a document together.

Are you planning on sending out holiday cards? Whether they are business or personal, your virtual assistant can help - especially if your contacts are in Outlook, Act!, Goldmine, Palm Desktop or other electronic format.

A virtual assistant can select and purchase the card for you and get the envelopes printed with your return and recipient address on it. All you need to do is sign it.

Decide which contacts to include.
It is easy to select contacts if you keep them in categories such as vendors, clients, prospects, business and personal.

Get a count of the number of business cards you will need.

Tip: Create a custom Yes/No field or new category in your contact manager called “holiday list” and put the contacts recieving cards on it so you can quickly select the contacts for next year’s holiday card list.

Purchase holiday cards.
Decide what type of card you want.

• Should it say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays?”
• What kind of theme do you want? (cute, funny, no photo - just words, Norman Rockwell, etc.)
• Do you want to send a postcard or one in an envelope?
• What size card do you want? (larger sizes may cost more to send)

Have your VA purchase holiday cards for you.
If you plan to just sign the cards, have your VA ship them to you. After you sign them, you can then send them to your VA to stuff and mail.

Tip: Take a close look at the envelopes included with the holiday cards. If you are printing the return and recipient address right on the envelope, you will need an envelepe made of paper that absorbs ink fast.

Envelopes with a high gloss are usually not absorbent and the ink will smear. The cents extra it costs to purchase cards with good quality envelopes is well worth it because they are less labor intensive.

Decide how you want to group the contacts.
Will certain contacts be getting a different card or personal message?
Do some of the envelopes require different postage (i.e. different country)?

By deciding before you print the labels and envelopes, you can sort the contacts so these different contacts are grouped. This will save you time when writing cards and putting postage on.

Create a recipient file.
Exporting your contacts into a spreadsheet makes it easier to sort the contacts and, if a problem occurs during printing, restarting the printing process where you left off. Include the prefix, first name, last name, and country fields.

If you have no criteria, it is best to sort by last name and then first so that if you need to find a particular person, you can locate them quickly.

After creating the spreadsheet, sort the list by the criteria you setup before as well as by country. You may want to cut the spreadsheet into several files if you are using different cards.

Create or review the greetings field.
Usually, we don’t want to use the standard “Mr John Doe” greeting for holiday cards. We want them to say “Mr. John Doe and Family” or “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe.”

A greetings field is a great way to handle this. Start by deciding which general format you want to use. For “Mr. & Mrs. Doe” fill the greeting field with the phrase “Mr. & Mrs. ” and the recipient’s last name. For “Mr. John Doe and Family”, fill the greeting field with the recipient’s prefix, first name, last name and the phrase ” & Family”.

After you fill the field with the standard greeting, manually go through and change those that are the exception to the rule. Depending on what spreadsheet program you use, you may need remove the formula from the greeting field by copying the content and using “Paste Special” to save only the values.

Tip: Add a custom field to your contact manager to store your “greetings line” so you can reuse it for all your occasion cards.

Print return and recipient address on envelope.
It takes longer to print labels and manually put them on each envelope than it does to print the return and recipient address right on the envelope.

Since the contacts are in an electronic format, you can do a mail merge using a word processing program. The key to addressing the envelopes is to make sure your document reflects the actual size of the envelope.

Put postage on the envelopes.
By having grouped them by country, you should be able to quickly put stamps on the envelopes.

Sign cards, stuff the envelopes, and mail.

When you start working with a virtual assistant, you need to get your her up-to-speed.

Learning the basics and how to do the tasks she is assigned is just the beginning. To be truely useful, she will need to know:

• The business’ lingo
• Who your customers, partners, and suppliers are
• Your work style
• The business’ goals and timelines
• The equipment/products you use
• Personal information such as travel preferences

To accomplish this, both you and your assistant need to commit to regularly, scheduled conversations.

I know, you decided to hire a VA because you are overwhelmed and too busy. How are you supposed to find time for these meetings?

Remind yourself that this is only a temporary situation. Also, your VA can get started with some tasks with only a little guidance from you. Such as:

• Filtering your email for spam. Later, she can filter your email for activities she can do for you like rescheduling appointments, sending out general correspondence, etc.
• Confirming and rescheduling appointments.
• Making travel arrangements.
• Proofreading documents.
• Printing/Copying documents for presentations.
• Updating your website with general content & product changes.
• Sending brochures out to prospective clients.
• Setting up teleconferences.
• Taking meeting minutes.
• Entering new contacts into your contact database.
• Etc.