When we’re on a Discovery Call with a new client, one question we’re asked most often is how time booked with a VA looks. It’s a great point – if you’re a small business trying to look after your pennies, how do you know whether you’re buying too much time, or not enough?
So we thought we’d take a look at what your first month of booking 10 hours could look like. We know that 10 hours can feel like a huge commitment, but you’d be amazed how easy it is to fill up that time.
We want to make sure your first few weeks with a VA are as smooth as possible, so can help you work out what your most urgent tasks are, and more importantly, how long you should allow for that specific job – our associates are a whizz at getting things done quickly, but it’s important to be realistic!
Broken down into a typical 4-week month, 10 hours breaks down to 2.5 hours a week, or just half an hour a day. So, for example, if you want your VA to do a regular task like managing your inbox, then logging in, reading and triaging mails, reporting back to you and actioning anything urgent could easily take 30 minutes. If your VA is doing this daily, then there’s your time, give or take a few minutes.
Perhaps you’ve got a small project that needs (say) 10 hours of work, don’t forget to allow time for briefing, progress reports, and delivery and debrief. 15 minute calls here and there add up: remember to give your VA enough time to actually DO the work and not just talk it through!
Maybe you have a set of one-off jobs you want to hand over and forget about until they’re done? No problem – you can always specify how long you’d like your VA to spend on a task and in the first few weeks we encourage open communication to make sure everyone’s on the same page about how long things should and do take. It’s important to give your VA some clarity on how much time and how in depth you’d like something (for example, market research) to be – if you’ve only asked them to spend an hour on it, you’ll obviously end up with something thorough, however it may well be less extensive than allowing an extra hour or two on it.
Do be aware that ‘small’ jobs can often take a deceptive amount of time. A quick change on a website, or tidying up a presentation – something you might think only takes 15 minutes, because it’s not your forte – could in reality be a little more in depth that you’ve considered, so be receptive if your VA tells you they need longer than allotted do the work properly. One of our Associates was asked to spend ‘20 mins’ cleaning up a slide that was so mangled that it needed recreating entirely, with such in-depth graphics that it became a 90 minute undertaking: our team will always do their work to the highest standard, but sometimes it takes a little longer than you might have first imagined!
Conversely, we should say that you only pay for the time you’ve used with your VA, so if that 30-minute job only took 25, that’s what goes on your invoice. We’ll never ‘waste’ your minutes, and that’s one of our key standards.
The important thing to point out is that you’re in the driving seat when you work with the VA Agency team – you can cap your hours, and there’s flexibility to to add more if you need them. We’re here to simplify your life, not make it harder! Book a Discovery Call today and see how we can start giving you your time back.
Until next time!
Stay productive.