Summer brings vacations, time off and lazy days, and many of us don’t start to think about the impact on our businesses until we start planning a vacation. But one of the best things you can do for your business, your family and your sanity is to have an ongoing coverage plan for work. After all, you never really know when you might be out of the office unexpectedly, and the last thing you want is to have to scramble to make sure the needs of your clients are met.
There are a lot of ways you can keep your business running and prevent losing clients when you are not working. You may have clients that typically plan ahead for most of their work, so taking off a few days even without much notice may not impact them greatly. But if you have a large client base and a lot of work that tends to come in unanticipated, you’ll need a more formal plan in place.
One of the best ways to line up coverage is by collaborating with a fellow VA. If you subcontract work regularly, your subcontractors can be the ideal people to step in and cover for you. They already know some of your clients, understand their needs and know how you like to work. Or, even if you don’t subcontract, you can coordinate with another VA to create a vacation-coverage arrangement where you cover for each other. Plus, many times the coverage you will need while you are not working is simply having someone you trust checking and responding to e-mail and voicemail, so the time commitment shouldn’t be too great for either party.
Another thing to think about is creating a set of operations manuals that document how your business runs and the work you do for your clients. This is a huge project, but something you can start to tackle little by little and benefit from immediately. Not only can this type of manual be a working document for your own business, but it’s also something you can provide to your clients so they have some insurance that their own businesses will not hit a stand-still if you are not available.
How do you plan for time out of the office and ensure nothing falls through the cracks?
Written by Alyssa Gregory
EMAIL Alyssa.
Owner of avertua, LLC, author of VA Secrets Revealed, founder of the Virtual Assistant Hub, blogger at the Small Business Idea Generator, and a whole bunch of other stuff!
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