NEW: Weekly Post - Questions and Answers

Question subject: Reaching Deadlines

Question: How do I reach deadlines?

 

Answer: You can reach deadlines by knowing how long tasks take and what is involved with doing them. Do practice runs before you open your business, experiment with how long it takes you to do the tasks you are going to offer. Know how long it takes you to transcribe a 1 hour file, how long it takes to type up 20 pages of basic copy typing, know how long it takes you to set up Facebook for a new client. Run examples and note down how long tasks take. 

When you feel a deadline is not reachable, negotiate, you will be doing the work, so only you will know how long it takes to complete. It is up to you as a business owner to tell your client ‘this deadline is unreal’ and to explain what is involved within the job. Many clients have no idea how long a particular job will take. They will give you very unreasonable deadlines. Only you know what you are capable of and what your limits are. This is often a problem with Transcription, the clients do not know how long it actually takes to transcribe and often the deadlines are tight but it is up to you, as you are doing the job to negotiate this with the client, not the client to set this deadline for you. Simply explain what is involved.

I would love to have your comments if you feel you would like to comment, please do, as I would like to put your answers with your contact details onto my blog, it gives you a bit of exposure. amftyping@mweb.co.za or alison@amftyping.co.za

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Question subject: Motivation

 

 
 

Question: What keeps you motivated while running your own business?

 

Answer: What keeps me motivated is knowing that my marketing is working and has kept on working since I started my business. Every time I have an enquiry about my business I can see that my business details are out there and being seen. It is motivating for me to get up every day and come to work as I love my job and I never know what each day will bring, every day in my job is different.

 

I would love to have your comments if you feel you would like to comment, please do, as I would like to put your answers with your contact details onto my blog, it gives you a bit of exposure. amftyping@mweb.co.za or Alison@amftyping.co.za

 

 

VA Tips & Tricks Blogging Challenge 2014 - F is for Fighting

We as VAs are always fighting something within our jobs. We fight to get paid, we fight to get our deadlines finished and we fight to find good subcontractors. Fighting is part of our jobs.

For many VAs its can be a battle to get paid, often on completion of a task, we then struggle to get our payments. We do the work, giving the client an excellent service then the client decides they don’t want to pay or had no intention of paying in the first place and they simply want the job done for free.

Some VAs are so busy that they fight to make their deadlines. This is one of my problems, I juggle my time between clients to make sure everyone’s work gets done and try my hardest to meet the deadlines which are not always possible. This is when time management skills come in handy, I have to stop, relook at what I have, look to see which piece of work I can get done quickly and then redo my to-do-list and start again.

 

 

 

Finding good subcontractors is a battle. Everyone wants to subcontract but not everyone is good and that is where the problem lies. We take on a subcontractor as they are so enthusiastic to assist and then when the job is returned and here is just one example proofreading has not been done. This makes our jobs more difficult as we are using subcontractors as we need the assistance, as maybe we are too busy, then we must stop what we are doing and proofread the work. Anyone no matter who you work for, your work must be proofread, nobody is too good that they should not proof their work, you either proof as you go or do a proof when you are finished but it is part of your job to proof any work that has been typed. Things like this slow down our production.

These are just 3 tasks that I have chosen to show that our job is about fighting to get things done; can you associate with any of them?

 



Reaching deadlines knowing how long a task takes

You must know if you can reach deadlines or not. You need to know how long each task you do will take, for example: how long will a 1 hour file of transcription take to transcribe, how long will it take you to type up 100/200/500 pages. When a client contacts you, you have to be able to let them know if you can or cannot reach the deadline they set.

You must give yourself time to proof your work, time to check the layout and formatting, make sure the grammar is good, the punctuation done, sentence construction etc. Also you need to make sure you give yourself time to take breaks/lunch and for interruptions. You need to know with interruptions, can you still reach the deadline.

When you feel a deadline is not reachable, negotiate, you will be doing the work, you know how long it will take, give yourself plenty of time to do the work and be negotiable on a deadline that you can reach. It is up to you as a business owner to tell you client ‘this deadline is unreal’ explain what is involved within the job, a lot of clients have no idea how long a particular job will take. They will give you very unreasonable deadlines. Only you know what you are capable of and you know your limits. This is often a problem in Transcription, the clients do not know how long it actually takes to transcribe and often the deadlines are tight but its up to you, as you are doing the job to negotiate this with the client, not the client to set this deadline for you, simply explain what is involved,

Do not take on jobs you have no idea how to do, a client will quickly find out you cannot do this job and they will not have confidence and trust in you again. Only take on the work that you have experience in doing, especially so when you are just starting out. If you take on a job that is new to you, let the client know it’s new to you, but that you are very willing to learn and try. New jobs will take you longer to do, remember this with deadlines.

Meeting Deadlines

One of the most important thing we need to do as virtual assistants and transcriptionists is to meet our client deadlines. Clients give us these deadlines as they need the work done and back to them for whatever reasons they want to use that work for.
It is important we know our limitations and know what we can do, we need to know how long particular tasks take to do, typing up a page, transcribing 30 minutes of transcript. You need to be able to work out with each task can you do it in the alotted time given, if not tell the client this, explain why not and ask to change your deadline, if you can meet the deadline make sure you can and give the work back in time, its even better if you can come in with the work ahead of the deadline as that shows commitment to what you are doing on your part.
Keep your client updated as you go along with the work, feedback is always a good sign that you are busy with the clients work and you are providing a quality service.
If you cannot for some reason make the deadline, do not leave it to the last minute to tell the client, tell the client well in advance and renegotiate the deadline if possible, it is not always possible, but with some work you can.
When we have more work then what we can handle we can then get assistance by asking other VAs. But these VAs need to understand we are then there client and they must meet our deadlines, which will be before the actual clients deadline, because the work will need to be proofed and checked before being returned to the client. A VA who is contracting and who cannot meet her deadline must let the VA know this well in advance.
Deadlines are very important in our jobs, we need to remember this, a satisfied client will come back and maybe become a regular client.