You already know a virtual assistant can be an effective time manager, but what you may not know is how much more your PA (productivity assistant) is truly capable of.
The feedback we've gotten over and over again is that we need to share our best practices for PAs.
So here are our PA best practices. Take a look, and start talking to your PA about how they can better serve you today.
So What Exactly Do Our PAs Do?
Prialto processes tend to fall into one of three buckets - Executive Services, Sales Operations, and Everything Else. Below, we've detailed what many of our tasks look like.
Executive Service tasks include:
- Scheduling support and calendar management (Ex. Handling meeting confirmation, placing holds in your schedule, etc.)
- Relationship management (Cross-referencing meetings in your CRM, scheduling follow up appointments, interacting with social media posts like saying congrats on a promotion or happy birthday, etc.)
- Expense management (Ex. Logging expenses in the expense management tool of your choice, etc.)
- Travel management (Finding flight options, making restaurant reservations, etc.)
- Handling purchases (Ex. Booking flights and hotels, purchasing client gifts, sending cards on your behalf, organizing catering for team lunches, ordering swag for team events, etc.)
Sales Operations tasks include:
- Prospect research (Ex. Lead gen, build lists of target accounts and target profiles with email, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Outreach (Ex. Constructing/sending outreach emails, managing outreach cadence and follow up and scheduling calls as needed, etc.)
- CRM management (Ex. Data entry, sales admin, sales operations, maintaining data integrity, adding contacts, accounts, logging calls, and emails, updating Salesforce, etc.)
- Building and running reports
Everything Else, as you might assume, can be nearly any other task - so long it's repeatable. Some examples of other tasks that we currently do include:
- Airbnb/rental property management
- Social media scheduling
- Ad operations
- Ad campaign management
- Issuing invoices
- Answering FAQ for leads
- Using TaskRabbit to handle in-person tasks
- Scheduling appraisal inspections
- Investment adviser paperwork (terrible way to describe what we do for RIA in a Box)
This is a small sample size of the tasks our PAs perform daily, and it doesn't stop there. Below, we've detailed a few more specific use cases to help you explore more ways you and your PA can work together.
1. Book a space with Breather
Breather offers affordable, beautiful meeting rooms in great locations. If you need a space for a workshop, a conference room on the fly, or just a break in a quiet room for an hour, Breather can help.
Your PA can help you by ensuring you always have a space to work out of, no matter where you go.
2. Help select restaurants for your meetings
Whether you're in town or travelling, our PAs are ready to help you find a great place to wine and dine your clients based on your preferences. From selecting the spot to making the reservation and sending your client the invite, we can take the pressure off of you to organize all of your outings.
3. Supporting your executive team
There are a few companies we have worked with for years, growing alongside them symbiotically. Castlight is one of those companies. We started with 3 units (Each of our PAs handles 3-4 units at any given time for reference.) but thanks to one of our especially proactive PAs, Jenny Tuguigui, and her Member, Tom McGurran, we collectively realized how much room there was for growth.
When other executives at Castlight saw how much Tom relied on Jenny, they began to lean on their PAs more, too. Today, Castlight is much larger than when we first started working with them, and the amount we support them has increased, too. We even helped them onboard new executives when they acquired another company, because of our in-depth knowledge of their company, systems, and even their building.
Today, we're supporting the entire executive team at Castlight, enabling them to save money, not have to worry about turnover (Remember, we're a managed service, which means you always have a backup.), and stay on top of their ever-growing administrative needs.
4. Supporting your existing office staff
Outsourcing gets a bad rap, but frankly, it's pretty unfounded. (At least here at Prialto.) We're not here to replace anyone - we're here to help support your people do the best work they possibly can.
At Castlight, their in-house executive assistants are able to handle more complex and creative tasks thanks to the repeatable tasks being outsourced and handled by our PAs. This is how to grow your business while keeping an eye on your bottom line.
5. Prospect research
Through the use of scraping tools and the knowledge you give us on who an ideal client is for you, we can help you increase leads at the front of your pipeline.
6. Salesforce Management
Many of our Members don't realize we work in Salesforce as much as we do. It's actually our preferred CRM, and we're more than happy to help you maintain the integrity of your data by helping you build and manage your pipeline.
Since so many organizations struggle to get buy-in on new software, like Salesforce, this can be a great way to get all of the benefits of Salesforce without having to force your people to learn all of the ins and outs of the program. Your team should know how to keep Salesforce updated, but there isn't a good reason to force them to do lots of data entry.
7. When in doubt, just ask!
Our PAs are smart, and they are here to serve. Once you've worked with your PA for a while - and they've begun to understand what you do and your preferences - the sky is the limit as to what you can accomplish together. We are constantly updating our virtual assistant best practices, and talking with our assistants is how we do it.
Once you understand what a virtual assistant can do, you're that much more empowered to take back your time. And couldn't we all use a little more of that?
Ready to start working with a PA?
