Hire Virtual Assistants That Optimize Your Time

Manage Your Calendar with a Scheduling Virtual Assistant

As a busy entrepreneur, you have a lot of plates to spin. 

Whether it’s organizing meetings for next week’s industry conference or setting up sales calls, there are multiple demands on your schedule. 

People and tasks constantly compete for your attention. Staying on schedule is vital –– missed meetings or lateness sends the wrong signal to clients and colleagues.

At the same time, staying on top of everything makes your life and work much more manageable. 

However, scheduling all these meetings, conferences, and appointments can become a headache. 

So many business owners overwork to meet the administrative demands of their business. They work 60-hour weeks, work late into the night, or sacrifice weekends.

What you need is a scheduling virtual assistant. 

When you see how much easier life is with a managed virtual assistant handling your calendar, you won’t ever look back. 

How to outsource calendar management 

A managed VA can help you prioritize people and tasks in your business. The first step is to consider who are the people you need to spend time with. What are the high-priority activities and meetings you need to be present for? Then, what are the activities and tasks you don’t need to be involved in? 

Divide your priorities into four categories: 

• Urgent and important: Priorities that only you can address and require immediate attention. Examples include board meetings or investor calls. 
• Important but not urgent: These tasks require your attention, but you can schedule them for later, within a week or so. You can schedule a meeting request from a direct report or a check-in with a critical customer for a later date.
• Urgent but not important: These are priorities that others can do, and you delegate them to someone else. Your VA can handle scheduling meetings, planning travel, and preparing documents. 
• Neither important nor urgent: These are priorities that you should not do at all. You can save hours of time by removing busy work from your inbox and calendar. If you are asking yourself, "Why am I in this meeting?" Skip the next one.

When you have a clear idea of your priorities and activities you must be involved in, you can delegate the rest. 

Clearly document the priorities you must be involved in, as well as the tasks you can outsource. 

How to optimize your work hours

Once you’ve documented your working hours and meeting preferences, it’s easy for your virtual assistant to optimize your time. 

Everyone works best at different times of the day. Whether you’re a morning lark or a night owl, your VA can build your schedule around your optimal hours. 

In reality, this could look like your VA: 

• Scheduling meetings during your preferred time of the day. 

• Taking calls and only putting you through when it fits your schedule.

• Ensuring your schedule doesn’t become overbooked or overloaded. 

How to make meetings more productive

Everyone has different preferences for meetings. So, document your meeting preferences. Then, let your VA schedule meetings when it suits your schedule and preferences. 

Here are some meeting preferences and how your VA can put them into practice: 

• Times of day: What times of day do you like to meet?
• Meeting duration for diverse types of meetings: Not all meetings need to last an hour. You can save a lot of time with shorter sessions.
• Buffer time between meetings: Frequent back-to-back meetings often get executives behind schedule. Transitioning from one call to another takes time, and a break between sessions can work wonders for your focus and attention. Five to 15-minute buffers between meetings work wonders.
• Restricted times: An effective way to make sure you can focus on key projects is to block off time for "deep" work like strategy and planning.
• Meeting preparation time: Do you need to schedule time before certain meetings to prepare? Your VA can add it to the calendar.

How your VA can coordinate with contacts

Prialto managed personal assistants can coordinate with your contacts to schedule meetings and appointments in your calendar. 

VAs can use scheduling tools like Calendly to schedule 1:1 calls with your contacts. Your VA can then work in conjunction with the tool by scheduling group calls and rescheduling. 

If you prefer to manage communication with some of your contacts, your assistant can still help behind the scenes. 

Here are a few examples:

• Your VA could use BCC on emails to contacts so that when an invitee confirms, they can handle the calendar scheduling side of things. 

• They can coordinate large meetings with multiple participants by using BCC.

• They can add all scheduled meetings to your calendar and schedule reminders.