5 A Day Keeps Your Business Healthy

We provide a direct mail and telemarketing service called 5-A-Day to Keep Your Business Healthy and to help you stay in contact with and find new customers.

What is 5 A Day?

Most small and medium-sized businesses find it hard to keep their existing customers aware of what they have to offer or don’t have much time to spend chasing up new ones.  5 a Day offers an affordable way of regularly marketing both new and existing clients

For just £100.00 per week

• We will send out 5 letters a day, 25 letters a week and 100 letters a month, 1,200 a year to new and existing customers
• Letters are much more effective in getting your message across as 80% are opened by their intended recipients compared to just 30% of emails.
• As part of the telemarketing side of the service, we then follow-up each letter with a phone call and find out who is interested and what they want to do about the information you’ve sent them. (FACT - If you follow-up a mailing with a phone call you can increase the response rate by up to 1000%)
• We then report this back to you in a weekly spreadsheet report which you can use as a point of contact for existing customers or to help find new clients.

Remember if you want to eat an elephant for breakfast, eat it one bite at a time!

What are the benefits of 5 A Day

1. Assists in achieving your business targets
2. Keeps you in contact with existing clients
3. Creates new contacts with 1,200 potential clients
4. Give your business an up to date tailored database
5. Helps your business to find out your customers issues
6. Builds your Brand
7. Ongoing engagement strategy to find new business

5 A Day will put you at the forefront of your client’s mind when they need you

In addition we can add to this package to create a blend of marketing incorporating a

• Monthly/Quarterly newsletter
• Database creation
• Research Networking Organisations
• Adding to your Blog
• Email Marketing
• Press Coverage
• Add to your Social Media sites

We will create a marketing “smoothie”!

Well as someone who isn’t naturally organised it is something I am constantly working on. Rather than talking about ways to be more organised today I thought I would look at the benefits of being more organised, hopefully that will motivate me in my ongoing battle!

Good organisation and planning can help in all areas of our life, not just work.

Financially: If we budget and plan we save. If we know where things are we won’t double up by buying more. Planning what we want on shopping trips will save you making those impulsive buys – which usually turn out to be a mistake!

Our Relationships: Stress amongst family and friends can be due to our own unreliability and mess. Being disorganised leads to us blaming others and making excuses. You’ll be a better parent and role model, if you are less stressed and have more time for your kids.

Our Time: Looking for things and replacing things wastes time. It also robs you of time spent on more worthwhile activities. Work becomes easier when our time in the workplace is managed better. Prioritising can make the difference between time at work and time at home. Organised homes are often faster to clean and tidy.

Work & Study: Fail to plan, plan to fail. The disorganised rarely progress or advance to where they’d like to be. You will make a better impression and improve your status at work if you look like you are in control. You won’t be looked at as unreliable or unable to bring a task to completion.

Psychologically: It will improve your mental health as you will feel a sense of peace of mind. We all hate that little niggle that follows us around, when we know we are not on top of things! Know you have everything under control will increase your self-confidence and allow you to relax and enjoy your time more. You won’t feel useless, guilty, judged or criticized.

Health & Well Being: Health improves. You’ll lower your stress and have a cleaner home and work environment. Clean and ordered homes also equal less dust mites, mould and mildew due to them being better aired, and easier to clean. You will eat better due to planning your meals and grocery shopping and because your kitchen is organised, you’ll enjoy cooking healthy meals.

There we go six areas of your life that can be improved by being better organised.

So go forth and organise!

Lawyers shouldn’t be wasting their time formatting a document or making simple additions and changes. The Virtual Assistant can fix your documents and email them back right away – saving you time and frustration! A good VA can do for you just about everything someone in-house can do…although hot coffee to your desk is a challenge! And to be honest, so are photocopying and filing tasks required to be performed in-house!

The VA can be a life-saver, and can relieve the stress of

ballooning workflow. An established VA relationship will ensure more consistent full-time, part-time, temporary or supplementary help, and will reduce the high cost of hiring and instructing short-term and temporary staffing solutions. You will be working in the crisis with someone who has an existing working relationship with you. Appropriately assigned work sent to a VA can help both you, and any in-office legal assistant, to handle successfully the work load variables with ultimate flexibility. You have spontaneous additional help without the overhead costs, and without the hassle of orientation of temps.

Wow! Sounds good doesn’t it?

Here at My Virtual PA, we offer high calibre assistance on a flexible basis to fit in with your needs. If you would like to find out more about how we could help you we would love to come and talk to you about your business and what we could do to make your life easier. No obligation, just give us a call or send us an email.

Finally thanks you for taking the time to read this, and goodbye until next time when we will tell you a bit more about My Virtual PA and the virtues of going virtual. If for some reason, you really don’t want to hear from us again! Please unsubscribe by clicking the link at the bottom of the e-mail, the last thing we want to do is annoy you!

Kind Regards

Kim & Jessica

Telephone us now on 01179 113 557 or

E-mail info@myvirtualpa.ltd.uk

• Write your To Do list – This can be done on paper (but not on lots of small bits of paper!) or the computer.
• Tackle unwanted projects first – That way you aren’t dreading them, which can slow down your day.
• Organize paperwork
• Binders, folders & file racks are your friends. Label as many folders as you must, and find a system that works for you. Perhaps separating by due date works best, simply work on papers from the file with the nearest date. Maybe it would help to separate by project. Either way, stacks of paper everywhere with no rhyme or reason will slow you down each time you have to search for and gather what you need. Do the same for e-mails in your inbox. Create folders for messages relating to specific projects or topics for ease in searching and reference.
• Finish a task before starting a new one – This is my biggie, jumping from one thing to another!  Distractions are the quickest way to inefficiency. If a new task hits your inbox before you’ve finished your current task, pop it on your ‘To Do list’ and finish whatever you are doing first.
• Manage your time well – Schedule quiet time at work to accomplish tasks that need extra concentration. Do your most challenging work when your energy is at its highest; save less demanding work for other times. If you tend to procrastinate, focus on the sense of accomplishment you’ll feel when the job is done. Use commuter time to plan your day’s activities.
• Manage your mail and phone calls – Sort incoming mail into categories by priority or action. Use voice mail to screen phone calls.
• Use a calendar – Check your work calendar daily to review your activities and avoid conflicts. Write down all commitments in pencil rather than trusting your memory. Use planning and scheduling forms and software to help you map out long-term projects
• Check e-mail on a schedule – Most people waste time answering every e-mail or text message as it arrives. Even worse, they respond without fully thinking through their response. Create a schedule and fall into a routine for checking your in-box. To keep up with e-mail, organise it in file folders. If the message needs more thought, move it to your to-do list. ‘ If it’s for reference, print it out. If it’s a meeting, move it to your calendar
• Reduce clutter – Clear your workspace. Keep only the most critical items and information you need daily on the top of your desk. Archive resource materials you rarely use. throw out duplicate information and materials that will soon be outdated.
• Organize files by priority and keep the most important ones within arm’s reach. Spend 15 minutes at the end of each day clearing your desk.
• Delegate tasks – You don’t have to do it all yourself, it can actually be far more efficient and cost effective not to! Assign tasks to others where you can. If the the task is not on your level of expertise or your time would be better spent on other things, delegate. Quick plug here, you can delegate to us, here at My Virtual PA, we can help with all sorts of things!
• Schedule a 2pm check-in – Most people wait until the end of the day to tally what they’ve checked off their to-do list. A mid-afternoon review allows you to know what needs to get done before the end of the day. It also allows you to manage the expectations of others. If you make a goal of leaving work on time at least two days a week, a 2pm check-in should help you make this a reality!

“Worry is interest on money never borrowed.”
Unknown Author

Your action for today is to take three things that you are worried about. Focus on what’s in your hands, do something about it and let go of the rest.

However, I always had my blackberry close at hand to ensure that I didn’t miss that vital email or text message; and began to realise that working for yourself, means you never really step off the work ladder.

Maybe I need to employ a Virtual PA!

I started as a virtual PA 5 years ago, few people even knew what it was, most of my clients were Americans or been working in the States, but now there are up to 10,000 in the UK.

The recession is the best thing to have happened to the Virtual PA, as people are looking for new ways of working without taking on staff.  Using a Virtual Assistant is cheaper and you will often get more experience and skills then you could in a full-time PA, as well as only paying for the time needed, avoiding costly employer responsibilities such as sick, and maternity pay and paid holidays.

Technology means that a Virtual PA can work from home and in some cases miles away from their clients,  staying in contact via email, internet, Skype and phone.

The companies most likely to use a Virtual PA are start-up, entrepreneurs and consultants.

Services can include answering letters, phone calls, diary management, booking travel arrangements, and increasingly blogging or tweeting for clients.

The charge for a Virtual is normally between £20 and £30 per hour.