When you’re supporting clients who aren’t used to the aid of an Executive Virtual Assistant, they may not be thinking of the best way to close out their year so they’re setting the stage for an impactful, profitable next year. As a forward-thinking EVA who provides this white-glove service, you have the opportunity to help your clients with this!
As you’re doing an end-of-year wrap-up, consider these 6 things so you can create a holistic picture of where they’ve been and guide them to an even brighter future.
Reflect on the Past Year
First thing’s first…reflection! Without knowing where the ship was supposed to go, you don’t know how close you got to the target. Guide your clients through a self-assessment so they can share how they feel like they’ve supported themselves and their business. What went well, what didn’t go well, what could be improved…all of these are questions worth asking your clients…and yourself! Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, determine whether there’s an opportunity for further training and continued education.
Understand Communication and Feedback
While I always encourage you to be in communication with your clients, it’s important to know how they like to receive communication. It’s kind of like knowing your partner’s love language so you know that they’re fully feeling the love you’re giving them.
Discussing that and setting clear expectations is helpful when moving forward together. You can also ask your clients to do this for their clients so they continue to be valuable to the people they support.
- Celebrate successes and address challenges
- Determine how you’ll move forward with challenges together
- Set goals for improvement
- Discuss what you could be doing to support them even more fully
Review and Report on Financials
One of the big pieces of whether a business is a business or a hobby is financials. There are a ton of reports that you can pull for your clients, but make sure you have at least a profit and loss statement. It would also be helpful to pull reports on time, most profitable services, and how long clients have stayed with them and how much they’ve historically paid (AKA: their Lifetime Value or LTV).
Audit and Optimize Systems
Part of being an effective EVA is in how proactively helpful you’re being to your clients. Instead of letting them discover something isn’t working and coming to you, you should always be auditing and looking for ways to improve. That said, the end of the year is a great time to consider what programs, software, and services your client is using and where they could be using these tools better. Ask them what they need the outcome to be and ensure that the tools are delivered.
- Check for broken integrations and automations
- Look for redundancies in programs, tools, etc
- Recommend relevant upgrades or changes (look for Black Friday and holiday special pricing for programs you use and want to keep!)
- Research migration options
Archive, Refresh, and Back Up Documents
Along with always checking that your tools and software are up to date and working properly, the same goals for always making sure your SOPs and workflows are still effective and updated. Now is the time to make sure how your clients are operating in their business is still working as they want them to and if not, find a solution that works better for their process.
- Identify what documents are old and back up then clear the clutter
- Clear out duplicates and empty “Untitled Document” documents in GDrive
- Sweep your Project Management Software by removing old projects, etc
- Update internal documents: templates, SOPs, etc
- Update external documents: contracts, welcome packets, etc
- Refresh Success Schedules (learn more about setting up a Success Schedule here!)
Plan for Next Year
Get into the nitty gritty details of what next year looks like for your client. While you’ll already have covered a lot of this information, make sure you set time aside in your year-end-wrap-up to talk about where your client wants to go next year. Part of being their go-to, their right-hand, their second brain is actually knowing what’s in their brain!
- Set personal and professional goals for the coming year
- Create space in their calendar for key dates: launches, vacations, conferences, etc
- Understand expectations around how they want your help in their business
This year-end-wrap-up will help your clients understand where they’ve been so they can use that information to help them easily navigate to their next level of success. You can also use these steps in your business planning. Treat yourself like the client and walk yourself through these 5 steps to make your own wrap up and planning easier!
If you want to make next year the best year in your Executive Virtual Assistant business, join the S3 Society: Systems, Support, and Success for Next-Level VAs! It’s possible to be less overwhelmed, sell with confidence, and make more money in your Virtual Assistant business. Now is a great time to create a virtual assistant business you are seriously proud of with clients who want you by their side. Let me show you how.
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