Dreading the Xmas slump which affects almost all virtual assistants? Kill the dead time by heading it off at the pass – and avoid the big hole in your cashflow come January!
Firstly, get your plans in place early – to avoid the slump you need to start planning well in advance… It’s not too late for Christmas 2011 if you start working NOW! But it’s even better if you can have this all in place for Christmas 2012, so don’t ignore it.
Accept that there will be a quiet period over Christmas with people closing for the holidays, but there’s also opportunities:
- Holiday Cover – ask your clients if they need extra phone cover, more tasks completing whilst they are on holiday etc.
- Cyber Monday – this is officially the busiest internet shopping day of the year and is set to land on Monday 28th November 2011. Tell your clients about it – get them to drive traffic to their sites with email newsletters, social media campaigns and extra customer service/order processing for that period.
- Last posting dates – Tell your clients about the last posting dates for Christmas – they are sooner than you think! They need to organise Christmas cards, gifts and any orders which need dispatched before Christmas.
- Send out your own greetings – do this early, and tell your clients when you’ll be working and when you’ll be closed to avoid a last minute rush job spoiling your holiday! It could be the prompt they need to brief that big project!
- New Year’s Projects – Put in a meeting with your client to discuss plans for 2012. Lots of people make New Year’s Resolutions to be more organised and there’s usually a quiet period after the holidays before everyone gets up to full speed.