Prepare your business for Christmas

With Christmas now less than 40 days away, it’s time to prepare your business for Christmas. Here are some areas for consideration so you are not caught out.

Office Shut Down

If you close your business over the Christmas period but still require work to be done, clearly identify what tasks need to be completed or maintained during that period, and start looking at what resources you can use to ensure smoothly sailing. You could consider hiring the services of a virtual assistant to handle phone calls, customer emails, diary management or social media.

You may decide to go cold turkey and shut up shop for the Christmas/New Year period. If this is the case, then consider notifying your customers as early as possible to avoid dissatisfied customers.

Emails

You should consider setting up your auto-responders on your emails or adding to your email signature a short highlighted message advising people you’ll be closed or away for a certain period of time. Consider starting this notification from now if you’re close from Christmas eve, so ample notice has been given.

Another options is to also send your customers and suppliers a specific email advising them of your Christmas/New Years plans, so they are well informed.

If you need emails to be attended to, whilst your away hire a virtual assistant to manage them for you. So customers are still receiving the attention needed.  Ensure your supply a full brief outlining all possible queries your virtual assistant may face from customers.

Telephones

If you need your telephones managed whilst your away, set this up well in advance so you can provide a full brief on the types of queries likely to be received.   You have several options for this, 1) outsource to a service that offer reception work, or 2) leave a recorded message advise of your closure and don’t forget to advise what they can do in the event of an emergency.

Social Media

The last thing you want to be doing over your Christmas/New Year break is worry about social media posts. Pre-schedule as many posts as you can to cover the duration. Otherwise, consider outsourcing this to be managed and monitored whilst your away.


Other areas to prepare your business for Christmas are;

Christmas Cards

We do live in a digital age where you can send electronic Christmas, but many still love the gesture of a posted Christmas card being received. Consider what works for you and what represents a good reflection of your business. Printed Christmas cards generally need to be ordered and organised late October to early November, so you need to get a move on.

Christmas Functions

Are you the type of business that hosts Christmas functions for staff or possibly customers? Depending on your guest list size, you might want to get onto this sooner rather than later. Venue tend to be booked nearly a year in advanced. If you’re planning on hosting a simple dinner party, again book in early. Majority of venues are booked up most December.

New Year Set Ups

Start the New Year the right way, ready to go and NOT deep in backlogged work from the previous year.   So plan what you need to get done before the year is out, delegate or outsource anything that will help you free up some of your time to meet your big deadlines. Review how you’re aiming to start in the new year and get any preliminary work done to have you are ready to make 2015 the year to be!

Knowing that your business is prepared for Christmas, you’ll be able to relax and enjoy the break.

Need tips on how to successfully manage your Virtual Assistant? Browse our website www.callarup.com to see the different skill sets of the personal assistant you can work with and let us know how we can help.