How to Prioritize Client Work as a Virtual Assistant

So you’ve taken on several clients and it’s getting tricky balancing all of the work. Whose tasks do you give attention to first? How much time each day do you spend on each client?

It’s definitely something you have to think about as you grow your business and bring on more clients. Obviously, organization is a huge part of this but it’s not the main focus of today’s post. How you stay organized is also going to vary for each Virtual Assistant, so we’ll leave that to you to figure out. Just make sure you DO have some sort of organizational system in place when handling multiple clients. But today we’re talking about prioritizing client work when you have multiple clients.

So how do you prioritize?

I’m going to break this down two ways: 

1. The type of task 

and

2. How much time the client has retained of yours for the month 

For the sake of explaining both of these, let’s imagine you are a Virtual Assistant with 5 clients. I’ll explain each scenario in this context:

Client 1: Retains 5hrs of support a month

Client 2: Retains 10 hrs of support a month

Client 3: Retains 20hrs of support a month

Client 4: Also Retains 20hrs of support a month

Client 5: Retains 40hrs of support a month

So let’s start with scenario #1…

Prioritizing client work by the type of tasks

It’s really straightforward when you think about it but let’s really break it down. You wake up and check your inbox…

You have an email from Client 1, 4, and 5. All 4 are scheduling emails.

Client 1: needs you to schedule a lunch with their friend for two weeks from now. 

Client 4: needs you to reschedule a call for today.

Client 5: needs you to schedule calls with each of their team members, all to happen in the next week.

You have an ongoing project for Client 2 that involves organizing their filing system in Google Drive. 

And then you have an email from Client 3 asking if you can book a flight for next week.

What do you do first?

First, I might send a note to each client letting them know I’m on it and for Client 3, letting them know when you will have flight options over to them. Even though this might not seem necessary, it keeps your client from worrying if you saw your tasks or are even working on them. It just creates that trust and responsiveness in the relationship. 

Now moving on, there is more than one right answer to what task we knock out first but here is how I would personally break this down.

Scheduling or time-sensitive matters always go first. For the obvious reason being…they are time-sensitive. People’s calendars book quickly, as soon as you can get a scheduling task taken care of, the better. Otherwise, you may be booking something a month out that was requested for a week from now. Take care of scheduling items asap.

Also, these don’t take a ton of time, so it makes sense to clear your to-do’s of these items as soon as they come up.

Pro-tip: Sometimes coordinating can involve lots of back and forth. When you are coordinating multiple events for one client (i.e. client 5) block the times you offer up to the person you are coordinating with. This way, you don’t offer the same times to multiple people and have them all come back confirming the same time! Once you lock in a time with someone, remove any blocks of times that they did not choose so you free up your client’s calendar again. 

Let’s break down even further how to prioritize these scheduling tasks. As I mentioned, these don’t take a ton of time to knock off your list (or at least initiate the coordination process) but sometimes certain scheduling requests can trump one another.

In the examples I gave, Client 4 trumps all of the other scheduling requests. Why?

Because it’s the most time-sensitive. The event is happening today, so you want to give the other party as much of a heads up as possible. 

The next one to knock off the list could be either Client 1 or 5. Client 1’s request is a quick interaction, so I personally would probably get the coordinating started with the other party since there might be some back and forth (locking in a date/time and location). Client 5 will take more time but is more time-sensitive and has more detail to the coordination process, so I want to give my full attention to ensure it’s a seamless interaction with my client’s team. 

Now that these items are out of the way, let’s move on to the next task. Client 2’s ongoing file organization project and Client 3’s travel.

What is the most time-sensitive?

Well, flights can change and book up quickly, plus this trip is next week…so I would get crackin’ on finding some new flight options. Once you’ve sent the flight options over and before you dive into Client 2’s request…

I would check my inbox for any responses to the scheduling emails from earlier. Chances are, you’ve gotten some responses. Take care of those to keep those items moving forward efficiently as possible and then get to work on your ongoing task for Client 2.

Ideally, you have a due date for this project with Client 2, so you can plan out how much time you should spend on it daily but there is no rush each day to actually get it done by a certain time. This is a huge benefit to having clients with fewer hours, they generally don’t need lots of time-sensitive items.

This leads me to the second scenario you should consider when prioritizing tasks from multiple clients.

Prioritizing by how much of your time the client retains each month

Ideally, you don’t have to consider this because clients like Client 1, 2, or even 3 + 4 won’t send several time-sensitive tasks a day.

Now, don’t get me wrong…you COULD have clients who do this, thinking they should get immediate attention at all times. I’ll cover in a bit how to address this.

And we kind of covered this example earlier with Client 2 and 3 but since Client 3’s task was more time-sensitive, it wasn’t a tough call.
So let’s think of another scenario that makes you think about how to prioritize based on client retainer.
Let’s say Client 1 emails you and says:
“Hey, I need you to hop on a call with me and one of my team members to take notes. It’s in one hour and the call will last for about an hour.”

The problem? You have a meeting with Client 5 at that time.

So we prioritize Client 5 because they pay for more of your time, so they naturally get priority.

How do you explain this to Client 1?

Well IF they push back on the fact that you can’t jump on a call last minute like this, then you can explain that you would love to accommodate last-minute items like this but because they only retain 5hrs of your time each month, the rest of your time is reserved for clients with larger retainers. If they anticipate needing more on-demand help like this, they might consider upping their monthly retainer so you can reserve more time for them. And that generally speaking, 5 hours a month is for clients with non-time-sensitive tasks/projects or a handful of scheduling items that take no more than 15min a day.

This really shouldn’t happen too often but when it does, it’s probably the only time you’ll really run into a situation that takes more than a few seconds of thought on how to proceed.

This is why I highly recommend setting expectations with clients before working together. If you get on an intro call with them and they give you a long list of things they need help with but then say they only want 5hrs of support a month, you should be setting the expectation right there by saying something like: 

“Got it! So for 5hrs a month, since that breaks down to roughly 15min a day, I can offer you basic low maintenance email management or calendar management. Or I can take on one or two non-time-sensitive tasks/projects each month. But keep in mind, that takes time away from any scheduling or email management. If you want me to tackle everything on your list at once, we may need to consider a larger retainer… But I completely understand if you have a budget you are trying to stay in and if that’s the case, we can tackle one thing at a time, I just want to make sure I set the right expectations for this type of retainer.”

Have you had any encounters like this with clients? Let us know how you handled it!