How to choose what goes first
Three tests. Does it happen every week? Could you explain it to someone in fifteen minutes? Would a mistake be annoying rather than damaging? Anything that passes all three is a good first handover. Save the judgement-heavy work until your VA knows your business.
The ten, roughly in order
- Inbox triage. Not answering everything, just sorting: what's urgent, what's routine, what's noise. Add drafted replies for the routine ones once they know your tone.
- Calendar management. Booking, rescheduling, confirming and protecting the blocks you actually need for deep work.
- Appointment reminders. Confirmations and reminders, plus rebooking anyone who cancels. It pays for itself quickly.
- Missed call follow-up. Returning calls within the hour turns missed calls into booked work instead of lost leads.
- Lead follow-up. Every enquiry gets a same-day reply and lands in your CRM tagged properly.
- Invoicing and payment chasing. Sending invoices on schedule and following up politely on overdue ones. Most owners hate this job and delay it.
- Data entry and CRM hygiene. Keeping records current so your reports and follow-up lists are actually usable.
- Social posting. Posting from a plan and answering comments and DMs. Strategy stays with you at first.
- Research. Suppliers, venues, competitors, prospect lists. Time-consuming, easy to brief.
- Reporting. A simple weekly summary of what happened, so you stop wondering and start checking.
How to hand something over properly
The handover is what decides whether this works. It takes less time than people expect:
- Record yourself doing it once. A three-minute screen recording beats a page of written instructions.
- Say what "done" looks like. Be specific: inbox at zero by 10am, every lead replied to within four hours.
- Agree what they decide and what they ask about. Ambiguity here is where most delegation fails.
- Check daily for the first week, then weekly. Catch drift early, then get out of the way.
What to keep for yourself
Pricing decisions, hiring, anything clinical or legal, and relationships with your biggest clients. Delegation is about removing the routine so you have room for the judgement calls, not handing over the judgement.
Most owners find their first three handovers buy back 8 to 12 hours a week. That's the point where the next ones become obvious.
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