(Straight from your EAs themselves)

We asked our EAs what makes a client great to work with. So, if you’ve ever wondered how to get the most out of your EA partnership (and make life easier for both of you), here’s your cheat sheet.

No one likes to talk about what happens when things go wrong. A crisis, a sudden resignation, a family emergency, a market shake-up, whatever it is, your business is either ready for it, or it’s not.

Recently, we had one of those moments. The kind that tests your systems, your culture, and your people all at once. And here’s what we learned:

Famous last words of a thousand overwhelmed founders.

It starts innocently enough. A quick reply here. A calendar tweak there. Maybe a follow-up email you meant to delegate, but… it’ll only take a sec, right?

If time is money – and it is – sales processes sure do waste a lot of it.

According to Salesforce, the average rep spends just 28% of the day on sales activities like prospecting and interacting with customers.

Where does the other 72% go? Most of it goes to administrative tasks like planning, generating proposals and entering data in the CRM.

Consider a high-value sales rep’s salary – that’s a fair bit of dosh for data entry. Not to mention the cost of missed revenue opportunities.

One study estimated companies may lose as much as 38% of potential revenue every quarter to inefficiencies in their sales process.

Taken all together, it’s pretty clear the fastest way to fatten up the bottom line is to slim down reps’ to-do lists.

So, you’ve decided to work with an Executive Assistant—awesome! As we always say, you don’t need much to get started. Just a good attitude, a rough idea of what you want to delegate, and your big boy pants so you can actually put some trust in this new stranger suddenly managing your life.

But if you want to turn that EA relationship into a legendary one—think cheese paired with wine—it’s going to take a bit more than that…