Today’s dynamic business environment creates many new challenges and exciting opportunities for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Thus, to be relevant, successful, and competitive in running any business, you need to understand the importance of productivity and efficiency to make full use of your talent and professional skills. In other words, it is about focusing on your strengths and making a significant contribution to the growth of your business.
What matters in outsourcing or sourcing globally is that they become a powerful tool to attract talent, increase productivity and shorten the cycle. “What’s more, outsourcing allows companies to reduce the cost of their services or products and promotes economic growth that reduces unemployment.
Suppose you feel that you are wasting too much time on repetitive activities, such as answering phone calls or making a calendar. In that case, you need a qualified assistant with excellent office and interpersonal skills.
A full-time assistant must be paid regardless of the amount of work, plus you still have to pay him in the event of his leave or sick leave, even if you have hired a temporary replacement. Therefore, it is more efficient to hire virtual help because you only pay for the time you spend.
What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant (VA) is a highly trained, experienced, skilled, and knowledgeable person who provides administrative, accounting, marketing, technical, creative, and/or personal support to any entrepreneur, business, or startup remotely.
For some time, demand for freelancers and personal assistants (PDs) from companies has been increasing, and small businesses have realized the value of flexibility and cost-effectiveness in their services.
Therefore, if you need additional secretarial or accounting support within your business but do not have the resources to hire other full-time employees or additional equipment and office space, hiring a virtual assistant is the right choice.
How can a virtual assistant increase your productivity?
Imagine how productive you can be when you deviate from other goals, representing time-consuming processes? If you are’nt sure about where to start, your best bet is to identify the areas that are wasting your time.
To find out how’re you spending your time, download a tool like Time Logger that records your activity. Complement this with questions such as which areas of your business do you dislike? And what will you do with your time?
Once you understand how you spend your time – you can start aligning it with your business goals. Now that you start to know what you want to delegate, you can turn your attention to filling that role for someone.
What Things Virtual Assistant Do?
As you can imagine, no two businesses are the same. Therefore, online support capabilities can cover a wider area. The following list gives you additional ideas on the types of jobs an online employee can help you with.
Administrative work
- Convert docs to pdf
- Clean and organize your inbox.
- Design and format slides for your next calendar event.
- Remind you about your important notes and events
- Schedule appointments and meetings in your calendar
- Search and book flights and accommodation for business travel
- Perform Data Entry
- Optimize Your Electronic Filing System
- Exchange conference notes
- Confirm and reply to customer email
Customer Service
- Answering Doubts of Consumers
- Online customer service (email, chat, and social media)
- Offline customer service (incoming/outgoing phone call)
- Appointment Registering services
Support and Project Management
- Provide project support
- Project Management
- Writing Reports
Marketing and events
- Create your next newsletter
- Organize your next event
- Flyer and brochure design
- communication plan
Blogging, Writing &nd Social Media
- Publish and Promote Your Next Ebook
- Submitting articles and guest posts
- Webinar installation and maintenance
- Internet advertising promotion
- Creation of Landing Page
- Editing and presenting podcasts on your platform
- Authenticate and edit documents
- Keyword research
- Blog assistant
- Copywriting
- Build and maintain your social media presence
- Content writing
- Proofreading
- Ghost Writing
Graphic Design And Creative
- Create a new logo
- Customize the template to match your logo design
- Graphic design
- Creating an ebook magazine
Development
- Contribute to the creation of a mobile application for your business
- Design and maintain your new company’s website
- Website or blog design
- Website or blog maintenance
- Coding
Financial Services
- Accounting and bookkeeping
- Issues invoices to customers
- Track your bill payments
- Manage your affiliate programs
- Pay Per Click Management
How can a virtual assistant help to grow your business?
This list is not exhaustive, of course. You can outsource several infinite skills related to your business needs. Determine what you want to do and ensure that your expectations align with freelancers’ skill sets and the self-employed online.
A virtual Assistant Can …
a) Answer the call
You can’t stop answering calls from your customers or potential business partners, but you might have days when the phone doesn’t stop ringing. Everyone can ask the same question, and while it is essential to provide answers, you can spend that time more productively. By hiring a virtual assistant, you can provide them all the information they need about your business and let them manage the phone for you. It will give you more time to focus on the most important tasks.
b) Organize your data
In today’s digital world, data entry and management are critical to efficient workflows, but they are quite repetitive and time-consuming. Hiring a virtual assistant will set your plate off. Even if you have many documents, you can scan them and send them to your assistant, who will take care of the rest. What’s more, they can organize your data the way you’ve always wanted but couldn’t find the time to go – all you need is some software or cloud storage solution, and it doesn’t matter.
c) Manage your social network
A social media presence is essential to build your brand image and promote your services, but writing blog posts and uploading photos may be too long for you. Even if you have a digital marketer, his knowledge and experience can solve more complex problems. Therefore, give your virtual assistant access to your social media account and only request a report.
d) Do research for you
Do you want to study your competitors, find software that will improve your company’s processes, or obtain the information needed to create a new proposal? This can be easy and fast with a qualified assistant who understands the Internet and can produce a short report for you.
e) Manage secondary operations
There are specific tasks that often fall on the shoulders of business owners, especially in small companies. If you run a small business, you probably manage your own calendars, appointments, and emails, prepare all the paperwork or even do your accounting and payments. As long as all this must be done, it is not your responsibility – unless you want time for something else. Virtual assistants are specifically trained to run many of these processes from behind the scenes.
f) Help you save money
Virtual assistants are not the only professionals who can help your business run and grow smoothly. The only way to hire a virtual assistant is financially beneficial. You only pay for their services when you need them, so you can adjust your schedule to fit your current workload. You have to pay a fixed monthly salary with a full-time employee, no matter how much work it does.
Also, when you decide to work with a virtual assistant service provider, you don’t have to worry about your administrator getting sick or going on vacation – always be prepared to change that. And even if you hire an independent contractor, you won’t have to pay it while you’re on vacation or sick leave.
g) Virtual Assistants Will Help Your Business Grow
As a business owner, you already have a lot. You may think that you need to do everything yourself to run the company smoothly, but handing over the secret tasks to a fair and effective manager. A virtual assistant can be an incredible asset to your company because you do not need to have a full-time employee complete the work.
Virtual assistants are qualified and experienced professionals trained to make your professional life so much easier. Instead of wasting your time and energy on irrelevant tasks and bureaucracy, you can focus on what really matters – growing your business.