Did you ever think about the steps you can take to enhance knowledge and expertise pool within your company, or industry or community? If yes, you’ve already made the initial step to becoming a better leader and successful entrepreneur.
Becoming a successful entrepreneur and better leader is a hot topic for a good reason, and it starts here.
Every industry including healthcare, e-commerce, insurance, recruitment is facing relentless, dog-eat-dog competition. Standing apart from the crowd is tough and needs strategic decisions, innovation in business and great support experience for your customers.
However, if you are too stuck in day-to-day business and couldn’t spare time for the planning and execution of next best in industry, you are hindering your business growth. Don’t worry, start delegating, build partnerships, take expert help, and do what you are meant to do. FOLLOW YOUR VISION.
Delegation can be by hiring in-house employees, hiring specialized experts and SMEs and delegating to virtual assistants.
This is our third edition of Virtual Assistant know-how series and we will be sharing our thoughts on some most frequently asked questions around Virtual Assistants.
Why hire a virtual assistant?
Hiring a virtual assistant has many benefits, certainly. These virtual assistants are cost-effective than the domestic employees and offer flexibility to multi-task across different aspects of your business.
Also, it is essential for entrepreneurs to get a grip on the best assets – time & money. The entrepreneurs spend days and hours while locked in time taking administrative tasks such as email management, CRM management, customer support, etc. To keep up the progress, money, & time, you need to consider hiring external help and learning to delegate.
How to find a virtual assistant?
Before you try and find a virtual assistant, you would need to identify your needs. Based on the identified needs you will have to define, what kind of virtual assistance you need. For example, for very short term contingency plans you may want to hire a freelancer. However, for more recurring needs and to have a permanent solution, I would advise going through a managed service provider.
You can get a freelancer from reputed and popular crowdsourcing platforms like Upwork, Fiverr etc. Make sure you take a deep look at the background of the virtual assistant, reviews, experience, and hourly rates.
To work with a managed service provider, focus on parameters like years in business, team size, dedicated staffing solutions, management bandwidth, the flexibility of plans, availability of a trial or demo and most importantly ability to scale with you.
How much does the virtual assistant costs?
Them: “Ron, I’m panicking with business work. I need help.”
Me: “Great! That’s a good place to start.”
Them: “But I’m pretty sure I can’t afford it.”
Me: “Well, my friend, that’s where you’re wrong.”
Them: “Do tell how!”
Often, there is a concern that people cannot afford a virtual assistant. And, VAs have varying cost structures. It is undoubtedly possible to find a VA that meets your needs and remain within the budget. However, there are different types of VAs affecting the overall cost. Below, we are giving close attention to the way it is structured.
Agencies/Companies: The virtual assistant companies bring affordable pricing of hourly and monthly plans. Additionally, they bring support systems and more availability of VAs so that you can scale your business with virtual help.
Freelancers/Independent Contractors: They can be cheaper due to the low overhead, and being a one-person shop, it limits availability and response time.
How can a virtual assistant revolutionize your business?
If you are wondering, “how can someone while performing exact functions that your in-house team performs revolutionize your business”? We have the answer here for you.
The virtual assistant brings precious work experience and training on the table. They have a unique understanding of the needs of a business and day to day administrative activities. Let us explain with the help of a few examples – if there is a project that you have wanted to do, the VA can assist by conducting research, perform the tasks of recurring nature, optimize raw data, schedule meetings and project management while helping you focus on core business functions.
Moreover, if you’re very busy to remember the important dates, your VA can assist by performing calendar management. Having virtual assistants besides can streamline all the business tasks and let you shift the focus towards business growth.
What is a virtual personal assistant?
For those who feel mentally overloaded and work seems to invade the personal time, virtual personal assistants are very convenient. These people with years of experience of learning personal preferences are expert in anticipating the needs. In addition to it, they can work with a variety of individual tasks including appointment setting, making reservations, travel booking, event planning, organizing bills, etc.
It is also feasible for the personal assistant to pay bills of utilities, cell phone, car insurance, etc., and keep everything tracked as well as organized in the spreadsheet for your see. In short, the virtual personal assistants can perform all sorts of activities that otherwise eat up your valuable time.
Which virtual assistants are the best?
As a professional or business owner, you must now be very excited to start working with a VA. But, there must be concerns regarding choosing the “right” person for the job.
Also, in the online work context considering deadlines and deliverables, it is straight forward to creep if the collaboration does not go smooth. Needless to mention, getting VA onboard and up-to-speed can take a lot of energy, time, and even money. Therefore, the virtual assistants that match up to requirements within the portfolio, meet the “must-have” skills, and quickly passes the trial project are eligible to collaborate with you.
Now, it is the time to decide, hire and get a virtual assistant to your business
Okay, so now you have answers of some more questions about virtual assistants, and now it is the decision time.
Though it might appear stressful and daunting to think about the training and onboarding involved in hiring the virtual assistants, you only need to get over the issues and make it happen. In the long run, virtual assistants can save a lot of time spent on admin tasks while helping you focus on existing and new clients.
Oh, and by the way, you can always check the list of other questions in our previous blog, and yes, we will be happy to answer questions you might have!
Read More: 5 Reasons Why Most Companies are Hiring a Virtual Assistant
