You wear a lot of hats when running a small business. You’re running marketing campaigns and working on your company’s growth.
You also might be developing your products and services, and the long list goes on.
Hiring a virtual assistant can make your life easier, considering the amount of work you have to put in.
Anytime you are working in your business and not on your business you are losing profits and not growing.
Anytime you are working on tasks that are below your paygrade and not high value intensive, you are losing money and wasting precious time.
Virtual assistants can help small businesses accomplish a variety of tasks. They can be anything from social media marketing and making calls to scheduling appointments.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through why virtual assistants for small businesses are important. Why they are good for your bottom line and how they can help you grow:
What companies need virtual assistants?
Every company benefits from hiring virtual assistants, especially small business owners. Here are the top industries that benefit the most from its services:
Virtual Assistants for Real Estate Agents and Companies
As a real estate professional, your main focus is offering clients quality service. Also, ensuring everything meets their needs. But chances are, real estate agents can’t do everything on their own. Effectively delegating tasks is essential. That’s why considering working with a VA can help you significantly.
They’ll help you out with tasks such as:
- Appointment scheduling
- Crafting emails
- Cold calling
- Publishing ads
- Social media management
- Lead Generation
- Dominating your local Google My Business map listing
- Providing general administration
- Transaction Coordination
- Customer service
- CRM implementation and follow-up
For more information about how a virtual assistant can help your real estate business to grow click here.
Business Start-ups
Are you an entrepreneur wanting to grow your business? When starting, you probably can’t afford to hire any full-time employees.
But with new orders coming in and a growing customer base to please, that’s where a good VA is valuable to your business.
Burn out is quite common for many small business entrepreneurs. By outsourcing these day-to-day tasks, you avoid the risk of burning out. You'll focus on important business aspects, propelling you to success.
When you spend time working on all the tasks in your business, you will soon realize there are not enough hours in a day to accomplish all those tasks.
You also realize that you will be putting important tasks on the back burner thinking you will get back to it. The problem is, unless you can duplicate yourself, you won’t get those tasks back on your to do list.
A virtual personal assistant can help you with tasks such as:
- Administrative tasks
- Bookkeeping
- Calendar management
- Content creation
- Customer service
- Executing marketing campaigns
- Podcast maintenance
- Publishing ads
- Social media management
- Website updates
- Writing emails
Information Technology (IT) Industry
If one industry hasn’t slowed down during and after the pandemic, it’s the IT industry. Your company is probably working around the clock providing IT services to business operations. Thus, making them connected with secure and functional systems.
With the help of a virtual assistant, you can:
- Offer excellent website admin development
- Customer administrative and technical support
- Creation of graphics, slides, etc.
- Professional support
Digital Marketing Industry
If you’re in digital marketing, a massive chunk of your time is likely focused on social media. Or any other online platform where your target market is. As you know, most of these tasks are time-consuming. If not done correctly, this can yield disappointing results.
So, you have to work with a VA with excellent digital marketing skills.
They can help you with:
- Ad posting
- Blogging
- Content creation
- Design
- Sourcing photos for quotes
- Market analysis
- Social media posting
- Social media campaigns
Medical
Since online services were introduced, it’s now possible for VAs to integrate with medical practices.
A virtual assistant will perform a variety of tasks such as:
- Answering calls for appointments
- Data entry
- Organizing files
- Returning patient calls
- Running a website
- Responding to emails
Non-Profit Organizations
Non-profit organizations focus on making a sustainable impact in their industry. But without spending a lot of resources.
Here are tasks that virtual assistants can help out:
- Responding to emails
- Handing FAQs
- Responding to queries and questions about the non-profit organization
- Handling requests or complaints
- Doing follow-ups
Attorneys and Law Practitioners
All the paperwork needed that goes with running a law firm can be draining. Especially if you try to handle everything by yourself.
While hiring an in-house employee to do the work is tempting, it’s not always the best option. Hiring a VA is excellent and cost-effective. It also makes the hectic day-to-day life of a lawyer more manageable.
More and more lawyers are now seeking the help of VAs to lighten their load, helping them with the following:
- Assist with invoicing
- Client communication
- Calendar management
- Data entry
- Email management
- Help out with billing entries
- Keeping website up-to-date
- Legal transcriptions
Amazon Sellers
Do you own an Amazon store? Selling on the platform can be a challenge. That’s because Amazon has one of the most competitive marketplaces in the world.
To help you in this highly competitive marketplace, you’ll need to hire someone to help. An Amazon virtual assistant is a great way to grow your business. Your VA will do various tasks related to your business.
Here are some of the things a virtual assistant can do for you:
- Research activity
- Customer support
- Product listings and optimization
- Running ad campaigns
- Order processing
- Translation
Business Coaches and Consultants
If you’re a business coach like me, you probably spend most of your waking hours supporting people. You’re helping them build and grow their brands. You’re streamlining business processes, improving your client operations, and enhancing profitability. You’re also implementing different strategies.
By having virtual assistants work for me, I can focus on the critical aspects of my business. It also helped me regain another valuable asset - time!
You can outsource a virtual assistant to help you with the following tasks:
- Schedule client meetings and follow-ups
- Social media management
- Brand marketing
- Keeping track of expenses
- Onboard new clients
- Respond to inquiries
- And many more
Accounting and Financial Executives and Firms
Accountants manage and interpret clients’ records. Many accountants and financial managers are now considering hiring VA. This saves them time and reduces their workload. The ideal VA to work with should have at least a basic knowledge of the finance sector.
They should also be comfortable doing the following tasks:
- Scheduling client meetings and follow-ups
- Data entry
- Maintaining databases
- Running reports
- Do general administrative tasks
- Submitting payrolls to 3rd party software
- Handling accounts receivable
Is a virtual assistant good for business?
An excellent virtual assistant lets you spend more time doing the things you love! By getting rid of the time-consuming tasks out the way, you can focus on the bigger picture.
A VA as part of your team can work with you in what direction you wish to take for your business. Whether this is finding new clients or customers or adapting a new strategy. The best thing about it is that you have more flexibility and time.
A VA can help you earn more. You’ll be able to maximize your productivity. You’ll be able to outsource tasks you don’t enjoy, tasks that you aren’t good at.
How can a virtual assistant help small businesses?
You’ve probably started your business with a bold vision and big plans as an entrepreneur. But it’s also easy to be bogged down with all the mundane work that comes with building your business empire.
I’ve been there. While these essential tasks can’t be ignored, a great VA can fill your most urgent needs.
If you’re still questioning whether hiring a VA is for you, I broke down the seven biggest benefits of hiring one:
1. Virtual assistants help you regain more work-life balance
As the world shifts to remote work, more and more people have experienced burnout. In fact, according to a 2021 study, approximately 66% of managers reported burnout.
Having a more balanced schedule in your work day can help you focus on what’s important. Can a VA manage your schedule? Of course! After briefing them on your needs, a qualified VA can start managing your calendar in no time!
They can also handle basic customer service phone calls with customers. Your in-house team can focus on other vital aspects of their work, ramping up productivity. Managing your schedule is one of the benefits of hiring a VA.
2. You’re free to work on high-level tasks
Mundane, low-impact tasks are essential if you run a business. But do you need to spend most of your work week doing them? A study by McKinsey shows that professionals spend 28% of the workweek managing email.
Setting up phone calls, managing inventory, and ordering supplies don’t need much attention from a skilled person. These are still essential to make your business thrive. A remote assistant can perfectly handle this for you.
Once a trained VA handles this, you’ll have more time to handle high-level tasks.
These include:
- Training new hires
- Lead nurturing
- Closing sales
- Budget resources
- Networking
3. A virtual assistant enhances your current workflows
Do you continue to stick to the “do everything yourself approach?” Are you pulling out 100-hour work weeks?
Chances are, you don’t have enough time to evaluate and enhance your workflows. Especially if you kept doing repetitive, low-impact tasks. This doesn’t give you enough time to figure out your business direction and strategy.
Virtual Assistants free up more time in your hands, getting these menial tasks done for you. This gives you plenty of time to study what’s working and needs improvement. It allows you to pinpoint any inefficiencies, which significantly enhances workflows.
It gives you enough headspace to devise new projects and make decisions. It’s also easier to think of innovative ways to grow your business.
4. You get to rely on a professional
A reliable, professional VA usually has the skills and years of experience to help you reach your goals. You can rely on them for copywriting, marketing, social media, and HR. Even accounting and bookkeeping!
You can look for VAs to help you do general admin tasks. They can also do customer service assistance and website management. There’s a sheer level of talented VAs who will help you get work done.
Hiring a VA is a significant investment you can make for your business!
5. Less hassle, more cost-effective
You’ll likely need a pair of extra hands as your business scales. But chances are, you don’t have enough resources to hire a full-time employee. The best alternative is to determine how much you can afford to complete all these tasks. Then, find a reputable virtual assistant to help you achieve these goals.
You don’t need to consider benefits, taxes, or be locked in long-term contract agreements.
6. Maximize your productivity
Hiring a virtual assistant is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It helped me maximize my productivity without hurting my company’s bottom line. As long as they’re properly onboarded and trained, you can expect better-delivered output. You’ll also experience higher productivity.
7. Allows you to focus on your strengths
You can’t be a master of everything, no matter how hard you try. You have to delegate tasks to people who specialize in those tasks. Moreover, these individuals enjoy getting the work done. So, consider this for every task of the process needed to run your business.
Hiring people to do the extra work frees up your time. You can then use this time to do the activities you’re actually good at!
Helpful Tips for Hiring a Virtual Assistant
While there are options for remote assistants, finding the right candidate is daunting. However, one thing’s for sure, hiring a top VA takes your business to the next level.
That’s why you need to plan properly. This makes it easy to determine which remote assistant is right for you. While the process may seem tedious, the payoff is worth it.
You don’t have to worry about hiring and firing or finding the perfect virtual assistant to outsource your work to because our company does it all for you.
Here are some tips for hiring the right VA for your small business:
1. List down the tasks that you do in a week.
2. Circle each task that is repetitive - these will be the tasks that you delegate.
3. Ask yourself, “Can I create a system for this task that is repetitive and easy to delegate?”
4. Create that system by recording yourself doing the task. This is the fastest way to accomplish this.
5. Go through our quick and easy 4-step onboarding system here: http://delegatemytasks.com/ready-to-get-started-start-here/
6. After you choose your hours or package you need, schedule your call with our COO, Chief Daisy. She will guide you through the rest of the onboarding process.
Hiring The Right Virtual Assistant for Your Small Business
If you decide to do this all by yourself, it will take a lot more work. Instead, save a lot of time and frustration by hiring our full service team of virtual professionals.
We’ve hired and trained the most talented VAs so that they’re ready to take on your tasks from day one!
Still not sure what you can delegate right away? Get our free list of 21 Things To Delegate Today, by clicking here.