Do you need assistance in your everyday tasks as a business owner? A Virtual Assistant (VA) may be the answer.
Woman Without Virtual Assistant
A Virtual Assistant is someone you can employ to support different business operations from a remote location. Startups can hire VAs to help with customer support, inbox management, and social media contents. They can help virtually in any tasks that don’t require their physical presence.
Some VAs are professionals in handling one particular task or industry. For instance, some VAs are specialists in marketing while some others specialize in tech, and so on. Employing these types of specialists cost a little more. There are typical VAs who are versatile and can perform various tasks and work with different businesses across different industries.
VAs have been operational since the 1980s when companies like Home Secretaries and ABSSI springs up to assist moms searching for work-from-home jobs. Nevertheless, the VAs business became more famous the introduction of the internet and online business operations.
Today, the trend is still growing in popularity. Some statistics state that by 2021, a quarter or more of digital workers will employ a VA to assist them daily.
If you’re operating a small business and yet to jump into the bandwagon of hiring VAs, here are key reasons why you should do so now.
1. To Establish Business Processes
Businesses lose about 20-30 percent of their revenue to inefficiencies every year. Most times, these inefficiencies happen because there are no laid-down processes. Processes can mean anything, ranging from automated invoicing to canned responses in Gmail.
The reason why many business owners fail to have processes in place is that they’re spending much of their time working on their business operations. By hiring a VA, you have these processes in place without having to manage them yourself.
Pencil down a list of the process you would like to be in place and give them to your VA. Alternatively, you can hire someone with experience in setting up reliable business processes to help you identify such inefficiencies. When you do that, it will accelerate your business efficiency and solidify your productivity.
2. To Assist in Filtering Communication
It is not necessary that you respond to every live chat, calls, or e-mail messages; people do receive a quick reply or canned response that doesn’t demand your attention.
When you hire a VA to manage your communication methods, they will help to filter that message that doesn’t need a reasonable response. That will help you to focus more on essential messages while making sure your message inbox is not overcrowded with unnecessary messages.
Woman with Headset
3. Capture and Organize Data
Modern businesses have increased access to data than in previous times. While your information is crucial in making profitable business decisions for your business, too much of it can overwhelm and distract your business.
Moreover, to collect and organize your data is not an easy task. However, your VA can help you sort through your customer data and web analytics and make them available to you in reports and updates. That will give you quick access to the specific information you may need at a particular time, saving you the time you would otherwise have taken to go through a load of data.
4. Complete Time-consuming Tasks
Tasks like internet research and data entry take much time. Again, they do not need the attention of a high-level team. Nevertheless, they are still vital to the successes of your business.
By allowing your VA to perform these tasks on your behalf, these tasks will be completed in quickly while allowing you to devote your time to more essential things.
Final Thought
You need a Visual Assistant if you are finding it challenging to manage every area of your business all by yourself. To be candid, it is virtually impractical to perform every task that involves your business. However, by hiring a VA, you can create enough time for yourself to achieve your business goals.
This blog was written by Linda Rawson, who is the founder of DynaGrace Enterprises (dynagrace.com) and the inventor of WeatherEgg (weatheregg.com). She, along with her daughter, Jennifer Remund make up the mother-daughter duo of 2BizChicks (2Bizchicks.com). For further information, please connect with Linda on LinkedIn, or contact her at (800) 676-0058 ext 101.
