When should you hire a virtual assistant?
How much do you think your inefficiencies are costing your business daily? Nobody wants to admit it, but running a small business is not an easy task. Are you able to manage all your emails, calls, work schedules, and other administrative tasks effectively?
As a small business owner, time management and setting up proper tasks is essential for your survival. You need to be on top of all your administrative issues to drive sales, including managing your social media, bookkeeping, appointments, scheduling, returning calls, handling emails, making travel arrangements, and tons of other responsibilities.
It is easy to assign people to handle all these critical business sectors if you have in-house staff. However, how many small businesses can afford full-time employees? In most cases, business owners try to manage everything themselves.
As a result, they become overwhelmed, and their inefficiencies start to bite them. If you find yourself in this mess, you definitely need a virtual assistant (VA) to help you. They are affordable, versatile, and can work whatever hours you need to help you achieve your goals.
What is a virtual assistant?
A virtual assistant is a professional contracted to provide administrative and other duties for a client remotely. Most VAs work from home or their remote offices and are paid according to the service they render.
Geographical location doesn’t usually matter when hiring a VA since most work remotely. In fact, that could even be an advantage based on time zone differences. Imagine having somebody handling your tasks while you sleep comfortably in your bed.
You’ll wake up every day to find all your tasks have been effectively handled. So, as long as there is proper communication, you can streamline your business 24 hours a day without all the stress and managing everything on your own.
Services virtual assistants provide
Most virtual assistants are versatile and can handle a wide range of duties. You can count on a virtual assistant for all your business needs, including but not limited to the following:
- Customer Service
- Data Entry
- Travel Itineraries
- Email Campaign Management
- Content Management
- Bookkeeping
- Web Design
- Editing
- Blog Writing and Scheduling
- Calendar Management
- Inside Sales (Cold Calling)
Whatever your business needs, a virtual assistant can help you streamline your objectives and save you both time and money. You can hire a VA to handle all your customer relations or go for one that has more executive experience.
Either way, you’ll have all the people you need to get all your work done as quickly and proficiently as possible.
Signs you need to hire a virtual assistant
Owning a small business comes with various challenges. You probably will have to compete with several established companies, and your survival depends on how practical your management skills are when it comes to running a business.
But, how do you concentrate on the core business when you have allowed yourself to be bombarded with never-ending tasks? Of course, multitasking isn’t a bad thing. However, you should know that it could drain all your energy and reduce productivity.
Know the things you can do yourself and those you need to delegate to others. Whenever you find yourself struggling with a task, you need a professional to help you. You need to hire a virtual assistant when you realize that:
You lack the skills to handle certain duties
Each field requires some level of expertise or technical know-how. Some tasks can be fundamental, but without the needed skills, you cannot do it alone. You may want to file your tax returns, do a PowerPoint presentation, or embark on market research for a new product but lack the skills.
In such cases, hiring a virtual assistant becomes your safest bet. You can always get a VA to help you with multiple tasks weighing you down or that you struggle to complete.
You are overwhelmed with tasks
Are you stressing yourself out unnecessarily? If so, you are depriving yourself of good rest, holidays, and family time because you want to do everything yourself. This is very normal with startups and young entrepreneurs.
You probably want to have input in every business decision to be in command. But, can’t you see you are stressed and not thinking straight? Don’t get overwhelmed with tasks; delegate some! Assigning some tasks to other professionals improves productivity and ensures proper time management. You are therefore able to run your business with a clear and sharp mind.
Overly concentrating on administrative duties
The core business should always be your number one priority as an entrepreneur. You should pay more attention to running the business than overly concentrating on other duties. If this becomes the opposite, then you need a virtual assistant to help you.
Let a VA take care of your bookings, invoicing, calls, emailing, filing tax returns, and all the other administrative duties that are taking up all your free time.
When you want to expand
As the business grows, your optimum goal now becomes expansion because you want to meet the growing demands of your clients. Every development comes with its own needs, including human resources, capital, and logistics.
Even human resources are impacted, you’ll need qualified and dedicated workers to roll out your vision. You can hand over market research, social media management, and administrative tasks to a virtual assistant.
When you hire a virtual assistant, they can take over customer service or call center operations if you are in the service industry. They can also help you streamline your business and meet your objectives by taking on some of the administrative tasks you’ve been falling behind on.
Find it difficult to execute your business visions
As the business grows, your optimum goal now becomes expansion because you want to meet the growing demands of your clients. Every development comes with its own needs, including human resources, capital, and logistics.
Even human resources are impacted, you’ll need qualified and dedicated workers to roll out your vision. You can hand over market research, social media management, and administrative tasks to a virtual assistant.
The virtual assistant can take over customer service or call center operations if you are in the service industry. They can also help you streamline your business and meet your objectives by taking on some of the administrative tasks you’ve been falling behind on.
Immediately you realize you need help
Sometimes it suddenly occurs to us that we need someone to help us get things done. We hit rock bottom and just wished there was someone to help. The same does happen in business.
As an entrepreneur, you sometimes try to manage everything by yourself. But you aren’t a superman! As soon as you realize that you need a specialist to handle some aspects of your business, you need to hire a virtual assistant.
You start making mistakes
Working on your own can quickly wear you down to the point you begin to make simple mistakes. Are you having trouble managing your schedules, calls, bookings, and all the other administrative duties?
You’re probably missing out on tons of things. Now is an excellent time to think about hiring a virtual assistant to help streamline your business. They can help you save time and money while meeting deadlines and getting all the little tasks accomplished.
Conclusion
Don’t wait until your business starts going down the tubes before you look to hire a virtual assistant. Always identify your strengths and weaknesses as a business owner. Do what you know best and leave the rest to experienced hands.
How do you find a virtual assistant? Leave that to us. Contact us through the contact page on our website and schedule a consultation call today.
