Are you trying to scale your business, but don’t have the proper help?
Or on the flip side, are you scaling too quickly without the proper infrastructure in place?
Adding a virtual assistant to your team can be a better answer to your scaling issues by taking administrative tasks off your plate, saving on operational costs, and much more.
Let’s take a deeper look at how virtual assistants are beneficial to businesses.
Remove Yourself From Admin Tasks
While administrative tasks are crucial and inevitable in your business, they can also easily be taken over by a qualified virtual assistant.
As a business owner or department manager, your time should be spent on the most important aspects of the business.
Allowing a VA to take over mundane, repetitive tasks will let you focus on scaling your business, building up your marketing efforts, improving processes, and maintaining quality output.
Virtual assistants can take over tasks like scheduling meetings, data entry, bookkeeping, customer service, and monitoring your email inbox.
Save on Operational Costs
Hiring a virtual assistant means you won’t have to worry about providing equipment or finding available office space for them, which saves on your operational costs.
VAs also only get paid when they are working on an assigned task, which means you can hire one on a part-time basis or a few times a week — whichever you think is necessary for your business.
Hiring a virtual assistant will also save you money because you won’t have to pay an employee a full-time salary, which includes all the benefits that come with that position, like additional taxes, PTO, benefits, and severance pay.
Increased Scalability
Adding a virtual assistant to your team of experts allows you to scale your operations with fewer potential risks.
Rather than hiring full-time employees, you can hire virtual assistants to test out the processes you built out after removing yourself from the day-to-day tasks.
Having a new set of eyes on your operations and processes will help you refine them and note where issues occur. While you might think you have things running smoothly, a virtual assistant can help spot inefficiencies.
By using a virtual assistant to increase scalability, you can manage your volume of output based on demand. Then, the money you save on hiring employees can be reinvested into your business.
Adding Skilled Professionals
Adding a virtual assistant to your staff also means you can choose to hire someone with a unique specialization that your company lacks.
For instance, virtual assistants commonly have specialized skills in the areas of customer service, tech, lead generation, marketing, and administration.
You have the freedom to hire someone based on the skills you want in your assistant.
Hiring someone who is specialized in the right field allows you to rest easy knowing that whatever task you give them will be handled without error — or at least, very limited errors.
You can also teach your virtual assistant the skills they need to accomplish their task, as they are usually fast learners who are used to jumping right into an organization.
How To Train A Virtual Assistant Better!
Since you won’t be able to train them on location (because most of them will be working remotely)
Training a virtual assistant (VA) can be tricky, especially since they’re not right there in your office.
But with the right approach, you can still get them up to speed and make sure they’re on point with what your business needs. Here’s how you can do it:
Set Clear Expectations
First, it’s important to communicate what you want clearly. Ensure that you outline the tasks you need your VA to handle, the standards you expect, and any specific workflows they should follow.
Start with giving them a detailed job description and a list of tools or software they’ll need to use. This way, they’ll have a better understanding of their role, and it reduces the chances of things getting lost in translation.
Provide Comprehensive Training Resources
To make sure your VA can handle their responsibilities, you should offer them some solid training resources.
This could be things like video tutorials, written guides, or maybe even access to online courses that are relevant to what they’ll be doing.
Screen recording software can be super helpful here. For starters, it lets you create step-by-step guides that show them exactly how your processes work.
Trust me, this visual approach is a lifesaver, especially for more complicated stuff.
Use Project Management Tools
The pandemic did give us a plethora of project management tools. So, why not take advantage of these tools, to organize the tasks better.
Project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Monday.com are great for keeping track of what your VA is up to.
They let you assign tasks, set deadlines, and check in on progress to make sure everything’s moving along as it should.
Plus, they give you a place to communicate, where you can leave feedback or ask for updates whenever you need them.
Regular Check-Ins
Having regular check-ins with your VA is key to keeping everything running smoothly. Set up weekly or bi-weekly meetings to go over what they’ve done, talk through any issues, and give feedback.
These meetings also give you a chance to tweak their workload or responsibilities if needed.
Hire Your Virtual Assistant Today
Ultimately, hiring a virtual assistant will make your life easier while growing your business.
You can bring on new talent to save on operating costs, increase your team’s knowledge base and skillset, and remove yourself from mundane day-to-day tasks. Hiring a virtual assistant will allow you to focus on improving your process so you can quickly scale your business.
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Jamarcus Eaton
I appreciate the nuance — you covered both pros and cons fairly.