Hiring a virtual assistant can help you or your company grow more quickly and efficiently. Some people feel they do not need one, until they truly understand the value in the tasks a virtual assistant can help you with daily. Whether it is email management or ongoing client communication, the opportunities are literally limitless when it comes to utilizing a virtual assistant.
What you can use a virtual assistant for
Email inbox management and communication
Do you have a messy inbox and are having trouble organizing all of the information that is coming through your email? You probably have a busy life like the rest of us. Is it really worth your time every day organizing your inbox and making sure you are responding to the people reaching out to you? You might not have a ton going on and at the current moment it might not make sense, but that is up to you. For me, it was the top 5 best decisions I’ve ever made when it comes to business efficiencies. How will the assistant communicate with people reaching out to me? It’s simple. You will start a database that is updated daily. I specifically use a google sheet. My virtual assistant updates the content of email and asks me questions on how to respond. Overtime, she will learn how to respond better as the database builds. If anything were to ever happen to my virtual assistant, I will not have that database on record to delegate to the next virtual assistant.
Client/vendor communication
I currently hold a portfolio of real estate rental properties. I brought all of my tenants onto a central platform called www.tenantcloud.com. The reason I did this was so I could build out a delegation for my virtual assistant and have her start checking on payments, communicating with tenants, and notifying me of any issues. With this task, she is also building a database of responses. She also delegates tasks to any vendors in my network through this platform.
Social Media Marketing
Don’t expect your virtual assistant to be a 5 star graphic designer, but do expect them to roll out the content strategy you’ve built for social media, through an outlet such as www.loomly.com I have yet to onboard loomly, but I am excited to do so. It makes it so all of your social accounts are in one spot and you can broadcast content with one post and one click. Your virtual assistant can also schedule the posts. Using www.canva.com they can easily update the templates your team has created and send off to you for approval in platforms such as www.asana.com . Asana is an excellent project management tool we use throughout our companies.
Customer Service
Using a customer service technology such as www.intercom.com or www.drift.com your virtual assistant can start to manage your customer service questions and issues. With a platform that helps you organize your customer communication, it is a no brainer to utilize a virtual assistant to do this.
Benefits of hiring a virtual assistant
Virtual assistants are inexpensive
Regardless if we are in a recession or not, hiring a virtual assistant is inexpensive and does nothing but help the bottom line of your business. Most of them operate as a 1099’d contractor and in most situations the virtual assistant will require much less per hour than someone here in America. In most cases, they will cost half of what it would cost here in the United States.
Virtual assistants do not require office space
They work remotely so you can save on the rent expense of an office. This helps keep my expenses low. With the exception of the software tools we pay for to communicate with our Virtual assistants, their only expense really is their time. Some tools I use are www.asana.com and www.slack.com (for everyday communication).
You are not limited by local talent
“I can’t find any help” This is something I hear every day. A lot of the people saying this aren’t taking a deep dive into the help they have and how they are currently being utilized. If you have your help doing tasks a virtual assistant can do, then you are costing your company money. A lot of it too. You should only be:
- Spending time in areas of strength
- Preventing burnout by delegating mundane tasks
- Focusing on high-value and income generating activities
How to hire a virtual assistant. Step by step
- Find the parts of your life/business that you feel are taking away from your growth. Whether it’s your family or your business, dial in and document these tasks that you could easily delegate
- Draw up a job scope for your virtual assistant jobs. I generally do this on a google doc . For inspiration use this: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/hiring/job-description-template/virtual-assistant
- Utilizing a platform such as www.asana.com create a step by step informational delegation for a virtual assistant
- Post the virtual assistant job on platforms such as www.upwork.com or www.fiverr.com Generally speaking, the best way to hire on these platforms is via their reviews and amount of business completed. Check back daily to see results of the job.
- How to post a job on Upwork : https://www.upwork.com/resources/how-to-post-job-on-upwork
- How to find a virtual assistant on Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/pages/howtofindafreelancer?cms=lunar
- Onboard them onto your communication platform such as Slack and onboard them onto your project management tool such as Asana.
You will have your good and bad experiences with different virtual assistants. It’s all about weeding through the bad ones and locking down the good ones. It takes time to save valuable time.
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