Virtual Assistants Help Small Businesses Scale: 7 Reasons to Hire a VA
As a business owner, it goes without saying that your time is extremely precious. We all know that there are only so many hours in a day and you don’t have time to do everything.
You have a million pieces of critical but time-consuming minutia pertaining to operating your business. If you get bogged down in all the smaller stuff, you’re bound to be mired in mediocrity and in a worst-case scenario may even end up losing it all.
As the leader and visionary of your business, you must focus on the big picture. The only way you can achieve your higher aims within a viable time frame is to delegate a lot of the smaller but mission essential tasks to a top-level virtual assistant (VA). This holds true no matter what your business is.
Related: Mastering the Art of Delegation
Whether you’re running a B2B Agency, Nonprofit, or a Solopreneur, Contractor, or CPA, below are seven indisputable reasons why obtaining a VA could be a game-changer for your business.
1. A Virtual Assistant can handle time-consuming tasks
Hiring a VA will allow you to offload time-consuming tasks in order to focus on strategic priorities. A VA can handle all kinds of tasks like posting on social media, checking voicemails, managing your inbox, keeping your calendar up to date, drafting correspondence, doing research online, etc.
If you have to do all these little tasks, there is absolutely no way you will be able to fully commit yourself to the bigger vision of growing your business and achieving progress. All the aforementioned tasks are things that are indispensable to the health and survival of your business but they need to be delegated to a highly qualified virtual assistant. All major strategic projects require ground-level grunt work and tactics – a top-notch VA can do this stuff while you pilot everything while maintaining a 30,000 ft. view of things.
2. A Virtual Assistant can grow with you and your business
It stands to reason that the longer a VA is with you, the more valuable that individual will be to you. As they acquire more skills and knowledge as well as a deeper understanding of the rhythms and nuances of your business, they can take more and more responsibilities off of your plate and make tremendous short and long-term contributions towards your organization’s success. In order to reach the figurative mountain top, you’ll need a trusted associate for the long haul! That’s why a virtual assistant can be your secret sauce to get your business growing.
3. Virtual Assistants can directly help you get the word out
You don’t have time to send out every email blast, draft an email newsletter, and post engaging content twice a day on social media platforms along with everything else you have to do. You should only have to provide a general idea of what you want blasted out, approve the final product, and let your VA handle the work of creation and dissemination.
4. Virtual Assistants can conduct research for you
You might want to scour competitor websites and social media pages to examine their layouts, content, offerings, policies, and procedures, etc. in order to establish your own best practices. Maybe you want several options to choose from when it comes to vendors that you want to work with or switch over to. Maybe you want to do some research on how to begin a podcast or blog to promote your business and answer questions about your industry.
All this stuff requires quality research to obtain actionable info. Do you want to be sitting in front of a computer for countless hours doing this research or would the business be better served by delegating this duty to a trusty VA who can do it efficiently? I think the answer to that is self-evident.
5. A Virtual Assistant can handle much of your day-to-day customer service
Whether it’s giving clients a great experience by communicating with a friendly human being or providing customer support, VAs can step up to the plate. You don’t have time to handle every customer complaint or comment or follow up on every new lead or field all inquiries. That stuff needs to be farmed out so you can focus on laying down your firm’s infrastructure for the future. Provide the VA with guidelines for executing outstanding customer service according to your company’s standards and with the right VA you will very likely get satisfactory results.
6. Virtual Assistants are often self-employed independent contractors
This saves you the time, effort, and costs involved in hiring an actual part-time or even full-time employee. If you go through a top-notch agency like Trusty Oak, they can do the vetting and selection for you! Also, whenever you hire actual employees there are a range of HR, payroll, legal, and financial that need to be considered. Going through a VA agency, you can eliminate all those variables from your plate.
7. A Virtual Assistant can give you an outside perspective
Many times as a business owner you’re in your own head brainstorming, planning, strategizing, and taking action. It is very important to get an outside perspective to provide a sounding board for your ideas, point out areas of improvement, and assist you in avoiding and correcting mistakes.
If you are just working in your own bubble, there is a real danger your thinking might harden and you start believing that everything you come up with is the best way of doing stuff. Or the opposite could happen where you’re not sure about any of your ideas and end up spinning your wheels in the mud. If either of these self-limiting mindsets take hold, then you could miss out on potentially awesome opportunities and avenues for getting much better results for far less effort and investment.
The seven points above make an airtight case for getting a virtual assistant. The worst attitude you can adopt is to think you can do everything. Don’t fall into that trap! You’re still human. Get the backup you need to win now.
