How A Virtual Assistant Can Help Your Business – 10 Benefits
Are you wondering how a Virtual Assistant can help your business? Look no further, I will outline what a Virtual Assistant is and when is the right time to hire a Virtual Assistant for your business.
For many businesses in the corporate world a Virtual Assistant will not be considered or even really known about, however the demand for Virtual Assistant is growing every single year.
After the Covid pandemic in 2020 many businesses that could, decided that the benefits of making their team remote was that they didn’t need to rent or buy office buildings. Plus with the internet they could do everything they needed with a remote team.
Now many businesses, whether it’s a physical store/service or an online business are all seeing the benefits of hiring someone to help on a temporary basis.
This is where Virtual Assistants come in!
What Is A Virtual Assistant
There are a few different ways of describing a Virtual Assistant but I think the most accurate definition I’ve found is from Investopedia:
“A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who provides administrative services to clients while operating outside of the client’s office. A virtual assistant typically operates from a home office but can access the necessary planning documents, such as shared calendars, remotely.”
Investopedia
A Virtual Assistant is someone who provides adminstrative support remotely, usually from a home office or any other location if they require. As the name implies, a Virtual Assistant will always complete administrative tasks of some sort, however they may specialise in particular services that they can provide eg Blogging, Bookkeeping or Social Media.
When Is The Right Time To Hire A Virtual Assistant
There’s no denying it, running your own business does have its challenges!
It can be super rewarding but sometimes everything just feels like hard work and if you are doing it alone or even if you have a small team, you might just feel very stuck and unable to progress your business to the next level.
The right time to hire a Virtual Assistant is when you look at the below list and can say that most of these reasons would apply to you:
- You’re working more than ever but not completing all of the tasks you need to
- Maybe you’re spending a lot of your time on admin tasks in general
- When you look at your to-do list, you feel overwhelmed by everything that you need to complete
- You are stuck and want to grow your business but can’t because of everything you need to do
- Perhaps you want to learn a new skill but don’t have the time to commit to learning
- You work all the time and don’t have much time for family commitments
- You’re feeling burnt out far too often
If you can answer yes to majority of the statements above then it’s very likely that you are in the position to outsource some of your tasks to a Virtual Assistant.
What Do Clients Look For In A Virtual Assistant
In case this is your first time looking into hiring a Virtual Assistant, I thought I’d put together some of the main things that clients look for in a Virtual Assistant to help you make the right decision for your business.
In my experience some of the main skills that clients are looking for are as follows:
- Organised – you don’t want to have to worry that the Virtual Assistant is not able to organise their workload well
- Reliable – a reliable Virtual Assistant is very important as you are hiring them to help you so you need to know they can be relied upon
- Communication skills – having great communication skills whether written or verbal is something you need to be looking out for, you don’t want to have to chase your Virtual Assistant for updates
- Conscientious – you want your Virtual Assistant to want to do an amazing job for you, you don’t want to be chasing them to improve their work
- Computer literate – ideally you want your Virtual Assistant to be confident with computers, even if they aren’t particularly tech savvy
- Efficient – the Virtual Assistant you choose needs to be highly efficient and able to complete the work with accuracy and speed
I asked some of my fellow Virtual Assistants about their experience with this so that I could include a variety of opinions and sources.
If you have a specific project or task that you need a Virtual Assistant for then looking for a skilled, specialist Virtual Assistant is a must. For example, if you want someone to take over your social media then you should look for a Social Media Virtual Assistant with experience in the social media accounts that you use.
Some clients might prefer to look for a Virtual Assistant which has the right attitude and character. Skills can be learned but the right attitude and character is not something that can be learned overnight. It really depends on your perspective and what’s important to your business.
When subcontracting they look for experience, ability, skills, personality, the run to the end of the earth, attitude, resourcefulness, honesty, reliability, someone who cares and someone who won’t give up. Plus someone who cares as much about the business and client’s businesses as much as they do.
The really helpful graph below was provided by Stephanie from Virtual Choice, you can follow her on Facebook.
How A Virtual Assistant Can Help Your Business
Now let’s get to how a Virtual Assistant can help your business..
10 Benefits Of Hiring A Virtual Assistant
1. You Save Money
It might surprise you but by hiring a Virtual Assistant you will save money. If you had to hire an employee you would need to have them on your payroll. You would need to pay out for equipment such as a laptop and a headset if required, you might also need to pay for tools and subscriptions needed to complete the job.
When you hire a Virtual Assistant, you know that they already have the equipment needed and any subscriptions or tools that they need to complete a task, will be paid for by them.
2. They Will Free Up Time For You
This is a really important benefit, think about the statements we considered above and how many of them related to not having enough time! When you outsource to a Virtual Assistant, all of those time consuming tasks that you were completing will no longer be your problem.
You can concentrate on having more time with your family and even growing your business to the next level. As a business owner you will reach a point with your business that you need take on more of a managerial role and hiring a Virtual Assistant will really help you to have the time to do this.
Sometimes you might need some additional information about increasing your productivity as a business owner, that’s why I’ve written a post how to be more productive as an entrepreneur to help you out.
3. You Don’t Need To Train Them
Another amazing bonus to hiring a Virtual Assistant is that you will not need to train them or send them on any courses. If you are looking for a Virtual Assistant that specialises in one or two areas then they are already experienced in that particular subject. Even if it’s something that the Virtual Assistant isn’t familiar with, it will be their job to seek out the training to do this particular task.
Most businesses will have an onboarding process for employees that can take several weeks and then often if the employee isn’t a good fit and leaves and you’ve spent so much time and money training them for nothing. With a Virtual Assistant you know that you can hire them on a temporary or semi permenant basis and it’s their responsibility to ensure they are up-to-date on best practices for the industry.
4. No Worrying About HR Or Equipment
I’ve touched on this a little but hiring a Virtual Assistant means that you don’t need to worry about HR or them having the appropriate equipment. If any equipment or tool is not functionally properly it is the Virtual Assistants place to make sure that this gets fixed ASAP so they can continue to do their job for you.
As well as this, there’s no need to worry about having a HR department to oversee anything. Each Virtual Assistant has their own onboarding process, how they account for time (if you’re going for an hourly package) and how they invoice. This is much less stress for you because everything is already taken care of.
5. They Help You Complete Projects
Are you considering hiring a Virtual Assistant to complete a few specific projects or if you will be requiring support on a semi-permanent basis? Either way a Virtual Assistant will help you to complete those projects of any size.
There are even Project Management Virtual Assistants you can hire to oversee the running of projects so that you can concentrate on other areas of your business.
There are some really handy project management tools you can use with your Virtual Assistant, such as Asana, Monday and Clickup.
6. Always Professional And Efficient
As long as you choose a really good Virtual Assistant, like yours truly. 😉 Then you will have the pleasure of working with a Virtual Assistant that is always professional and efficient in everything that they do.
It’s in a Virtual Assistant’s best interest to always be professional and efficient in their work, they are self employed after all and the success of their business depends on how they treat other people and whether or not they do a good job. I’m sure there are some Virtual Assistants that are not professional and efficient so make sure you do your research and check how they interact with others online (before you decide to hire).
7. You Can Choose Package Or Hourly Rates
Most Virtual Assistants will have the choice between packages and hourly rates. If you already have an idea of what you need doing and the approximate time frame then you might prefer to choose a package rather than the hourly rate. Often package prices include a discount but not always so definitely check this.
Even if the Virtual Assistant doesn’t offer a discount on their website, you might find that they would be willing to negotiate if you take a certain amount of hours, so it’s worth asking if you don’t have a huge budget.
8. They Are Not Your Employee
Another great benefit is that they are not your employee so if you decide in the future that you no longer need a Virtual Assistant, you only need to give them the notice that’s outlined in the contract you signed. For me, I’ve included 14 days notice for termination of the contract, however other Virtual Assistants might have different terms.
If you are hiring a Virtual Assistant for a particular project then you won’t need to worry about this anyway. Once the project is completed and you no longer need a Virtual Assistant, that’s basically it.. As they are not your employee you don’t need to worry about sending a P45 or whatever the form is in your Country.
If you are pleased with the work that they’ve done for you, recommend them to your business friends and leave them a review as it does really help Virtual Assistants to get that feedback.
9. You Can Work On Growing Your Business
I’ve mentioned this before but sometimes the only thing that’s holding business owners back is that they are spending too much time trying to be everywhere and do everything.
This can be an issue, particularly if the business is successful but the growth has slowed down a lot because you’ve had to concentrate on other areas of the business.
As an independent person myself, I get it! However you can’t concentrate on your sales funnel or marketing plan if you’re spending all of your time on the admin tasks.
10. They Care About Your Business Succeeding
It might sound obvious but a really good Virtual Assistant will really care about your business succeeding!
It’s not about getting good recommendations or reviews for their work, it’s about doing an amazing job for the client and seeing it through to completion. It’s about helping the client make more sales through their website or helping them get organised, whatever the service is. A good Virtual Assistant will get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing that they are really helping you to succeed and grow your business.
If you’re curious about what a Virtual Assistant can do for you, you can read this Virtual Assistant case study where I help a client set up a blog and email marketing for her business.
Other Information That Might Be Useful
Something else you might need to know is that Virtual Assistants will usually require full or part payment prior to doing any work for you. You can find out their payment process during a discovery call or in the contract that they send.
When you’re ready to hire a Virtual Assistant you will then need to decide where you want to advertise the position. You can post the job opportunity on a freelance website such as Upwork, Fiverr, People Per Hour or Freelancer.
You can also post the opportunity on Instagram or Facebook. You might find a bit more success on Facebook because you can join a few groups and post your #jobopp there, make sure you leave instructions on how they can apply on the post.
When hundreds of people ignore your instructions you can really cut down your list of applicants making it to a discovery call..
I hope that I’ve managed to explain well enough how a Virtual Assistant can help your business. The 10 benefits of hiring a Virtual Assistant doesn’t even include everything, but it should give you some idea of how hiring a Virtual Assistant could be beneficial for your business.
If you need to outsource some of your tasks, you can fill out the form on the About Me page and I’ll get back to you soon. If you’re not quite ready to contact me, you can find out more about what to expect when working with me.
Damaris
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