By: Joseph Ryan Lopez
Ever wondered how the big guns of the entrepreneurial world seem to skyrocket their success…without blowing up their cash flow? There’s no secret sauce you’re missing out on — but there’s a formula for it! A formula that, when executed correctly, works 9 times out of 10.
A key component of this formula involves leveraging offshore outsourcing and hiring a virtual assistant.Without this, the rest of the formula can be hard to implement (unless you’ve got a truck full of cash!)So let’s delve deeper into why this strategy is so key to entrepreneurial success today.
Successful global companies are outsourcing large amounts of their workload so you should be, too.CLICK TO TWEET
Why hire a Virtual Assistant?
Hiring a virtual assistant has many benefits. They are generally cheaper than domestic employees and can offer the flexibility to multi-task across many aspects of your business. There are also various virtual assistant companies that can help make the hiring process easier.
Here are the top ten reasons why successful companies or businesses are hiring a Virtual Assistant:
1. Time is your goldmine
The most valuable asset anyone has today is time, and money only comes in second.
Successful businesses recognise that time is the best asset to keep a tight grip on. Without time to think strategically, forge new relationships, and develop ideas, all you have is a business that refuses to grow regardless of how much you work at it. And entrepreneurs that spend their days locked in low-level administrative tasks like email management and customer support are kidding themselves that they have any chance of growing a successful company.
To reclaim your time, you need to hire people and learn to delegate. But hiring staff can really rip into your bottom-line so it’s a catch-22 situation that plagues a lot of businesses…unless you follow the clever herd and embrace offshore virtual assistants.
The most valuable asset anyone has today is TIME.CLICK TO TWEET
Hiring a virtual assistant solves the catch-22 and allows you to break out of the deep crevice that exists between startup and growth…without blowing up your cash flow.
2. Cost-effective Business Scalability
Business growth requires capital. By hiring virtual assistants, you can substantially reduce your capital needs. Not only is the cost of hiring a virtual assistant substantially less than hiring domestically (for most Western nations), but the ongoing costs of management and development are also less.
By embracing the offshore virtual assistant model and making a commitment to making it work, you can really ramp up your team without blowing up your balance sheet.
In addition, you can utilise any domestic staff you have for more high value, localised work. It’s a win-win. You lower your costs while simultaneously building up your team and increasing the value of the work produced per dollar spent on salaries.
3. Maintain Entrepreneurial Sanity
One of the key things for entrepreneurial success is mindset, but we don’t all do the mindset thing very well!
If you find your tasks or to-do lists piling up so you’re ending up scattered and achieving less and you’re getting a little too overwhelmed with the things you need to do for your business, then here’s an insight: The best virtual assistant can help you with all of that!
Delegating tasks to someone reliable and able to manage several duties and responsibilities is one way to avoid becoming overwhelmed. You can divide or handover the items on your to-do list to a VA. This is why most successful business owners hire a virtual assistant.
Delegating tasks is one way to avoid becoming overwhelmed.CLICK TO TWEET
You can prepare a detailed list of tasks to outsource to a virtual assistant – things you need to get done and help you grow your business.
Virtual assistants are very organised and can help you prioritise which tasks to do first. Some of them have had training and years of experience in assisting business owners.
Your sanity is important to your entrepreneurial success so start hiring a virtual assistant and stay sane!
Your sanity is important to your entrepreneurial success so start hiring a virtual assistant and stay sane!CLICK TO TWEET
4. Escape the Admin Jungle
If anything will drag you away from growing your business, it’s the admin vortex. Administrative tasks can be easily delegated to a Virtual Assistant, because they are process-driven and repetitive. Having a Virtual Assistant on your team can ensure these tasks are done on time, leaving you to focus on other, high-level tasks.
Some of the most common administrative tasks that a hired virtual assistant can do:
- Administrative and office support activities for multiple supervisors
- Receptionist tasks such as fielding telephone calls and managing appointment bookings
- Responding to emails and helping to filter them for easier management
- Word processing, creating spreadsheets and presentations
- Organising your Dropbox and Google Drive folders.
- Internet research
- Data entry
If you’re assigning your virtual assistant these admin tasks, try to be as detailed and specific as you can. Skill sets of virtual assistants vary, and while most VAs can easily breeze through your task list, it’s still important to be clear on what duties and responsibilities you want your VA to take on. Ultimately, having someone take on the recurring admin tasks in your projects will help the growth of your business.
It’s important to be clear on what duties and responsibilities you want your VA to take on.CLICK TO TWEET
5. Streamline your business operations
Having well-documented processes and systems in your business spells success when hiring a virtual assistant. If you don’t have these processes in place yet, a virtual assistant can help you set them up and make your operations more streamlined.
Because VAs work remotely, it forces both sides to increase the focus on efficient processes, effective communication, and advanced reporting channels. This is how you can really use virtual assistants to help grow your business.
6. Improve your products and services
Virtual assistants can help improve the product and services you offer in the market by being your eyes and ears in the market and throughout your customer base.
As a business owner, you need to know the needs of your customers or prospective clients. You do this by monitoring the markets you operate in, listening for conversations on social media about your brand or industry, watching what competitors are doing and saying, collating feedback from current clients, and generally staying abreast of industry news.
Virtual assistants can help improve your products and services by being your eyes and ears in the market.CLICK TO TWEET
While this helps your business a lot, this also takes time and energy. These tasks can be outsourced to a virtual assistant. They can collate this information and document the data you need.
Having quick access to this data can be a game changer in your business, especially if you’re not the one tied up doing it. Your virtual assistant can gather this data on a continuous basis to help you improve your business.
7. Provide 24/7 business or customer service
One way to widen your market is to be available 24/7 for customer support. This is particularly important for online stores that work on a global scale.
This can be achieved by hiring a team of virtual assistants who can provide support for customers in different time zones. A virtual team can even provide service during official holidays.
Some things that you can have your VA do are:
- Responding to customer questions
- Creating email responses or Frequently Asked Questions
- Checking on clients, especially long-term clients
- Dealing with complaints or requests for refunds or discounts
- Create a welcome pack for new customers
They are also the quickest solution to temporary manpower shortages.
8. Maintain a Killer Online Strategy
In this age of mobile technology where social media, video, and content marketing have become the norm, it’s expected that every business has an online presence.
But there are two issues in this area:
- A strong results-focused strategy is needed for effective implementation
- The work involved in implementing and maintaining an effective online strategy is extremely time-consuming.
Virtual assistants are a fantastic resource in this area. All things digital are, by nature, online and ‘virtual’, so the concept of having a virtual person implementing and maintaining this strategy for you is easier to get your head around.
A virtual assistant can help you implement and maintain your online strategy for your business.CLICK TO TWEET
You no longer need to spend all day creating images on Canva, collecting quotes, and sharing tips on social media – your VA can do these things for you.
Your virtual assistant can also save the time you spend on creating new content to feed your marketing strategy by taking whatever podcasts, articles, webinars you already have and repurposing them into other types of content – infographics, SlideShares, blog posts, Ebooks… the list goes on.
You need to be online but you don’t need to get bogged down in the work involved.
9. Avoid selling your soul to your business
Let’s be honest, hiring a virtual assistant to help manage, oversee, and do tasks on your list helps ease the workload and stress you face in the day to day operations of your business. At the same time, it also allows you more leisure time with your family and friends. So, you are basically taking back your social life.
Also, by giving your Virtual Assistant responsibilities and tasks from your list, like those repetitive tasks, you add more productive hours to your day.
Getting more free time allows you to function better and avoid suffering from burnout. It allows you to focus on what really matters in your business.
More free time also means more time for people who are important in your life.
We must remember, other than being an entrepreneur, we also play different roles at home. We also have personal relationships which need care and attention. Having someone to help organise schedules and tasks (and do some small personal errands, as well) frees up more time for us. And, free time means more time for ourselves, family and friends.
10. Increase the asset value of your business
When done right, working with virtual teams forces you to develop very strong, efficient processes and solid communication and to utilize technology in more creative ways.
Once you hone each of these areas and ensure tasks can be delegated to anyone who steps in, it means your business is systematised. This creates a far more valuable asset if you ever decided to sell the business.
Go on… Hire a virtual assistant for your business!
Virtual Assistants are a fantastic asset to you and your business, especially when integrated correctly. So many people think they need a Virtual Assistant for just a few hours here and there, but the truth is, there are so many tasks we can delegate to a Virtual Assistant and so many things our Virtual Assistants can do for us. It is well worth the investment to bring someone on more permanently and build them into your growth plans.
(Source: thevirtualhub. Re-published with permission.)
