Are you feeling overwhelmed with your work? Don’t have much time for a personal life? Managing your workload and running a business on your own can become more and more difficult to carry out by yourself. You don’t have to do everything on your own. You may not need someone permanently, why not hire someone for a few hours or for the tasks you need done? Outsourcing some of your work to a Virtual Assistant is something you should be seriously considering, even if you have just started out. By taking the time to find the right person for this role, you will soon be feeling less stressed and overwhelmed.
A Virtual Assistant is a self-employed office administration professional that works from the comfort of their own office or anywhere they want to be! In short, a Virtual Assistant or VA does the majority of things that a personal assistant does. Replying to emails, invoicing your clients, diary management, data entry.... Anything you can do online, your Virtual Assistant can help you with.
Before outsourcing any work to a Virtual Assistant, it is important to establish why you think hiring a VA will be beneficial to you and your business. Here are some key benefits to hiring a VA:
A Virtual Assistant frees up your time and energy
Hiring a VA frees up your time and energy meaning you will have more time to focus on running your business instead of carrying out those tasks that you are not good at, aren’t knowledgeable about or simply don’t like doing. You will likely have to spend some time up front in guiding your new VA on how you run things, but as a result once this is done, not only will they take the workload off you they will give you more hours in the day to enjoy the things you love. A Virtual Assistant will make your business more efficient
Hiring a VA will likely streamline your processes and get things done quicker. Research shows that on average, businesses spend at least 10 to 15 hours a week on non billable tasks.
What can you outsource to a VA?
Customer/client support
Data entry
Data presentation
Online research
Diary/ calendar/ project management
Setting up and managing social media accounts
General administration
Writing, editing and scheduling blog posts, publications, social media posts or newsletters.
Bookkeeping
Email Management
Top tips for hiring your first Virtual Assistant
Before finding or hiring a VA, you should know what tasks you will delegate to that person, how many hours you need your assistant to work in a week, or do you only need them for one off task. These are some things you should think about before hiring a VA. You cannot create an effective plan if you don’t know the outcome you want.
Communication is key to any successful business relationship, and this is especially true with VAs. Explaining yourself thoroughly via digital means of communication can sometimes be difficult, but it’s necessary to ensure that your VA is carrying out the tasks properly.
VAs usually work for more than one client so please bear this in mind when hiring your VA. I would advise you to do a trial run before entering into anything big or long term to make sure you are both a good fit for each other.
Give them as much information about yourself and your business (what you do, who is your ideal client, what is your mission/goal) as you can. This will really help them to get to know you better and how your business is run. It will also make sure you are a good fit for each other before you get started.
So have you thought of hiring a VA? What hesitations do you have? If you could outsource ONE thing right now, what would it be? Interested in how I can help you? Get in touch with me today to discuss your requirements - info@sageadmin.com.au
Comments