3 Signs Your Business Needs a Virtual Assistant

As you probably know, virtual assistants are all the rage these days. It’s hard not to come across a blog post, or a group message that doesn’t make reference to a virtual assistant. In fact, at the time of writing this, we ran across a highly popular LinkedIn post by Ryan Williams, marketing director of ZenMaid Software, that talked through why remote work is, and should be, here to stay. And with remote work, comes the need for a virtual assistant.

How do you know it’s time though? How do you know if a virtual assistant is right for you?

Here are our top three signs your business, regardless of the industry, needs a virtual assistant.

1. You are behind on emails, and as a result, important tasks and messages are slipping through the cracks.

If you find that your inbox is wildly unorganized, and vendors, staff, current clients, or worse, potential clients, are emailing you asking for a follow up or confirmation you’ve received an email, it’s time for help.

A virtual assistant can help in so many ways in this regard! They can…

• Answer all of your important emails so that no important task gets missed.
• Organize your inbox in a way that best makes sense.
• Help you, or completely take ownership of, sorting and prioritize emails from least to most important.
• Schedule calls and meetings. They would need access to your calendar but they can 100% take on the back and forth messaging and coordination of scheduling.
• Create and manage templates. This is wildly helpful if you find yourself re-composing the same email over and over.
• Manage spam and subscriptions.
• Responding to routine inquiries.

The beauty is that depending on your goals, your own virtual assistant can take on these tasks in full, or simply help you, think of it as having an extra hand on the task. When it comes to replying, you have two options: They can sign emails as a company representative, or, they can sign and answer emails as you. It all depends on your final goal and what you are trying to accomplish.

2. Your To-Do List is getting longer and longer, and you’re getting overwhelmed

What causes long and seemingly endless to do lists? Simple! Tasks (and projects, which we’ll address in a bit) get piled on and are being added faster than they are getting done. Having a long list of to dos ends up in overwhelm and can cause a decline in motivation and enthusiasm for your business.

How having a virtual assistant can help: Divide and conquer! There are a few ways you can get the relief you need here with a virtual assistant. You can either give them tasks which they will take on in full and have jurisdiction over or, you can assign them certain pieces of a task.

Examples:

A. Order flowers for a client who just returned from a hospital stay B. Organize a staff game night

The first example can go both ways: You can have them help you with this task, or, they can take it on full. This task involves:

• Prep work to find the flowers (research)
• Writing the message
• Ordering the flowers
• Paying for the flowers

If you take this task and have them help you, they may provide you with a message to copy / paste, as well as a link to pay for the flowers.

Or, and what I prefer, they can even pay for the flowers which means the task is 100% off of your plate. It is easy to set up any person in your company with their own credit card that has an extremely low limit for tasks such as these.

In the second example, organizing a game night, a virtual assistant can take on the task in full. A game night might consist of the following tasks:

• Deciding on the game (may take quick research)
• Organizing a venue
• Coordinating schedules with staff
• Organizing food and drink considerations
• Ordering prizes, if there are any
• Creating invitation
• Creating associated graphics (rules, game pieces, etc)

All assigned tasks will require your input and direction. However, it will be minimal compared to the time that it would take you to complete these two tasks on your own.

3. Projects that are meant to grow and scale the business are no longer being attended to.

As a small business owner, you have three lists: Your normal to do list, your projects list, and then the things that come up unexpectedly in your day that need your attention. Many times, those unexpected activities are the ones that distract us from our normal to do list. Once they have been tended to, we head to our to do list, if time allows. That means that larger projects go on the back burner.

That is why having a virtual assistant is imperative. Not only can they help with the to do lists as we’ve already seen, they can be an invaluable asset for larger projects. Many times, those larger projects are the ones that will grow the business or strengthen the systems that will help us continue to grow and thrive.

Let’s take a quick look at what most people will consider a larger project, the switching of a software system. Here are some of the steps that need to be taken into consideration for that to happen:

• Compiling list of software providers (research)
• Reach out to industry peers for recommendations
• Compiling list of required features and criteria
• Reviewing pricing to ensure software meets budget requirements
• Reviewing websites for feature comparisons
• Signing up for demos
• Signing up for trial periods to evaluate features
• Short listing softwares
• Scheduling final demo for final evaluation
• Compile all documentation for your review

By now, I hope that it’s easily recognizable that these are all things that a virtual assistant can do on their own. They will be able to take on the project in full or, help you with certain aspects. It’s all up to you, guided by your own goals and desires that will ultimately help you decade if you need the project off your plate completely, or simply would just like help and support to get it done.

As we’ve explored, there are three clear signs that your business could benefit from a virtual assistant:

1. An overflowing, disorganized email inbox that’s causing you to miss important messages and tasks.
2. A never-ending to-do list that’s leaving you feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated.
3. Crucial business growth projects that keep getting pushed to the back burner.

If you’ve recognized any of these signs in your own business, it’s time to seriously consider bringing on a skilled virtual assistant on board. Our obvious clear choice is Task Away Virtual Assistants which services the maid service industry as well as other home based small businesses.

Up next: You now recognize you would like to hire a virtual assistant. Where do you start? What questions do you ask? How do you qualify them? We’ll answer all of this and more. Stay tuned!