Ahh, a new year has sprung. This is a time to recover from festivities, slim up from holiday feasts, and hunker down for a fresh new year of opportunities. Many people right now are continuing their day-to-day tasks as if nothing has changed. Others are preparing to execute their plan for the new year. In either case, it seems like there isn’t enough time in the day to take care of all of your day-to-day tasks. If you haven’t thought about it before, it might be time to think about deploying your own virtual assistant to help you out.
We’ll break down some reasons why you should deploy a virtual assistant in 2019. First – you might be asking yourself:
What is a virtual assistant?
When we talk about virtual assistants (VAs), we aren’t simply talking about AI solutions like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Now, or…Bixby? We are talking about real people that can help you with lot of different things. Virtual assistants are multitaskers, dedicated experts, and all-around helpers who work remotely. They can handle your customer support, data entry, general admin, accounting, and a slew of other tasks.
Today, you don’t need to have someone working next to you to be working for you. This is why there is such a rise of multitaskers helping managers, entrepreneurs, and any other go-getter who wants to stretch their impact and influence. Whether they are chosen for a specific skill set or for a range of different tasks, virtual assistants are deployed for a certain number of hours per week – in many cases, working with multiple clients.
Check out a few reasons why you should consider hiring your very own virtual assistant from the Philippines.
Reduce Workload
This should go without saying, but it’s important to list this at the top. The main reason you should hire a virtual assistant is because it will unburden you from some tasks that don’t need to be done by you.
If you own your own business, manage a team, or work on your own, you know that a lot of the most important tasks that you need to take care of getting interrupted by other things in your schedule. You can get bogged down by these things, taking you away from what you do best. While this is not an exhaustive list, VAs can help you handle some basic, yet essential, tasks below:
- Scheduling
- Email Management
- Chat Support
- Inbound and Outbound Calls
- Data Entry
- Market Research
- Sales Outreach
- Social Media Moderation
You may even need to hire a VA who can tackle more complicated tasks such as:
- Lead Generation
- Web Development
- Search Engine Optimization
- Content Creation
- Social Media Management
- Sales
The above listed items are not exhaustive – whatever you need to get done with a computer, a VA can most likely help you. Virtual assistants can help take away a lot of essential tasks so you can focus your efforts on your specific skill set. By hiring a virtual assistant, you can significantly reduce the stress you encounter from work and get things done when you need them to be done. The name of the game is working smart.
Read on after this picture representing your metaphorical working life.
Shed Secondary Tasks
The tasks that were listed in the previous section are important, but they don’t necessarily need to be done by you. It’s important to triage your tasks so you can focus on your core operations. Furthermore, working with a virtual assistant has the added benefit of leveraging skill sets that you may not have.
Whether you need to do things that don’t require your complete dedication or if you need to tackle issues that you are not familiar with, a second pair of hands will always help. The best way to start is by delegating routine tasks to your VA. They can begin with general admin and then branch out into other things when you get a handle on what value they can provide.
Reduce Cost
It’s always good to be find the most cost-effective solution. This doesn’t mean being cheap, it means being smart with how you use your money. You can never get your time back, but you can always work to earn more money. Outsourcing tasks to a virtual assistant in the Philippines might be one of the best employee-related expenses you can decide on.
By working for multiple clients, virtual assistants don’t need to be deployed for a full 40-hour workweek. In many cases, they can be deployed for a little as 10 hours per week. You can set a specific number of hours for your VA to work to handle the tasks you delegate. When you outsource your tasks, you can cut down on operational costs.
If you deploy a virtual assistant through a company like Process Ninjas, you pay a flat rate and don’t need to worry about HR, accounting, taxes, benefits, or office space. If you compare the cost of a virtual assistant to that of a full-time employee, you save a significant amount of money.
Leverage Flexible Deployment
As discussed in the previous section, you don’t need to work with a VA full-time. Virtual assistants have a flexible working schedule, which means they can accommodate your own needs. In many cases you can decide if you want to hire a VA for a short term, project basis or for a long term operational basis.
Geographic location where you outsource your processes, virtual assistants adapt to your timezone to either work with you or handle tasks while you are asleep. By having a malleable schedule, they can help you take care of the things you need to get done and increase your productivity at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time or part-time employee.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you might want to be available for your customers as much as possible. If you hire virtual assistants to help you out, you can extend your availability to 24/7 operations. Imagine being available for your customers around the clock. In many cases, you can even get help to handle tasks while you take some much needed rest and relaxation for yourself. If you work with a business process outsourcing company, you can also take advantage of the added benefit of temporary virtual assistants when your own VA is sick, on vacation, or enjoying a holiday.
Get More Done, Faster
Today, working hard means working smart. You don’t need to be juggling multiple tasks on your own if you leverage all of the resources at your disposal. If you outsource your tasks to a virtual assistant through companies like Process Ninjas, you can have a co-pilot in the Philippines who will work in tandem with you to handle your daily tasks. Divide and conquer with a virtual assistant!
If you are an entrepreneur, you understand how precious your time can be. There aren’t enough hours in the day. When you work with a virtual assistant, you can be sure that you handle everything within a reasonable time and maybe even give you the opportunity to take a break.
Continue reading after this lovely imagining of your virtual assistant.
Find Complimentary Talent
Just as you would do when hiring your own in-house staff, you have full control of who you work with when engaging a virtual assistant. Working with an outsourcing provider, you can list the qualities you are looking for in a VA and they will hunt for talent to fill your needs. You can vette their CVs, participate in the interviews, and set your own workflows for them to follow. Of course, if you need basic admin tasks, you can also just reach out to your outsourcing provider and have them take care of everything for you.
The best part of hiring a virtual assistant is that you are not bound by geographical restrictions. Whether you work in a big city, a small town, or live in a treehouse in the mountains (with internet), you can get talent to help you out. The most important thing that you need to deliver on, is to clearly communicate what you need. After working closely together, your virtual assistant will become your right-hand man or woman.
Scale Your Team
One of the great things about working with a virtual assistant is the fact that they are flexible. If you have more work to do, all you need to do is provide proper instructions to have them execute your vision. Working with a virtual assistant gives you the ability to help you scale your operations – either by increasing hours, finding more talent, or providing training in your stead.
When you have a virtual assistant to lean on, you can manage variances in your business operation much more easily and scale your operations up or down. If you engage a VA through a business process outsourcing company, you also have a hidden talent pool of other people that you can tap into if you need to quickly scale up. Whether you have a short-term project or need long-term team, they will have you covered.
Expand Your Online Presence
While it’s possible to function as a business without an online presence, it can be an uphill battle without. When you outsource a virtual assistant, you can increase the frequency of social media posts and ensure that you have interactions with customers and companies online – this all works to strengthen your brand. Your virtual assistant can ensure that customers are quickly responded to, make sure posts are shared when they need to be, and escalate trending issues that you might miss.
As powerful as social media can be, it takes a lot of dedication to take advantage of it. When you outsource a virtual assistant from the Philippines, you can make sure that you have your bases covered. When you can increase the frequency and level of interaction of your brand online, you stand to greatly benefit from your exposure.
Grow Your Business
Having someone to help you on your projects is essential to the growth of your business. When you find the right people to work with, you can collaborate them to take things to the next level. You can build a strategic partnership with your virtual assistant – the longer you work with them, the more familiar they become with your needs, your goals, and where you can improve.
Furthermore, you can also bounce ideas off of your VA to determine if the ideas you have or the path you take are heading in the right direction. Remember: your virtual assistant is an extension of yourself.
Make Time for Yourself
If you work with a virtual assistant, you have the option to have more time to yourself. You can identify the tasks that only you can do, and assign the rest of the tasks that you don’t need a direct hand in to your virtual assistant. When you have the opportunity to share tasks with your VA, you are increasing your own productivity.
While you increase your own productivity, you also give yourself the chance to decompress and recharge. When you do need to get back to work, you can dive into your tasks with renewed zeal and improved clarity. Time spent resting can be just as important as time spent working: when you recognize this, you find that you have a better all-around quality of life.
2019 is the year of the virtual assistant. One of the best things you can do for yourself, and for your business, is to find someone to rely on. You can either find a virtual assistant on your own, or reach out a vendor to find a VA. If you work with a vendor (like us!), you have the added benefit of outsourcing the task of finding the talent. All you need to do is make a decision on who you want to hire – all other operational overhead will be taken care of.
What are you waiting for? Reach out to Process Ninjas to see what you can do when you hire your very own personal assistant.