Hiring a virtual assistant soon? Here are 5 reasons you shouldn’t wait

You can spend more time on your business, instead of in it

Managing the daily to-do list of any business operation is a major time-sucker, and the reality is, it inhibits your ability to grow your business.

You can miss market trends, have less mental space for long-term strategic planning and miss critical business pitfalls when you’re spending every day in the trenches.

So, when considering ‘should I hire a virtual assistant?’, think about what that would actually allow for in terms of higher-level activities.

What about the ability to polish your service offering? Or expand your core value proposition? Grow your clientele with direct sales and networking? Even futureproof – to restructure your business to best service your needs, goals and family situation? Perhaps you have young kids who need more of you, or you’re ready to travel more?

These are all things that can massively increase your revenue. 

Your documents are airtight and polished, every time

They say that the devil is in the details, and it’s that extra eye separate from yours that can prove invaluable to the documents you send out every day. 

Be it reports, tenders, contracts, working drafts or even your run-of-the-mill email trail, having a second brain to pick up mistakes you otherwise wouldn’t notice when you’re staring at the same thing for too long – or distracted – frees you up to focus on more important work, and prevent any big mistakes. 

Another one of the bigger benefits of a virtual assistant is that they can often help you to figure out how your documents can be better, too. 

Maybe a spritz up in the design or formatting, simplifying the language to appeal to a broader audience or analysing bounce and click-through rates so that your email marketing performs better – a great VA can offer support in all critical areas. Plus, because you get final oversight and say on everything, you can ask that nothing is ever sent out to customers without your approval. 

Of course, there are plenty of virtual assistants and online business managers who can take on the responsibility of final approvals too.

Exceptional customer service with every interaction

First impressions really matter, and when you’re busy doing the hard stuff – it can really send your patience out the window when dealing with enquiries. 

Hiring someone with a clear head who is dedicated to the role of customer relations extraordinaire can work wonders in taking that load off of your shoulders, and ensure every client gets a great experience, every time. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to not be the bad guy sending and chasing late invoices? When thinking ‘should I hire a virtual assistant?’, it might help to know that virtual assistants can reduce business operating costs by 78% (according to Outsource Access). This not only allows you to work faster and smarter, but look more polished and professional in the process.

Reduced employee expenses (with no loss of resourcing)

Permanent full-time headcount – while helpful in growing your database of customers and scaling up – can be expensive, and come with a whole heap of HR headaches. 

Fortunately, that isn’t the case anymore, with one of the main benefits of a virtual assistant being the extra support you get without having to invest in any permanent, full-time staff. 

Extra bonus: Depending on your arrangement with your virtual assistant, you can ramp this support up and down as you need to – great if you’re a seasonally busy business. 

Remember, you may still need to be obligated to pay superannuation, so please understand your legal contractor remuneration obligations before you engage anyone.

When thinking about what parts of your business need extra support, consider these:

• Social media management
• Inbox management and phone triaging
• Customer service
• Document formatting
• Basic bookkeeping
• Invoice management
• Email marketing
• Event planning
• Project management
• Automated workflows and process improvement

A virtual assistant can help with all of the above and more. If you’re not sure what tasks you have that can be delegated to a VA or OBM, check out our latest Rates Report for a comprehensive list of current rates charged for common tasks.

Smooth out the kinks in your own process workflow

As people who are process-obsessed, our clear answer to ‘should I hire a virtual assistant?’ at the VA Lead Network is a resounding ‘yes’ every time. If not for all of the benefits of a virtual assistant listed above, but because it’s simply a great way to make your systems and processes better.

Having a productivity-focused VA or OBM (online business manager) to support you can help you to see the forest from the trees, and make your own service offering more efficient. 

For example, is something way too high-touch that should be more low-touch? Are you bleeding money on a clear (and easy) cost-saving fix? Are you losing valuable customers with a kink in the onboarding flow? Are you sending out too many communications, or perhaps not enough? 

A VA with solid experience will not only carry their business-as-usual responsibilities, but also help you to run things more smoothly with informed recommendations along the way. 

Ultimately, while the beauty of self-employment is that you can structure your operation however you’d like – the downside can be the very same: bogging you down in the monotony.