Do you get home after a long day and then spend hours catching up on your admin? Do you spend time during the day on administrative tasks when you could be making money and meeting your business goals? Knowing which tasks to outsource can be tricky whether you have an existing business or you’re just starting up. Virtual assistants, like myself, are usually freelance and work from the comfort of their homes and can fully focus on administrative tasks and/or projects. We work in the exact same way as a personal assistant (PA) or executive assistant (EA) but work virtually rather than being employed and based in an office. An experienced VA could complete a task in less than half the time you take to do it yourself.
I don’t know if you are like me and before I decided to leave the job I had been in for 19 years, I had never even heard of a Virtual Assistant. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a VA but after some good old ‘google’ research I was amazed, shocked in fact, at how many VA’s there are out there. The number of VA’s are growing however what I have learnt is, it’s a community and we all have various expertise from various backgrounds.
Virtual Assistants can be used for the simplest of tasks to major projects and if we don’t know how to do it, we will probably know someone who does. It is important to build trust with your VA just as you would if you had a PA/EA. We like to become a member of your team, the only difference being we just happen to work remotely.
So, what could you outsource, let’s take a look.
Email management – nowadays most of us have busy lives however smart phones have revolutionised the way in which we can monitor our day to day activity. Being in meetings all day however can mean that your inbox gets busy and you end up with tens of emails to review. A VA can monitor your inbox and categorise your emails making it easy to review and respond to urgent emails and simply file those less important.
Diary management – A VA can help make appointments, accept or reject incoming meeting requests, schedule telephone / conference calls and all importantly remind you where you need to be and even plan your best route. You would need feel comfortable with relinquishing the reigns and be clear and concise over your requirements but a simple discussion can help with this.
Database entries – whether this be a large pile of business cards or updating information for existing contacts, keeping databases current is a suitable task for a VA.
Presentations – turning your ideas into a PowerPoint presentation or helping clean-up / format an existing presentation.
Travel – We can be a wealth of resource for finding hotels, booking trains and/or flights and putting together travel itineraries for both business and pleasure.
Events – assist with the research of the best places / locations to hold a business event / conference. Working within a given budget and liaising with delegates to ensure plans are put in place. VA’s can also provide onsite support for some events.
Expenses – from just grabbing a simple coffee, taking clients out to lunch to travel arrangements – do you really have time to sit down and log all your business expenses? Let a VA take care of it for you and release that time back.
Chasing – have you sent out your weekly, fortnightly or monthly billing and now have the mundane task of chasing that all important payment. From a simple courtesy email or phone call just to check the invoice has been received and is in the system for payment or to chasing an outstanding payment to producing final reminder emails, a VA can take care of this for you.
These are just a few suggestions on what you could potentially outsource to a VA. The best thing to do is find the right VA and discuss your requirements, you won’t look back and you’ll probably pinch yourself for not outsourcing sooner.
Recognise your strengths and weaknesses and outsource those frustrating or time consuming jobs.