Before we start teaching you the process of how to hire an amazing virtual assistant, we’d like to tell you eight reasons why you should actually do it.
First off are the decreased operational costs you’ll have across the board. You won’t need to rent out a space or buy equipment like computers or business Internet to utilize a virtual assistant’s skills.
As compared to a regular employee, a VA costs way less, and you won’t even have to pay for any employee benefits or pay them when they’re sick. There is an understanding that if they don’t work, they won’t get paid.
The second reason is that virtual assistants give you more time to work on your business rather than in it. Try to think back to all the times you wasted doing menial and repetitive tasks when you could’ve focused on building and scaling your business instead. VAs can perform all these tasks and let you have the time to plan for your business in the future.
This also leads to the next two reasons, which are to decrease workload and improve your personal brand. As your VA works on various tasks from data entry to transcription to marketing, you’ll have less work on your hands and more time for professional and personal development. How many times did you cancel a conference or workshop because you had “things” you needed to do and, on the other spectrum, how many times did you have to cancel on holidays with family and friends because “something came up” at the last minute? With a VA on your team, you won’t need to stress over those “things that come up” as you can rely on them to field those “things”. You’ll have more time to build your connections, both professionally and personally, that will greatly improve your personal brand.
The next reason is that you’ll have more access to individuals with specific skills. If you’re starting your own business, you have to juggle learning multiple fields from digital marketing to website creation to graphic design. Rather than limiting your options to specialists near you, fielding VA inquiries will remove any geographical restrictions. You’ll get access to competent VAs and specialists. But our experience has been that, when we have given them projects, there are competency and organizational gaps.
So we hire on an individual basis, not by team, which creates another layer of distortion. All of our people are dedicated to our mission (and to their 3x3 goals), not subcontracted out.
The US-based specialists are mainly account management, which is hard to get outside the United States. The last two reasons have more to do with dealing with your customers rather than how your business operates.
Other businesses utilize automation to field potential customers as well as respond to customer inquiries. This provides a bad taste to some customers as we’re all human and want that human interaction, be it from a human voice or spontaneous chat exchanges. VAs provide them with that personalized human response, which provides a better customer experience.
Aside from a more personalized feel, VAs generally provide quality service. VAs are committed to delivering maximum value to their employers as well as ensuring and repeatable results. They are dedicated to their work and will do their best to give you high-quality service. We know of businesses that think VAs actually perform at even higher levels than full-time employees.