THE BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL ASSISTANT SERVICES

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Banking on Virtual Assistants can benefit your business financially while enhancing productivity. In addition, there are several advantages to contracting with a virtual assistant services provider over hiring a traditional assistant. Some recognized advantages include:

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• Lowered employment costs: You aren’t required to pay employment taxes for a non-employee virtual assistant, nor are you responsible for workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment, sick leave, or vacation time. Plus, recruiting, onboarding and training is minimal — if even necessary at all.

• Flexibility: A Virtual Assistant can work during whatever schedule you set. For example, if you need an inside sales agent to cover your phones on weekends or during off-hours (in the evening or early morning), you can set their schedule as such.

• Minimal overhead / reduced equipment expenses: You don’t need to provide office space, desks, computers, or mobile devices for your VAs. They work from their own remote offices and supply most of their own equipment. You retain the option of providing them with specific software you may require to perform their job duties.

• Bigger talent pool: By tapping into a wider geographic area and giving workers more flexibility and work arrangement options, you increase your access to varied talent.

• Enhanced productivity: Most business professionals can benefit from virtual assistant services, no matter the size of their organization. A solopreneur juggles a lot of balls and is typically overextended. A virtual assistant can pick up the slack, allowing the entrepreneur to focus on essential duties. Small companies who retain the services of a VA can benefit in many ways that entrepreneurs do. They can also lower their employment costs and business expenses while increasing productivity. Mid-size to larger organizations will reap all these benefits and more with the strategic use of skilled experienced VAs who can tackle value-added job duties.

• Maximizing the value of your time: Successful businesses and entrepreneurs know the value of being economical using their time. Unfortunately, low-level tasks like email management and customer support can clutter up your schedule, restricting the amount of time you can spend on the more profitable tasks of your business, like dealing with leads and strategizing for future growth. Virtual assistant services enable you to free your schedule of non-revenue generating tasks and expand your business without blowing up your budget.

• Affordable Business Growth: Business growth requires investment. By hiring a virtual assistant, you expand your operations without drastically increasing your wage bill and the amount of investment needed to grow your business. A VA is not only substantially more affordable than hiring in-house, the continual management and training costs are also far less.

• Freedom from Administrative Busy-Work: Responding to emails, managing meeting times and appointments, and data entry are all necessary daily administrative tasks, but they can easily eat into your schedule. A virtual assistant can ensure these tasks are completed on time, enabling you to focus on the more productive aspects of your business. While it’s important to provide clear instruction on what you want your virtual professional to achieve, having these recurring admin tasks taken off your plate will help you focus your time on growing your business.

• Gain valuable customer feedback and market data: Knowing the needs of your customers and potential clients is crucial to sustaining the growth of your business. While monitoring the industry you operate in, keeping informed on what your competitors are up to, and collating customer feedback are all important to help grow your business, they also require an investment of time and energy. A virtual assistant can collate all of this data for you, providing a valuable resource for your business. Having up-to-date access to this important data could prove a game-changer for the growth of your business.

• Maintain Your Online Presence: In the age of social media, businesses are expected to have a strong online presence. However, while the benefits of maintaining the presence of your business across social media and consistently producing content are well known, the work involved can stretch your budget and consume time. That time should spend on the more profitable tasks of your business. A virtual assistant can help you manage your online presence, responding to customers and prospects on social media, and producing and repurposing content so you can keep your social media posts fresh and engaging.

• Avoid Burnout: Every professional can suffer from burnout during their career. Hiring a virtual assistant to assist in managing elements of your workload can help relieve the stress that a hectic work schedule can cause. Having someone there to help organize your schedule and deal with tasks frees up your work schedule to focus on more productive aspects of your business and also helps to avoid your work leaking into your personal life. Virtual assistant services can help you maintain a work-life balance crucial to optimizing your productivity and general well-being.