You may not realize it, but you may be someone who needs a virtual assistant.
There are many instances where a VA could be a great investment. Below we’ve listed 11 most popular cases where people may need some remote help.
1. Overwhelming Email Inbox
Do you have too many emails to answer in a day? Find yourself spending hours replying to people before you even start other work? Are you endlessly scrolling just to find key information within an email buried under a hundred others? If any of the above situations apply to you, it might be time to hire an inbox management VA.
Some of their email management tasks would involve:
- Organizing emails into folders and applying labels and filters to make everything easy to locate
- Deleting junk emails and setting up spam settings for unwanted newsletters, subscriptions, and the like
- Managing and sorting your list of contacts for mass emails
- Responding to emails
2. Administrative Tasks Piling Up
Perhaps you’re looking for an assistant in the more traditional sense of the word. Maybe you need help with a wider array of clerical tasks that require less in-depth knowledge. In that case, you might consider hiring a general VA. They can help you book flights, answer calls and general emails, and compile certain documents. They can also be assistants who assist other VAs and fill in gaps where you need them.
Perhaps you require someone with a little more managerial experience. An executive virtual assistant can help you organize and implement work as head over other general VAs. They can take charge over internal communications between in-house workers or other VAs. They can take meeting minutes and remind other assistants of their duties. Some executive VAs can also be responsible for onboarding new hires or helping in the hiring process.
3. Social Media Management Becoming Time-Consuming
Maintaining and building a social media presence for your business is no piece of cake. It requires some marketing, some content creation, and people skills. On top of other tasks like product/service development and sales, this can become overlooked. Either that, or you get overworked trying to keep up with the demands associated with engaging an audience. A social media VA can take these tasks on for you.
These VAs will know how to manage your Facebook and Instagram profiles through Meta Business Suite. They would also know how to use other social media advertising and marketing tools.
Their duties include:
- Creating and scheduling posts
- Liking and replying to comments
- Market research and analytics
- Ensuring posts align with company values and branding
4. Data Entry and Document Management Backlog
The email-backlogged is not the only person who needs a virtual assistant. Other businesses may neglect data and documents too. You may require regularly updated customer records or simply better organization systems for your files. Never again waste time skimming through folders and drives looking for the right information and let a VA take care of that.
A VA can help you with all your data entry needs, from updating spreadsheets to transferring files across destinations. Quickly access information to share with partners, investors, and your team.
5. Inability to Handle Appointment Scheduling and Calendar Management
If you’re anything like most people, there have been times where you’ve arranged two different meetings at the same time. One of them might have had to be pushed to later in the day or rescheduled completely. It’s an honest mistake, especially if you’re thinking about how to fit other tasks into a busy work-week.
Give a VA access to your calendar and let them take care of organizing your appointments. They can schedule meetings internally and with external parties, like suppliers and other business partners, via call or email. They can also assist with the hiring process and schedule interviews. Use a shared calendar and work together with them to organize your daily, weekly, and even monthly schedules in advance. This way meetings don’t sneak up on you and you have more time to focus on other duties.
6. Unable to Handle Customer Support and Inquiries
One or two customer inquiries a day is manageable. However, if you’re getting enough that you’re spending hours answering simple questions, then you may need a customer service VA.
These VAs can help you with a variety of customer support related-tasks. For instance, can hire a live chat VA who will engage customers on your website and help them in real time. They can set up automated quick response chats and direct customers to certain pages like your FAQs. If you don’t have an FAQ section, a customer service VA may also help you with its development. They can also manage a separate email specifically for customer inquiries.
Customer service is crucial to growing your business. So, you want to make sure you have enough of an infrastructure to support all customer questions and concerns.
7. Blog Post Writing and Content Creation Backlog
Blog management and content creation is almost a necessity in this day and age. Whether it’s a website or social media, content is important to drawing attention and attracting potential consumers. Another level to that is SEO, which is important if you want your website and its pages to rank on SERPs (search engine results pages).
Add a content writer or copywriter to your team to create quality, engaging content for your audience. With knowledge of SEO best practices, they can level up your content to cater to both humans and search engines.
Let a blog manager take charge of posting and scheduling on your website.
Blog managers can:
- Head your team of writers
- Ensure things get pushed out in a timely manner
- Check if existing content needs updating
- Check if there are gaps in your current content collection that might be beneficial to write about
- Make sure there is no duplicate content or plagiarism
8. Unable to Do Research for Various Projects
Research is a skill. Almost everyone has the internet at their fingertips, but not everyone knows the right sources. Not everyone knows how to find accurate and useful information. We can’t always find information through a quick Google search. Research can take a lot of time. Correction. GOOD RESEARCH takes a lot of time. This is especially true if, for instance, you need scientific evidence to support certain product claims. Excellent research wins the trust of consumers and helps you avoid legal trouble.
You can hire general internet research VAs. Alternatively, you can also hire VAs with specialized knowledge. Though, that might be more challenging and costs extra.
9. Not Doing Bookkeeping and Expense Tracking
Financial management is often overlooked. This is unfortunate, seeing as a lot of companies fail due to poor money-management. You might be spending hours on your books monthly. Maybe you have no idea how to do taxes. Maybe, even, your relationship with your accountant is strained because of poor bookkeeping. If this is you, you may be someone who needs a virtual assistant to take care of the financial back-office.
This is where a bookkeeping VA or a fractional bookkeeper comes in. Bookkeepers can help you keep your finances tidy, track your spending, issue invoices, pay bills, and organize key reports monthly. Some can even manage your payroll duties for you.
You can also hire a virtual accountant for needs like tax filing and compliance, budgeting and forecasting, and financial analysis. They can provide financial guidance and share key insights on your financial reports.
10. Unable to Do Lead Generation and Database Management
You can have the best or service product on earth, but without customers, it only helps you. Lead generation is an essential part of the sales funnel. This is the process of getting the attention of potential customers and nurturing their interest. The ideal end of that customer journey is a conversion or sale.
However, this can be quite a pain-staking process. You can outsource this process to an individual or lead generation team.
These people can help you with
- email marketing
- content marketing
- landing page optimization
- cold calling
- other advertising techniques
They can also maintain and update your customer information database. This database allows them to target customers more effectively.
11. Unable to Keep Up With or Get More Sales
It’s one thing to have difficulty making a sale, it’s another thing to not be able to keep up with a high sales volume. While the latter is definitely a better problem to have, you probably want it solved.
You can hire sales VAs and a sales management VA to help get your sales force organized. They can help build your sales strategies, plan for high-volume seasons, and even coordinate with those in charge of inventory management. They work closely with your marketing team to produce leads and are an essential component to nurture them towards conversion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is hiring a Virtual Assistant cost-effective?
Absolutely! There are several ways a VA can help you save costs.
For one, you don’t have to worry about taxes, employee benefits, or other overheads typical of in-house hires.
A full-time or even part-time salary of an in-house worker will come out to be much higher than a VA. This is because you can hire a virtual assistant on an hourly or project basis. This is more cost-efficient because you only pay for the hours they are actually working.
Second, the most popular countries to outsource have lower costs of living. This affects the rates of virtual assistants. If you’re hiring from places like the UK or the US, local rates will be much higher.
How do I find and hire a Virtual Assistant?
We recommend finding a reliable VA through reputable freelance marketplaces like Upwork, PeoplePerHour, and Freelancer.
Do I need to provide training to a Virtual Assistant?
Not necessarily. A lot of VAs already have a mix of experience, education, and certifications.
Someone who needs a virtual assistant might want to hire someone with less experience or skill and handle training themselves. Some actually prefer to do this with entry-level freelancers. Because they are more of a clean slate, they are easier to train in certain processes and work habits and culture. However, if you go this route, you will be the one to shoulder the cost and the risk.
How do I ensure data security and confidentiality with a Virtual Assistant?
There is always a level of risk when hiring freelancers. However, hiring from reputable places will mitigate this risk.
You can also have lawyers write up contracts between you and the freelancer.
Can I hire a Virtual Assistant for personal tasks?
Sure you can!
A personal general virtual assistant can help you:
- book travel arrangements
- schedule personal meetings
- do your personal finance bookkeeping and accounting, and more
What Is Outsource School?
Outsource School helps you to unlock the potential of virtual assistants and accelerate your business growth.
This is the exact system Outsource School’s founders, Nathan Hirsch and Connor Gillivan, used to go from zero to 8 figures and 40+ virtual assistants with an exit in 2019.
Since being founded in 2020, Outsource School has helped 1,000+ business owners hire 2,000+ virtual assistants for their companies.
Schedule a free sales call to learn more
Free resources you might like:
- Outsource School Case Study: How We Scaled to 45+ VAs and 8 Figures in Revenue
- Free VA Calculator | See How Many VAs You Can Afford
- Free Training on 5 Keys to Working With VAs
- Learn Outsourcing 101 | Guides, Downloads, and Checklists
Conclusion
So, who needs a virtual assistant? Well, from our list we can see that anyone can benefit from a VA. They can help you save time and provide expertise and efficient processes anywhere from creative tasks to organization. If you relate with any of these situations, this might be your sign to start looking for one.
Feel like we didn’t touch on something you relate to? Please let us know in the comments!
