Does Your Small Business Need a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistant. The mere utterance of these words can make a small business owner ecstatic or apoplectic — all depending on their experience with this increasingly popular administrative help.

Here are just a few signs that a VA might be a productivity enhancer for your small business.

You’ve blown a business opportunity because you missed a deadline to follow up. You’re not on top of business development because you have no up-to-date client and prospect database. You have exciting work projects you would like to take on but always seem to be too tied up with the day-to-day running of your business to get to them. You work nights and weekends to keep up with routine administrative tasks. You have routine work items that you don’t like doing which take time away from other more creative and important tasks.

If you’re shaking your head at this point and saying, “Huh, what is she talking about,” stop reading. If you’re nodding your head in agreement, read on to learn a few ideas on bringing a VA into your business.

Discover the routine tasks you dislike doing. During the next week, keep a log of all your activities. At the end of the week, sit down and review the list and determine which activities you need to do yourself, and which you could delegate to a VA. For example: uploading a week’s worth of pre-written tweets, physically posting your weekly blog, following up on invoices, etc. Those are perfect projects to give to a VA.

Start small. It's ok to just start with a couple of projects to get accustomed to each other.

Once you have worked together a few weeks, the sky can be the limit.

There are so many advantages to using a VA, you will be amazed you didn't think of it before!