WOULD A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT WORK FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS?

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 things to contemplate if you are wondering whether 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 general tasks on your to-do list that get pushed off from week to week.

• You have routine work items that you don’t like doing that 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….

Discover the routine tasks you dislike doing. Take a 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. Once you have found the perfect VA you think might be the delegation partner of your dreams, start small and work up as a way of becoming more comfortable. You will be glad you took that first step and hired her.