Virtual Assistants: Why Do You Need a VA?

Virtual Assistants (or VAs) are independent contractors who perform administrative or other duties for your business while operating remotely. They can handle tasks that you or other members of your regular team don’t have the time or unique skills to manage. They can act as a sort of jack-of-all-trades when you need to fill in gaps in your business’s productivity. And, best of all, they are usually far more affordable than hiring a regular team member.

Virtual Assistants can revolutionize the way you do business. Depending on who you contract with, your VA can help you with a wide range of tasks, from administrative to marketing to customer relations. They can help with productivity, time management, delegation, resource distribution, and organization. They can manage CRM programs, do light design work, moderate company social media profiles, schedule appointments, answer phone calls, perform data entry, transcribe documents, and much more.

Administrative Assistant: A Virtual Assistant can manage many of your regular, day-to-day administrative tasks completely remotely.

Executive Assistant: An executive assistant works directly on your needs and tasks, as opposed to those of your business. If you are an entrepreneur with multiple businesses and feel spread too thin, an executive assistant can help manage your daily life, so that you can focus on all the work that needs to be done for your separate ventures.

Social Media Manager: A social media manager can plan, organize, oversee, and publish social media posts for all of your various profiles. They can manage each profile individually, or use a social media tool to manage them all at once. They can create captions and SEO profiles, select photos, schedule posts, and more.

Data Entry: Data entry is one of those tasks that is super simple to handle remotely. If your business requires a large amount of data entry, a virtual assistant is a great option, as they can help manage and organize all of your data without having to step foot in an office.

Typist/Transcriptionist: It can be extremely valuable to have a note-taker keeping track of meetings, speeches, pitches, and announcements. If you have regular video content or long, involved meetings that go over a large number of topics and assignments, it may be helpful to have someone available to transcribe those things.

Scheduler: If you attend a lot of meetings, or if you schedule appointments with clients, having a Virtual Assistant act as a scheduler is a great idea. They can manage your calendar, or that of your business, so that you can relax.

Phone Operator: Do you feel you can’t step away from your desk, lest you miss a call? Is your phone constantly ringing? Having someone remote who can answer your calls regularly can make running your business a whole lot easier.

Customer Service Representative: Having someone available to assist with customer issues, either via phone, video chat, or text chat, can relieve a lot of stress when it comes to customer interactions and satisfaction.

Cold Caller/Lead Generator: You can have your VA make calls or send emails to pursue clients and customers, affiliate businesses, or partnerships.

You have repetitive tasks that are done daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. These tasks can range from quick actions to extended busywork. They need to be fulfilled on a regular basis, but take up entirely too much time for you or one of your regular staff to perform.

You need a “jack-of-all-trades” to help with several areas of your business. You need someone who has a wide variety of skills who can fill in the gaps you’re struggling to find appropriately-skilled coverage for.

You have systems in place that are important, but you don’t have the bandwidth to monitor them yourself.

You can’t remember the last time you had a day off because you do so much busywork in addition to your own duties.

You’ve been doing more administrative work than leadership work.

You’re ready to scale, but don’t have the budget to add more full-time team members.

You personally don’t have a skill that you desperately need. A Virtual Assistant can be the perfect solution to fill a skill gap!

Even though you’re not hiring a regular team member to work full-time or onsite, you still want someone with a range of important skills so that they can contribute meaningfully to your business while still keeping costs down. So what are some of the skills you want to look for when recruiting a Virtual Assistant?

The most important quality your Virtual Assistant should have is fluency in English. The majority of Virtual Assistants’ duties are typically administrative, which requires a large amount of reading and writing. Therefore, hiring someone who is fluent in English is an absolute must, and the number one qualification you want to start with when looking for a Virtual Assistant.

Second, it’s always great to find someone who is college-educated. They will have experiences and the kind of well-rounded knowledge that is likely to be very useful to have in someone on your staff. This is especially valid if they have a degree in something like Marketing, Business, English, or Communications.

Working virtually means that internet connection is important, so you want someone who has a reliable, hard-wired internet connection. WiFi can be a bit too finicky and inconsistent, so a hard-wired set-up is absolutely crucial. In addition, you want a Virtual Assistant to have sturdy, dependable peripherals, including a headset and a webcam.

Your Virtual Assistant should be organized and good at time management. It can be difficult to stay organized and on top of tasks when you’re not clocking in at a location for a 9-to-5, so they have to be a self-starter and productive without direct oversight.

They should have general business software experience. Programs like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace, CRM or email management software, schedulers, eCommerce programs, and even some design programs like Adobe Creative Suite or Canva are all great specialties to look out for when surveying resumes.

The final two qualities you want to ensure your VA has are research skills, and communication skills. They should be able to do both qualitative and quantitative research, and should have both written and verbal communication skills. These are essential for every administrative assistant.

If you’re planning to hire a Virtual Assistant, you will need to ensure that they have all of the necessary equipment. At PMGo, we make sure that all of our Virtual Assistants are prepared with the following:

• • A computer or laptop with at least 8 GB of RAM and a hard-wired internet connection
  • A headset with a quality microphone
  • A quiet place to work, especially if they are going to be making or receiving calls or attending meetings
  • A webcam
  • A time-clock software or app

In addition, you will need to provide them only with

• • Any specialized software or programs they will be using while on the job
  • Any other specific equipment that they will need to perform your task

By bringing a jack-of-all-trades independent contractor onto your team, you’re saving money that would have otherwise been spent on individual, full-time experts in the various skills you need covered. Additionally, you can focus on the big picture details that bring in revenue, without being bogged down by administrative tasks.

A Virtual Assistant will work as needed, and your utilization of their talents can scale depending on workload. They can automate tasks that have taken up both time and money in the past and streamline your systems for maximum efficiency.

The price of a Virtual Assistant can depend on a number of factors. Skill, experience, education, location, equipment or software necessary, scope of duties, and amount of interaction with customers or clients are all factors that go into determining the cost of a Virtual Assistant. US-based VAs can cost upwards of $20 per hour. With PMGo, you can hire a qualified, skilled VA for as low as $6 an hour.

As technology advances, options for working digitally have become more and more abundant. There are plenty of businesses that run completely in the digital workspace. If you’re already there, a VA is a great tool to add to your business. But even if you still operate out of an office or brick-and-mortar business, a Virtual Assistant with PMGo can save you time, money, and stress.