Thursday, March 5, 2009

How a Virtual Assistant can help your business especially in this challenging financial climate!

Hiring a virtual assistant from Virtual Angels can help a small business to succeed in today’s market. I would suggest that many business owners just don’t realise how many benefits an outsourced VA would bring to their business immediately. These people are so experienced they can ‘hit the ground running’ from day 1!

This challenging financial climate for small business could well be viewed as an opportunity to grow but you must have the right resources in place to free you up to develop the business. Here are some important things to think about right now:

1/ Plan Ahead – don’t be too short term in your overall business planning – think about where you want your business to be in five years from now and think about investing in the future. You may well be missing a fantastic opportunity to get one over on your competitors right now. As they shed resources you can monopolise and leverage off a very flexible resource – your Virtual Angel. You can control the budget and use your VA for 2 hours or 20 depending on what is happening in your business at the time. Remember you are helping to stimulate the economy by keeping people working albeit in a part-time capacity – this is usually enough for them to keep their cash flow going and help them survive this bleak period of unemployment – so do your bit for the community and at the same time maximise your business opportunities.

2/ Change Your Mindset – We all need to get our head around the fact that the future of business is going to depend more and more on trusting virtual workers. We must adopt a more outcome focussed mindset and apply these outcome oriented KPI’s to our workers. Micro-managing people and looking over their shoulder constantly is unproductive and time consuming. Trust your professional Virtual Assistant, apply deadlines and be clear on expectations – you will be amazed at the results.

3/ Stop Being a Control Freak – So you think you are the only one who can run your business, eh? You are the one who started this business because you have a passion and you believe in the service or product. There comes a time when we all have to let go and let other people come in and help us otherwise you will run yourself ragged trying to be all things to all people and your business will simply not grow. Before you know it you will be frazzled and in a heap and possibly fail. Build your resources slowly but surely and trust. Allow us to find you the perfect person for your business who shares your values and your passion, first and foremost.

4/ Learn to Delegate – Stop being too busy to explain and delegate. Your Virtual Angel is an experienced professional, you usually will only have to explain things once and they will get it. Believe it or not he or she may even suggest a new and better way of doing things and before you know it you have a streamlined and efficient process in place. A little bit of time spent up front explaining how things need to be run will be worth the investment.

5/ Guaranteed Return on Investment – This will be the most cost effective and life changing investment you ever make. A Virtual Angel will change the way you work forever and free you up so much time you didn’t think you had. I would almost guarantee you will get your return on investment in the first few weeks of hiring your angel because at last you will have the time to personally follow through on all of the sales leads and opportunities you were missing before.

Take action NOW. Give us a call and start making your business really work for you. Find the passion you started with….I think it’s hidden under all of those invoices over there that need doing!

Have a productive day!

Caroline & The Virtual Angels Team


5 comments:

Ruby said...

It is advisable to do background checks and get referrals before hiring a virtual assistant, since you will be entrusting your company in their hands. Make sure you and your virtual assistant are on the same page in every aspect of the project at hand.

Ruby Chelmsford

Unknown said...

“Don’t be too short term in your overall business planning”--- It’s important that you think first before you act. Try to foresee if this will have a positive effect in the future. It’s not bad to take every opportunity that you have, just make sure that you’re making the right decision. Remember, chances and choices are important in a business.

Deana Varney

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

The use of virtual office is starting to expand now since a lot of clients are already depending on the World Wide Web for their deals and business transactions. Having a virtual assistant is definitely needed in the sense that your virtual office needs to be supervised or monitored. These are great pointers for starting a visual office!

[ Clayton Steadham ]

Anonymous said...

A very informative article on how virtual assistants can help businesses. Those who are considering to have virtual PA services will surely find this as helpful. Thanks for sharing.

Welcome to the Virtual Angels Blog

If you like what you read, please email a link to your friends!