Have you ever felt like you’re constantly drowning in administrative tasks and putting out fires instead of working on the big-picture strategic goals for your business? As an entrepreneur or small business owner, it can be really difficult to find enough time in the day to get everything done. But what if there was a way to get back some of that precious time while also saving money for your business? Hiring a virtual assistant may be the solution you’ve been looking for.
A virtual assistant (or VA) is someone who works remotely, usually as an independent contractor, to provide administrative, creative, or technical services for a business or individual. With the right VA by your side, you can free up hours in your week, reduce overhead costs, increase productivity, access specialized skills, enjoy greater flexibility, and ultimately help your business thrive. Here’s a closer look at some of the key benefits of having a virtual assistant.
Time Management
One of the biggest struggles for entrepreneurs and business owners is finding enough time to accomplish everything on their to-do lists. There are only so many hours in a day, and time spent on administrative or repetitive tasks is time taken away from higher-value activities like business development and strategic planning. A virtual assistant can be a game changer when it comes to time management.
According to a survey by Remote.co, 46% of virtual assistants spend the majority of their time scheduling appointments and meetings for clients. Handing off time-consuming activities like calendar management, email triage, travel coordination, and document creation enables you as a business owner to focus on the work only you can do. Ultimately, this helps you use your time more efficiently and productively.
Let’s consider a real-life example:
John owns a 5-person marketing agency that’s starting to take off. He finds himself in back-to-back meetings during the day and spending nights and weekends on administrative work just to keep up. By hiring a part-time virtual assistant, John was able to offload scheduling, project coordination, client communications, and report creation. This gave him back 10-15 hours every week to focus on developing new service offerings and high-level strategy for winning new clients.
The right virtual assistant becomes an extension of you and your business, taking time-consuming tasks off your plate so you can spend more hours on important high-level work.
Cost Savings
In addition to gaining back time, hiring a virtual assistant also offers significant cost savings compared to hiring traditional employees. Let’s break down the numbers:
- The average salary for an executive assistant or administrative professional in the U.S. is $50,930 per year, which works out to roughly $25 per hour. (Salary.com)
- The average hourly rate for a U.S.-based virtual assistant is $25-35 per hour. (International Virtual Assistants Association)
- When you hire a full-time employee, you also have to factor in overhead costs for things like payroll taxes, insurance, paid time off, equipment, and office space. These additional costs are estimated to be 25-30% of an employee’s salary. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- As independent contractors, virtual assistants handle their own taxes, insurance, vacation time, equipment, and workspace, saving you those extra overhead costs.
By hiring a virtual assistant at $30 per hour as needed versus a $50K/year full-time employee, you could easily save over $20,000 annually in salary and overhead alone. And paying only for the exact hours of VA time you use each month provides additional cost savings and flexibility.
Beyond direct salary and overhead savings, virtual assistants can also reduce costs in other ways. Take client reporting for example:
Sarah hired a virtual assistant to take over compiling her monthly client reports. Because the VA had experience creating professional reports, there was no learning curve. By having polished reports presented to clients each month, Sarah was able to showcase the value her agency brings. This led to higher client retention and satisfaction. Sarah estimates the VA’s work on client reporting saves her thousands per year in churn costs.
With the right person in the role, a virtual assistant more than pays for themselves through time and cost savings.
Increased Productivity
According to the EY Future Workplace 2021 Productivity Survey, 53% of employees say they are more productive now working remotely than when working in an office. Virtual assistants are no exception to this trend. Because they are often specialized in certain types of work, they can dive right in and deliver results quickly.
Common tasks that virtual assistants can take off your plate to increase productivity include:
- Customer service and client relations
- Research and preparation for meetings/presentations
- Managing projects and collaboration tools
- Writing and optimizing content like blog posts, social media, and newsletters
- Administrative tasks like booking travel, submitting expenses, organizing files
- And much more!
Because top-notch VAs have experience streamlining these types of activities, they require little oversight to deliver maximum productivity. Thanks to modern technology like shared online workspaces, communication tools, and project management software, it’s easy for a virtual assistant to collaborate and integrate their work with yours seamlessly.
Let’s see how this played out for one business owner:
Michelle’s technology consulting firm struggled with bottlenecked workflows because sales qualified leads weren’t being handed off promptly to the service team. By bringing on a virtual assistant to manage the CRM system and handle lead handoff communications, Michelle was able to increase the number of new clients onboarded per month by 20%.
The right person with the right skills can increase productivity across many areas of your business. And the flexibility of only paying for the hours you need means you can scale support up and down as your needs change.
Specialized Skills
Finding an employee with specialized skills like bookkeeping, graphic design, or SEO can be difficult and expensive. However virtual assistants can provide expertise in all kinds of areas that may be outside of your own skill set as a business owner.
Some examples of specialized skills VAs can offer include:
- Bookkeeping – Accounts payable/receivable, payroll, tax preparation, budgeting, financial reporting
- Web design – Website development, web hosting, system administration, security
- Graphic design – Logos, branding, marketing materials, presentations, ads, signage
- Copywriting – Blogging, social media, newsletters, press releases, website content
- Project management – Coordinating teams, agile methodology, Kanban, Asana
- Data entry – Transcription, spreadsheets, database management
- SEO – Keyword research, metadata optimization, link building
Rather than spending months trying to recruit and hire specialists for these roles or paying high consulting fees, you can find virtual assistants with expertise in these exact areas. This provides your business with specialized skills instantly and in a highly cost-effective way.
For example:
Joel’s manufacturing company won a massive new contract that would require ramping up payroll administration and financial reporting quickly. By partnering with a virtual assistant who specialized in Quickbooks and payroll systems, Joel was able to award the contract and meet the client’s strict financial tracking requirements. This allowed the company to take on new business it couldn’t have handled otherwise.
Don’t let gaps in technical or administrative skills slow you down. A virtual assistant can provide just the expertise you need just when you need it.
Flexibility
When hiring full-time employees, you commit paying for 40 hours per week regardless of whether there is enough work to fill that time. With a virtual assistant, you only pay for the exact hours of work you need. This provides unmatched flexibility to scale support up and down as your business goes through busy and slow periods.
Other advantages include:
- No long-term contracts – If you only need help with a particular project, you can pay a virtual assistant just for that timeframe
- Ability to change needs weekly or monthly – Perhaps you need more hours devoted to social media marketing leading up to a product launch or campaign
- Add capabilities instantly – If you find your workload could be eased by bringing on additional administrative or technical skills, you can find a virtual assistant with those strengths and have them start within days
- 24/7 availability – Some virtual assistants are based internationally, so you can potentially have support overnight
- Work around gaps in schedule – If you will be out of the office for a week or more, a virtual assistant can fill in to handle time-sensitive deliverables
Let’s look at an example of how this flexibility helps:
When Andrea’s team was ramping up for the launch of a new website, their workload doubled. She was able to temporarily add 10 more hours per week of support from her virtual assistant to handle the extra marketing, customer communication, and reporting needs during the busy launch period.
Being able to easily scale assistance up or down and shift tasks week to week provides the ultimate flexibility to handle changing business conditions.
In summary, hiring the right virtual assistant provides five key benefits for your business:
- Saves you time by taking administrative and repetitive tasks off your plate
- Reduces costs compared to hiring traditional employees
- Increases productivity by handing off specialized projects
- Provides access to specialized skills without the need to hire full-time
- Delivers unmatched flexibility to scale support up and down as needed
If you’re feeling stretched thin and wish you had more hours in the day, it may be time to consider hiring a virtual assistant. Focus on finding someone who understands your business goals, needs, and work style. Make sure to communicate priorities, expectations, and metrics for success.
When you find the perfect person, you’ll feel like you suddenly have a clone of yourself with additional superpowers! A great VA becomes an invaluable asset that enables you, as the business owner, to focus on the work only you can do while they take care of the rest. With the right partner supporting you virtually, you will be better positioned to grow a successful, thriving business.