Excepting profitability, company growth is one of your biggest concerns. However, remember that rapid growth can be catastrophic for a small business that isn’t ready to scale up. On the other hand, steady growth allows you to slowly switch operations, hire the right talent, and handle financial details.
Of course, you find yourself in the position of being the sticking point when it comes to growing your business because you’re the owner. The process implies more meetings, tasks, and problems. You can’t find a spare moment to relax or properly plan what business expansion would imply. However, if you cannot find a way to manage your time and tasks better, your company will stagnate because it’s physically impossible to do everything on your own.
Just because everyone thinks that working 16 hours is sexy for an entrepreneur doesn’t mean you should also adopt this misconception. Trust a professional to do things as good as you or even better. A virtual assistant can elevate business operations to the next level by offering you the needed time to focus on your work.
If you truly want to scale your company, here is how a virtual assistant can support you in the process.
They can handle mundane tasks that consume most of your time
One of the main reasons entrepreneurs work with remote assistants is that they help them free some of the stress they experience in their leading position. So, if you want to expand your business, follow their example and hire a specialist to take some of your daily workloads. You don’t want your business growth to stall because there aren’t enough hours in a day for you to squeeze in all the tasks you must complete. Many of them don’t require your personal attention or aptitudes. For example, you don’t have to read all emails to filter the important ones and delete spam. Your personal assistant can do it for you and forward to your address only those that require your attention. They can also send out and follow invoices because even if it’s essential to handle the task flawlessly, you don’t have to do it personally.
Offloading routine tasks lets you apply your time to the work that drives company growth.
Leverage remote assistant specialization
Different virtual personal assistants offer various services. Some provide general administrative skills while others specialize in particular industries. For example, some give only marketing services. Marketing offers great opportunities for driving company growth, but only if your remote assistant knows how to handle the campaigns. For instance, you may want to concentrate your marketing efforts on social media because you’re running an e-commerce website, and your clients spend most of their time on social media platforms. A virtual assistant specialized in social media campaigns would know how to generate user-targeted content.
For maximum leverage, hire a VA specialized in the areas you lack aptitudes.
A virtual assistant enables you to make better decisions
A serious bane in your life as a business owner is something called decision fatigue. You want to avoid dealing with this issue at any cost. Decision fatigue means that the more corporate decisions you make, the worse they become because you no longer own the creativity and focus on understanding what it’s best for your venture. You are predisposed to suffer from this problem when you make countless decisions over a short period, like a day or week.
When you offload some mundane tasks to your remote assistant, you reduce the number of decisions you must make daily. They can handle everything from checking emails to customer service and social media marketing. This means that you make fewer decisions over the course of each day and have more time to consider their implications. This way, you’re less likely to make mistakes.
Eliminating mistakes and issues can enhance a company’s success.
Here is what you need to do before hiring a remote assistant to help you propel business growth
Document operations and establish procedures
When we say document everything, we mean it. You need to use a tool to record all tasks you complete daily and their particular features. Writing each task down step by step and using a video to demonstrate how to complete them ensures that anyone understands how you want things done, and your virtual assistant will make no mistakes.
Identify the tasks you can delegate to a virtual personal assistant
Now that you have documented your processes, you need to figure out which tasks are important and require your attention and which ones are easily handled by someone else. Don’t expect the remote assistant to replace you. However, if you carefully train them, they can come pretty close to doing things the same way as you do it. If you follow the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule, you need to concentrate on 20% of things and delegate the others to specialists who possess the required aptitudes.
Depending on what you do daily, your personal assistant can take sales calls, create marketing content, send proposals, manage emails, or do outbound prospecting.
The list of tasks you can delegate to a remote assistant is endless. It would help if you were clear on what you want them to do, so they can ease your job.
Find a virtual assistant who shares your business values
There are countless ways to find a virtual assistant online, but not all provide the same services. Many agencies and platforms connect business owners with people skilled and trained to complete the tasks you assign them. However, it’s important to research to ensure that you don’t hire someone who lacks the knowledge or experience to support business growth. Read the candidates’ resumes, connect with former employers, and interview the individual before signing a contract.
Tracking and training
The last stage in the process implies training and tracking. You want to spend some time with your part-time employee to train them on what they have to do. Start with the easier tasks and progress to the more complex ones. Once they acquire all the needed aptitudes, track their progress.
