One of the more common questions we encounter is how can a virtual assistant help if they’re not even in the same building as me? And that’s a fair question. But a good VA has lots of experience helping business owners run their affairs remotely. In addition to this experience, they have many other skills to manage more specialised tasks, and may even offer sector or industry specific knowledge. Depending on your needs, you can get virtual assistance with almost anything, from simple day-to-day tasks, through to much more specialised, complex tasks.

Think about all the little things that never seem to leave your ‘to-do’ list; booking hotels, organising your diary, answering emails, bookkeeping…These examples are typical virtual assistant tasks and employing a virtual assistant to work remotely can help you to deal with all these little things, and a lot more, such as:

• Time management & virtual admin
• Business finance support
• Sales & marketing support
• Event and travel planning

Employing a personal assistant who works for you virtually has many benefits, some are more obvious than others but here are a few of the main ones.

1. Become more efficient; make more money

By delegating smaller, less pressing tasks, or larger more time-consuming ones, you can free yourself to ‘bring home the bacon’. For example, if you spend 2hrs a day dealing with basic admin and online content monitoring for your business, that’s 2hrs you could free up by delegating this to your VA. That alone is 480 hours per year, or 53 days, that you can spend making money for your business.

2. Save money

What’s more, personal assistant outsourcing can save money, too. With these kinds of services you only pay for the hours they work. You don’t need to worry about lunch-breaks, paid holidays, pensions or sick leave, all of which you would need to cover with an in-house member of staff. For small businesses this can equal a huge saving! Lower overhead costs mean more money towards expansion and development.

3. Access skilled support

There are many things you can do yourself when it comes to running your business, but there are some things that you just shouldn’t try to learn on-the-go. Your accounts, bookkeeping and online security definitely fall under this heading – you just can’t afford to get them wrong. One of the real benefits of using a virtual assistant is that they already have these skills and can hit the ground running. This means no nasty surprises when your tax return is due and no prospects slipping through the net. All of this adds up to the kind of peace of mind that money normally can’t buy!

4. You’ll be more organised than ever

Many VAs specialise in organisation and events planning. This means if you attend conferences and AGMs, you don’t have to worry about keeping track of all the business cards you’ve been given. Virtual assistance could see all that info compiled into a neat file and saved to your cloud database before you even get home. You can even authorise your VA to follow-up on Linkedin, or make first contact via email to say that you enjoyed speaking with them and hope they will keep you in mind for future projects. How efficient is that?

A tailored service can also manage your business and personal diaries helping you keep track of important dates, making sure you don’t double book yourself, you aren’t late for that dinner with a new client and that all the key deadlines are met (from project delivery deadlines to wedding anniversaries, just in case…)

5. Marketing and sales support made simple

If you don’t know what you’re doing, marketing can be a real nightmare! Most virtual assistants will offer services like market research, content creation and online updates as standard. Virtual assistance with things like lead generation and nurture can also be extremely helpful to small businesses who have complex sales processes to manage.

6. Client management

Another of the many benefits of using a virtual assistant is getting help with client management. Something as simple as ensuring all correspondences are read and replied to within a reasonable time frame can really improve your reputation and professional credibility. Briefing your VA with the names, birthdays and contact details of your most loyal clients, and any important newcomers, is a simple thing to do and it can have a huge impact. Something as simple as receiving a Christmas card, which thanks them for their business can build the kind of strong relationships that small businesses thrive on. Virtual assistance makes this kind of attention to detail effortless.

We do hope that you’ve found our blog about the benefits of using a virtual assistant informative and useful. If you’ve ever asked the question ‘how can a virtual assistant help me?’ we hope you found the answer here! If you’d like to find out more about our our virtual assistant services, or would like to get a free consultation to discuss your needs, you can call 0800 994 9016, or use our contact form in the menu above.

Related articles:

• Choosing a virtual assistant – how to select the right service
• Which is best for your business? Virtual assistants vs temps, employees, freelancers and agencies
• How to delegate work effectively to a virtual assistant team