The process of recruiting somebody to help you in your business is one of the most difficult tasks that any business owner can face today. Even in a hiring environment that is so densely populated with people who find themselves to be newly unemployed, the task of finding somebody "good" is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
If you are a really focused individual, who knows exactly what he or she wants in life, is dynamic, proactive and driven, you represent gold to the business owner. It is truly quite amazing that the majority of people who are applying for these jobs just do not fall into this category.
When you are in business you have to surround yourself with people who are driven in this way. They may not share your entire vision in exactly the same way as you do, but they should nevertheless "buy into" what your company represents and must be able to contribute to its long-term viability and growth. It's a business owner's dream to be surrounded by people who are motivated, self-starters and who instinctively know exactly what to do in any given moment of crisis.
While finding staff at the executive level to help head various departments or roll out new ventures may be one thing, we should never underestimate the importance of finding staff that can help us with the day-to-day operation of each department within our business. While there may be less at stake here, these individuals nevertheless contribute to the greater good of the company. Without their focused and well delivered effort, the company is likely to flounder.
It's unfortunately true that many would-be employees still view their employment as a means to an end. They may be in fact relatively good at what they do, but they're not inspired and not likely to seize an initiative should it be needed. For example, if there were a better way of doing a particular task, a really good and forward thinking employee might suggest it and know how to implement it. Unfortunately, this kind of employee seems to be few and far between.
This is a good reason why business owners should consider outsourcing many of these positions to virtual assistants. You see, a virtual assistant is invariably a small business owner him or herself and knows full well what it takes to drive the business forward proactively. The virtual assistant can become not only someone who takes on, very cost-effectively and efficiently, many of those outsourced tasks, but could also become a valuable partner, advisor and someone who contributes in many more ways than one to the business growth.
Next time you complain about the lack of star quality among potential new recruits, consider outsourcing that particular position to a contributory virtual assistant. You will find that not only will the associated task be completed carefully, correctly, on time and within budget, but you may well be able to draw on the experience of the VA to help you further consolidate.
There are more and more small business owners that are aware of the concept associated with outsourcing. However, they might think that it is only applicable for things such as article writing or maybe some website work. These people tend to feel that they simply must keep on top of a lot of their routine, everyday work. If they don't, won't they lose control of the company? It can be difficult to let go, but in reality, someone like your virtual assistant is ideally placed to help with so many different elements of your daily schedule. Now, when we are all facing hard times, when we are all 6th week into lockdown, we are forced to stop work or implement a new way of working this might come in handy and show you ideas of your Daily Schedule you could outsource online.
1. Calendar Management.
If you feel that you are running around from pillar to post, always seem to be late for appointments (conference calls) and can never seem to fit in time for meetings with important prospects, then you should outsource your calendar management to a VA. When you're busy doing other things meetings can be scheduled and you can be given plenty of advanced notice so that you are in the right place at the right time without feeling flustered.
2. E-Mail Management.
Time management and efficiency experts tell us that one of the worst ways that we can waste our time is to constantly drop everything to deal with e-mails as and when they arrive. So many of these e-mails can be time-wasters. Other e-mails represent an attempt by the originator to control your time according to their schedule. By putting a virtual assistant at the gateway you know that you will only be prompted to deal with emergency situations and all other e-mail can be handled by the VA in the background.
3. Customer Support.
Now that you've got an increasing number of important clients "on the books" you will find that there will be an increasing number of customer service issues to deal with. This is something that you must prioritise as poor support in this area will quickly gain you a bad reputation, to say nothing of lost clients. A VA will ensure that everything is handled carefully, professionally and promptly, with your input only required in predetermined circumstances.
4. General Tasks.
As there are only so many hours in the day the small-business owner will invariably find that there will be many calls for their time that may not necessarily be related to business at all. For example, running errands, gift shopping, social event organisation. All of this can be handled by your VA.
5. Trip Planning.
I know it doesn’t seem to be relevant now, but I am sure it will be back soon. We all know how long it takes to try and plan a trip. Those airline travel consolidator sites may offer you many different choices but you've still got to try and sort out your hotel, car and do so within your budget. Before you know it you've spent hours trying to arrange just one trip. Outsource this to a virtual assistant. Once you have given them the appropriate parameters they'll do the rest with maximum efficiency.
Treat your virtual assistant as an extension of yourself. There's no need to feel as if you giving up control when you outsource all of those general administrative tasks that in truth are simply non-productive and holding you back from becoming successful.
In my previous articles, you can read about other outsourcing ideas like Admin tasks or Social media tasks. And soon I will cover more.
It's incredible just how many individual tasks you have to deal with as a small business owner if you simply do not delegate. In fact, you can find that more than 50% of your valuable time is taken up by tasks that indeed should be outsourced to a virtual assistant. Any small business owner should really take the time to record what he or she does very clearly and accurately, each day for at least a week. Upon review, you can then see just how much time is mostly wasted when it comes to pure business creativity and onward development.
Let's have a look at just half a dozen random examples of how a virtual assistant can relieve a lot of that administrative headache from you:
Usernames and Passwords Handling. It's really amazing just how many individual web pages these days require registration, the creation of a username and password. Some of the sites must be secure, of course, while others do not really contain any sensitive information but want to restrict access. A virtual assistant can help keep a reliable database of all this information.
Time Tracking. These days there are some great tools available to help everybody keep track of just how much time they spend online, to see whether it is productive or not. When some different individuals are involved in working for the business, the business owner never really knows whether productivity is being maintained. A virtual assistant can help to oversee this area and report back to the owner.
Gathering Testimonials from Customers. The business is only as good as its reputation. To maintain a reputation, it is essential to get testimonials back from customers. The virtual assistant should be engaged to do this on a proactive basis. It's easy for the small-business owners to forget this, after all.
Data Entry / Word Processing. Information and data are powerful, but only if it is used correctly and with purpose. A virtual assistant can help to ensure that all of the individual pieces of data that you generate, whether it be numeric or alphabetical can be included in the relevant database, spreadsheet programme or contact management application.
Receiving Calls. Not all business is conducted online, and many people still want to talk with a real 'live' person before they decide to buy your product or service. If you're responsible for answering the phone as a small business owner, or simply do not have a dedicated service, then you should consider how a virtual assistant can do this professionally and practically.
Internet Searching. We all know and use the power of Google. It can be an excellent resource, but searching can also be very time-consuming. The virtual assistant can be charged with the responsibility of searching for information that is relevant to any specific issue or topic. They have the added ability of being able to find information through resources that may otherwise have been invisible, adding to the knowledge base of the small-business owner.
Time To Consider An Alternative To The Dysfunctional Office
If you’ve ever watched an episode or two of that long running TV hit show “The Office,” you will no doubt have laughed at and enjoyed the antics of the dysfunctional office environment. So much of the work they do appears to be unproductive and is reflective of the traditional office that we have known for so many generations. There is a hierarchy within the office set up and certain people are assigned to do certain tasks, but often the tasks expand to fill the time available. In the corner office the manager is only marginally in control and somehow or other the business gets by eking out a small profit. (more…)
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