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In the early days of your business, you as the owner usually spend most of your time taking on all of the small jobs related to growing and maintaining the company.
As the growth of your business picks up, you will start to see that doing all of the work yourself in unsustainable. You will (or already are!) get too busy with the function of your business that you are the expert in. All other tasks will take a backseat.
Say you’re an expert in technology services. This was the case with one of our clients. As the business owner, his expertise was needed in the day to day operations of the business. He wasn’t an expert in bookkeeping, marketing, or handling payroll. These tasks (yes, including payroll!) were taking a backseat to the day to day operations.
As you can imagine, this wasn’t sustainable.
Most business owners resist outsourcing the work for one simple reason. “What can someone else even do in my business to help? AND trust that they will do them correctly?”
Take a few minutes and write down the list of tasks that you just haven’t had the time to complete lately. Include anything that you’ve labeled as “not a priority.” These tasks are the ones you should be outsourcing.
Let’s look at some of the typical tasks that business owners will outsource to their virtual assistants to keep their business growing:
Social Media
Being on social media is absolutely crucial in this day and age. Social proof is what many rely on when deciding on a company to work with. If you want your business to appear trustworthy, you will have some kind of social media presence.
Being on one social media platform is incredibly time-consuming. Posting, engaging with potential customers, responding to customers, and managing your reputation are all things that need to be handled on each platform! This being said, most businesses are on at least 2.
The good news here? This is the most commonly outsourced task in small businesses, and there is a huge number of highly qualified virtual assistants handling these tasks.
Hiring someone to take care of this important task in your business will free up your time, alleviate any stress you’re feeling around managing your social media and build up your social reputation.
Marketing
I’m always asked “How is this different from social media? That’s where we DO our marketing.” The best answer I can give here is that it’s not so much that it’s different as that social media is one single segment of the huge picture that is marketing.
Do you want to send monthly email newsletters? Showcase your expertise in a podcast series? Publish informative blogs? These are just a few examples of the other key aspects of marketing a business.
There are experts in the virtual assistant world offering different combinations of almost any marketing plan you can think of.
Get clear on what you are looking for in the marketing department and outsource it so that you can get back to focusing on the new customers that you will be bringing in.
Website Design
Getting your website up to date and properly designed can be a huge job and an easy one to put off “until you have time.” It’s 2019! The number of consumers that go online to find a local business has jumped to 97%! If you want them to choose your business, you need to be found online—meaning you need a website.
So now that we know how important it is, it’s time to stop putting it off and get your business online.
Hiring a virtual assistant to build your website is a great solution. It’s a specialized skill which means that it’s a great thing to outsource. It’s likely that you’d be able to hire an entire virtual assistant agency to cover all aspects of your site from graphics and copy to actual web design!
Graphic Design
Graphics are picky things. Everyone has their own style and their own methods of doing things. So while this is a great thing to outsource, it can be difficult to find the right fit!
Before you outsource your logos and other graphics, make sure you have a clear vision of what you want to see. Without this vision, the overall process can be frustrating.
Once you have an idea in mind, giving clear direction to your new designer will have them creating amazing graphics for you and your business!
Scheduling & Calendar Management
Scheduling is one of those things that just has to get done in every business, but no one ever seems to have the time to do it effectively. Appointments get missed, and follow-ups start to fall through the cracks.
Without effective scheduling, you are leaving business on the table. Those leads that you’ve worked diligently to pull in will become ice cold without contact.
Getting an assistant to help you with this aspect of your business can be very freeing. Imagine waking up in the morning and knowing exactly where your time will be spent. No surprises meetings. No clients popping up wondering why they never heard back from you about that meeting.
You’ll have more time to worry about converting your leads, and you’ll spend less time worrying that you forgot something!
Event Support
Do you plan events with your business? Perhaps even a company party or luncheon? A virtual assistant can definitely help with this.
How is this helpful? They can complete all of the scheduling and planning tasks that you need to delegate without pulling your other company resources away from their other jobs!
It’s pretty typical that planning a company event will get tossed on to the desk of an in house assistant. This then means that the assistant will either become very overworked or their other tasks will fall by the wayside. Neither of those options is great.
Getting a virtual assistant to come in and handle the tasks for you will eliminate the need to overwork anyone AND your event will still get planned!
Bookkeeping
This is another key aspect of how your business runs. It’s
This creates an absolute nightmare each month when you want to know how your business is performing AND an even bigger nightmare during tax season!
At minimum bookkeeping should be handled weekly and for really busy businesses it should be handled daily to keep everything on track and running smoothly.
At the same time, you can outsource your Accounts Receivable tasks and your Accounts Payable tasks. Your virtual assistant can keep the books in order and make sure your getting paid on time!
Customer Service
Customers like timely responses. It’s pretty simple. Finding time to dedicate to responding to customers? This part isn’t so simple.
A process that works really well here is to set up a dedicated customer service email inbox (or Twitter account if you’re T-Mobile) and have someone there 24/7 to respond to customer inquiries. This is ideal because customers never need to wait an extended period of time before they get a response.
This is really difficult to do on your own. Especially since you probably like to get at least some sleep each night. A great way to get this taken care of is to find a team of virtual assistants that is already handling this for another few companies.
You get the added benefit of a monthly rate, and your customers will always be answered promptly!
If 24/7 support isn’t something that you need, hiring a single virtual assistant can do wonders to make sure that all of the inquiries are answered in a timely fashion. They can also put a process in place for things that need to be escalated up to you!.
So, why should I outsource?
In simple terms, outsourcing will save you both time and money in the long run. I know, it seems strange that paying other people to do the work for you will save you money, but it’s so true.
Let’s explore how you will save time, money, and sanity with these three crucial questions:
Question #1 – What is an hour of YOUR time worth to you?
Let’s make an example. Say that an hour of your time is worth $500 if you spend that hour working on the tasks that you are an expert in.
Now say you hire a virtual assistant and spend $50 for an hour of their time working on your bookkeeping.
If you would have done that hour of bookkeeping yourself, you wouldn’t have earned any money for that time. It’s even possible that it would take you more than an hour because bookkeeping isn’t really your cup of tea.
The math here is pretty simple. You spend an hour doing your most profitable tasks, and a VA handles the rest for exponentially less money per hour.
Question #2 – How many hours per day do YOU want to work?
When I first began my business, I was working 16 hours per day. It was exhausting, but I didn’t want to outsource because I needed the cash flow.
A good friend told me that I needed to outsource, that I was working too much and that it wasn’t sustainable. Also, let me tell you, he was right.
I hired someone, I outsourced a good part of the work to them, and then I realized that as I outsourced the job, I could bring in more clients, AND my work-life balance was better.
So decide how many hours you actually want to work each day or week and what you need to focus on for those hours. Then start outsourcing the rest.
Question #3 – What is your priority in your business?
Ask yourself this question. What is your priority? Are you trying to build a business that will support you in retirement? Change the world? Disrupt the technology space?
Every different priority has a different path to get there, but they all have one thing in common. Outsourcing.
If your goal is retirement, you’re going to want to start outsourcing as soon as possible because someone is going to need to run that business while you take your cruise around the world.
If you’re trying to disrupt the technology space, you need to outsource because your expertise is required for all of the big things in your business.
If you’re trying to change the world, you definitely need to outsource because that job is way too big for one person to handle.
So take the next step. Today is the day to grow your business! Now that you’re ready to hire… click that button below to get in touch with us. We can definitely help!
