Leveraging Virtual Assistants to your advantage: A Mom and Pop Shop’s Guide to Business Growth
We all know about today’s non-stopping world, you can’t catch a second to pause andyou’re your energy back. On top of this you have to run your small business, and we all know what being a small business owner at times can look like: you’re the owner, accountant, marketer, customer service, deliverer, operations manager. You just get your hands dirty and help everywhere. Starting a business, or even a running a long time standing business at times, with limited resources and time, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stretched thin.
What if there was something you didn’t know you could do to lighten your weekly load on your personal and business day to day? Enter Virtual Assistants — the silent heroes of today’s businesses. In just a few reasons, I’ll tell you my personal experience on how how virtual assistants have been a game-changer in my life, and can help you too, even more than you know it. I was hesitant at first, but after trying it out my business saw improved efficiency, a boost in productivity, and business growth. My personal life: spare time for my family and loved ones, less stress, happier life.
Delegating Administrative Tasks
As a small business owner, you NEED to learn how to delegate. Take those pesky admin tasks that take a bite out of your day and move them to your new Virtual Assistant. This is an absolute game changer!Answering customer and RFI emails, scheduling appointments, managing invoices, data entry, and more! These repetitive tasks are both time-consuming and tedious. So just take a small portion of your afternoon, teach your Virtual Assistant how to do these, and after a couple of days. No more! They’ll all be done and right there in your inbox for you to be in the loop. These way you get to free up valuable time to focus on higher-priority activities like high level business strategy and getting customers through the door.
Virtual Assistants can very well handle a good portion of you day-to-day chores, it’s just a matter of letting go. Among activities they can help us with, but not limited to these, we have:
- Email: Sort, answering RFI’s, reaching out to clients, suppliers, and contractors.
- Calendar: Scheduling appointments, setting up meetings, and reminders.
- Data Entry: Inputting, organizing, filtering, and processing data.
- Bookkeeping: Generating invoices, billing, tracking payments, and basic bookkeeping.
Delegate these easy but time-consuming tasks to your Virtual Assistant, create a workflow and ensure those back office tasks are handled quickly and efficiently, giving you more free time.
Customer Support
At times people usually underestimate the power of customer service. Your product might not be perfect, but customer service needs to be. This is what will make a customer turn into a repeat customer. This is what brings in the 5-star reviews. So being able to provide exceptional customer service is one of the most, if not the most, important factor to continued success in a business. This is specially for startups and small businesses who need to build strong relationships with their clients and need to build a brand. Remember, word of mouth and reviews are the best form of advertising, and they’re free – but negative reviews can also take you downhill real fast. On the other hand, providing 24-hour customer support can be difficult and costly, if not impossible, particularly for small businesses with limited staff and resources.
Virtual Assistants are specialists in customer support, their friendliness is almost tangible. They can serve as part of your customer support team, or even be your entire team if you don’t have one. Being able to respond to clients quickly, provide assistance, and address customer inquiries and concerns as fast as possible are all vital to keep your clients happy, keep them coming, and getting those 5-star reviews. VirtualAssistants can make sure that your customers receive quick personalized support to their inquiries any way you need: email, live chat, phone, or social media, improving their overall experience with your business.
What’s better, Virtual Assistants can also assist with:
- Processing Orders: Handling orders, tracking shipments, and managing returns.
- Scheduling: Setting appointments for customers, following up, rearranging schedules.
- Product Support: Providing product information, troubleshooting, and inputting customer feedback.
Having Virtual Assistants on your team, and taking full advantage of their abilities will augment your customer support efforts, improve customer loyalty, increase satisfaction, which will all ultimately bring in repeat business through the doors.
Marketing
Today more than ever, having an online presence throughout several social media platforms is vital for small businesses. Whether you’re looking to reach a wider audience or stand out from the crowd, this is the first place to do so. However, managing a business and at the same time trying to do all related to marketing, sounds like an impossible feat, cause it almost is! Managing social media accounts, creating content, and creating and implementing marketing strategies are all time consuming tasks, eager to be dished out.
Virtual Assistants can help with you with all basic tasks managing and posting content, copywriting, and handling inquiries. Virtual Assistans with marketing experience can help more by taking your marketing efforts and improving the results. Managing several social media accounts throughout several platforms, and creating engaging content, sending out email marketing campaigns, and copywriting among others, are all tasks Virtual Assistants can support you and your business with.
Some more detail on just a few things Virtual Assistants could assist you on your marketing efforts:
- Social Media: Creating posts, responding to comments or direct messages, engaging with followers, looking for new prospects and promotion ideas.
- Content Creation: Writing blog posts, designing basic graphics, curating and posting content for social media.
- Email Campaigns: Writing and sending out email newsletters and promos, managing subscriber lists, compiling campaign performance info.
- Product Reviews: Follow up with existing customers to get them to leave a review.
By having a Virtual Assistant by your side to manage your several marketing initiatives, you will be able to increase your brand awareness, expand online reach, and finally attract new customers.
Improving Efficiency
Efficient day to day operations in a small business are the cornerstone of success. And that’s some of the most challenging tasks like managing inventory, order processing, and coordinating logistics can that require much attention to detail can be delegated to your Virtual Assistant, whilst you just oversee and approve.
Virtual Assistants play a crucial role in improving your operational efficiency as mentioned before, by:
- Inventory Management: Tracking inventory, placing orders, and managing stock replenishment, inputting inventory data.
- Order Processing: Tracking customer orders, responding to RFI’s, and coordinating delivery logistics.
- Logistics: Process order shipments, managing deliveries.
- Market Research: Conducting research, analyzing data, researching competitors, and identifying new untapped business opportunities.
Take advantage of having an experienced Virtual Assistant, learn how to delegate more duties, oversee operations, and center yourself in decision-making and strategy.
Increased Profits
Whether you knew it or not, Virtual Assistants also have a direct impact on a business’s bottom line. Believe me when I tell you, I’m talking from experience. When you outsource tasks to your Virtual Assistants, businesses are greatly reducing some overhead costs that only come when hiring an on-site full-time employee: higher salaries, benefits, office space, utilities and other variables. In addition to this, hiring your Virtual Assistant with KrewUp! will bring you even
