Five Signs You Need a Virtual Assistant
Are you in need of business support?
You and your business are unique and special. But you’re not that unique and special!
We get clients coming to us with the same issues and stressors, time and time again. The required solutions may vary according to the individual needs of the business, but usually the complaints are very similar.
I don’t have time to keep my books in order. I feel overwhelmed. I haven’t taken a holiday in years. It’s starting to affect my family. I want to grow my business but feel bogged down.
Here are the top five signs that indicate it’s time to hand your admin over to the professionals.
You wish you could clone yourself.
Have you ever felt like you need two of yourself to get everything done? As yet, the technology is severely lacking—and you’d have to wait for your clone to grow up and become an adult, anyway.
While a virtual assistant might not be quite as good as another YOU, it’s very much the next best thing. Employees, while necessary and helpful, have their own jobs to do. For small trades and services businesses, this means that they are occupied in the trade or providing the service. This is not much help when it comes to the busywork of running the business itself.
A VA is dedicated to taking care of those annoying and time-consuming business administration tasks. The ones that aren’t big enough to hire someone to do—but are keeping you from the work you should be doing!.
2. You’ve got ring-ins keeping your books.
We wrote about this on the blog earlier—unless they are very much qualified, willing, and being fairly compensated, your partner (or family member) probably shouldn’t be your bookkeeper.
It’s pretty simple: business can interfere with family, and vice versa. Additionally, business support tasks like bookkeeping and customer service are important functions which should be done by those with the right experience and expertise.
If you find yourself foisting work off onto your husband, wife, partner, parent, or other loved one, it might be time to look into a virtual assistant.
3. You haven’t had a holiday in far too long.
Being a business owner shouldn’t mean that you can never get away. Holidays are important, and allow you to recharge and reset. If you feel like the place would fall apart if you were gone for a week, it’s time to allow an assistant to take some of those essential daily tasks off your plate.
Consider this also: there may come a time when you have an enforced break. Injury, illness, or other incapacitation can take the choice out of your hands. Would your business be able to tick over in your absence?
4. You’re on the phone way too much.
Answering constant calls is an absolute productivity killer. Not only does it require time spent actually talking on the phone, but it often sends you down a rabbit hole of attending to the enquiry of the person on the other end. When it all becomes too much, not only is productivity tanked but things get missed: follow-up calls forgotten, quote opportunities overlooked, and other details lost in the muddle.
Answering phone calls is one of our most-requested services. A virtual assistant can answer basic enquiries, take messages, perform outgoing calls and follow-ups, book jobs, and more. It’s amazing how much this will free up the time of a small business owner.
5. You want to grow.
If you want to grow your business, you’ll need time available to focus on that specifically. Owners can so easily get caught up in the neverending and cumulative list of daily tasks that they are unable to even think about the bigger picture for the company.
You didn’t start a business to be stuck knee-deep in admin and accounts. But we did. Handing the administrative tasks over to a virtual assistant (or team of them) can free you up to do some of the work ON your business that only you can do.
If you’ve recognised one or more of these signs in yourself, we’d love for you to get in touch and find out what Released can do. Having help is so important, and you might be amazed at how good administration support can improve your experience as a business owner.
We have a team of professional, experienced, and talented virtual assistants who can provide a range of services including customer relationship management, general administration, bookkeeping, digital marketing, tech and training, and design.
Book a quick chat to find out more!
