8 Tasks You Didn't Know A Virtual Assistant Could Do For You

Virtual Assistants are a blessing to startups and businesses in their early stages as they can help escalate the company's growth. They are like a third pair of hands for entrepreneurs and small business owners, since virtual assistants can take care of many of the mundane tasks, that would otherwise take up a lot of their time.

With a virtual assistant on your team, you can ensure that everything is completed on time with perfection just like you want it!

Apart from routine tasks such as managing your inbox, replying to emails and making reservations, there are a wide range of tasks performed by virtual assistants, that you might be unaware about.

In this blog, we share a few of those tasks to enlighten you on the importance of virtual assistants for small businesses, but before that, let us take a second to learn more about them and how virtual assistants can help scale a startup.

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Who Are Virtual Assistants? What Are Their Skills?

Virtual assistants often have years of experience working across industries, and are experts in their field. Virtual assistants are like self-employed contractors, and consider companies they work with as their clients.

They usually work for multiple companies at the same time. As a result, they have vast experience and knowledge of quite a few fields.

Virtual assistants are highly organized, and consider meeting deadlines as their top priority. The main advantage of hiring virtual assistants is their knowledge and experience of working in a big firm and applying that to small businesses and their clients.

Their working strategy give their clients the right boost to stay ahead of their competitors, while getting accustomed to corporate culture.

Here are some of the common skills that most virtual assistants usually have as part of their skillset.

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Communication Skills

Every virtual assistant has exceptional communication skills. Emails, meetings, phone calls, reports, and presentations are essential ways to get in touch with your client, and to be able to convey the company’s vision in clear words. Therefore, a virtual assistant must possess good communication skills.

Project Management

Project management and ideation are crucial skills for managing a company's marketing team. Virtual assistants are well trained and experienced in management and can help guide your team in the right direction.

Time Management Skills

Meeting deadlines is one of the key qualities of any virtual assistant, and managing their time is an additional skill. Virtual assistants usually work with multiple clients simultaneously and efficiently manage their time to get work done without any last-minute haste. Virtual assistants are well organized with their schedule and are always punctual.

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Attention To Detail

Maintaining a good reputation is essential for virtual assistants; hence they are well known for their multitasking and precise work. Delivering work with perfection saves time invested in improving, so they work to give their best in the first attempt.

Problem Solving and Decision Making

There are tasks performed by a VA that require interaction with customers or leads. In some cases, customers might ask questions that only a person from the internal team could answer. Virtual assistants have high problem-solving skills and decision-making and can tackle difficult situations in the best possible way.

Fast Learners

Virtual assistants are naturally good at learning new things in terms of skill, software, apps, or even business operations. This is because virtual assistants work on the internet most of the time, and are surrounded by gadgets. This opens the possibility of always learning something new.

To satisfy clients, they need to know about every platform and software to provide the best services. Therefore, their quick-learning ability is highlighted and is of great importance.

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Self Motivated

Employees who work from the comfort of their homes often find it challenging to stay motivated and complete tasks. It requires a lot of motivation to sit and work all day without any human interaction.

Virtual assistants are self-motivated and are accustomed to the working environment created for themselves. Therefore, they make their office setting the most attractive and comfortable place where hours of sitting and working do not hamper their productivity or quality of work.

Mental health is essential; they strategize their routine by taking breaks often and completing tasks on time.

Creative

Sometimes you can’t think of new ideas for your business or run out of campaigns to keep up with your competitors. Virtual assistants can be of great help as they are creative, help you think out of the box, and give a fresh new perspective to your ideas.

If you have considered hiring a virtual assistant in the past but were not sure what were the kinds of tasks could be outsourced, here is a list of tasks that you didn’t know a VA could do:

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Tasks Performed By Virtual Assistants You Didn’t Know About!

Virtual assistants are known to perform specific repetitive tasks such as replying to emails, customer service, and data entry, but there are many other tasks that VAs are experts in, through which virtual assistants can help small businesses grow such as:

Recruiting Employees

Hiring new employees for your business is an important process. However, it requires time and a team to keep the process and documentation going in a smooth and efficient manner.

What you might not have known is that a virtual assistant can be of great help in the same perspective. This is because VAs are trained to follow instructions and know-how to do their job reliably.

Their familiarity with websites like Upwork, LinkedIn, and other hiring websites is an advantage in this field. Most VAs even have great networking skills and connections with qualified people who can be referred to the company.

The time invested in recruiting is tiring and would also put your other daily tasks on hold, but hiring a virtual assistant can get your work done efficiently without any delay.

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Social Media Marketing

Every company or business requires a formidable social media presence nowadays, due to the high number of people using social media channels for information and entertainment.

A virtual assistant can help manage your social media presence, update your social media pages regularly and even create content for them, if they have the skills. That can help your brand increase its online presence and connect better with customers.

Managing Calendars

Do you often feel that your day is packed with so many meetings and deadlines, that you hardly get to finish any essential tasks and are often left with no time for your personal life?

If your answer to these questions is a yes, then you certainly need a more organized assistant to manage your calendar. As a business owner, prioritizing and valuing your time the right way is essential.

Virtual assistants are experts at calendar management. Prioritizing the right things according to your needs and saving time for recreation is essential for the body and mind to prepare for another new day.

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Travel Arrangements

With a variety of options available, deciding what is best for you when traveling is challenging. However, an experienced virtual assistant who has made travel arrangements for their clients knows precisely how to handle a vacation or a work trip.

There are many things to consider when planning travel. From transport to the nearest airport or train station, to choosing the right hotel with the facilities you want.

The proximity of the hotel to the desired location you wish to reach, the overall budget, food, climate of the place, the right things to pack, and much more! A normal human being could get exhausted by the time all these things are figured out.

What if I tell you that there’s an easy way out? Hiring an administrative virtual assistant will undoubtedly change your life from this perspective. A VA has all the right contacts and knows the best hotels, travel means, and the best places to visit when managing your travel plans.

This will not only save your time on research, phone calls, and bookings but also will save you some stress.

Brainstorming

It is normal for a human being to run out of ideas and new changes when it comes to a company or business. Therefore, brainstorming new ideas with your team is essential to keep everything smooth and your customers interested.

Sometimes coming up with the best ideas might seem like a challenge, and brainstorming is the best way to tackle that. Hiring new members in your team, such as a virtual assistant, can help you go a long way with ideas.

VAs are creative and have a different way of coming up with solutions to complicated problems. This can be used for brainstorming and coming up with new ideas.

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Scheduling Meetings

Owners of small businesses and companies tend to meet up with their competitors or fellow business owners to develop creative ideas.

The chaos of managing time, completing daily tasks, replying to emails, maintaining paperwork, missing out on your schedule, and turning up late to meetings is very usual. But this can be easily handled by hiring a virtual assistant.

Wouldn’t your day be much smoother if someone was there to remind you when you had to prepare for a meeting or create your presentations and script to present in front of a potential investor or client?

A virtual assistant will do just that for you! Unfortunately, not many people have adequate knowledge about this, but virtual assistants are excellent at managing calendars and scheduling appointments and meetings without delay.

Training New Employees

Hiring new employees is a standard process in small businesses and companies. However, it is time-consuming to train new joiners, teach them your working style, and get accustomed to their daily work.

The easy way to save time and train new employees is by hiring a virtual assistant to do it for you. Usually, more people are required to onboard a batch of 20-30 people, but in the case of a virtual assistant, you might only need one.

By appointing a VA to onboard new employees, you can save both time and money.

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Bookkeeping

Every businesses needs to maintain paperwork and procedures to keep their records straight and well-maintained. Even filing taxes becomes easier when you have done all your paperwork correctly.

Some virtual assistants are also good in basic bookkeeping services where they can assist you in keeping financial records and tracking your expenses, so that you do not have to go through tons of paperwork on the day of doing taxes and budgeting.

Be more cost-efficient

Employee hiring costs have risen so much that cutting costs on hiring has become more of a necessity than a choice. As the costs of hiring a virtual assistant are comparably lower, they are gradually becoming a necessity in the US.

Due to their high efficiency, you can outsource more tasks to them, helping you be more cost-effective and avoid losses. Professional virtual assistants can also help grow your business and achieve the vision that you see for your company.

Hire a Virtual Assistant to scale Your Business Today

Hiring a virtual assistant is the best option if you wish to grow your business without having to invest a lot of money. The number of tasks they can perform and their efficiency more than make up for the money you invest in hiring them.

To know more about the tasks performed by VAs, you can visit our website www.wishup.co or write to us at [email protected].