Virtual Assistant Quick Fixes that Give You Hours Back Each Week!

Hiring a Virtual Assistant is the single most affordable way to get a qualified consultant working on your business.  The best bit is, your Virtual Assistant is all about giving you more hours in the day; and who doesn’t need that!  Here’s 5 ways a VA could restore hours and hours to your week without breaking the bank

1. Admin/Bookkeeping Audit and Fix (save many hours per week)

Just because you’re awesome at what you do, doesn't mean you’re great at admin.  If you've set your business up from scratch your ‘ad hoc” approach to admin may actually be costing you a lot of extra hours. A great VA will come to your office, check out how you work and then make suggestions for ways to work smarter. Once you find a system you’re happy with, your VA can then put it into place, train you and your team, review and refine and then create an operations manual. Once it’s all in place you’ll spend far less time working on non-billable tasks.  Better still, you’ll also have a manual to give to new team members or to temps when you take a holiday, get sick or have a bub!


2. Inbox Management (save many hours per week)

If there are 250 red flags in your inbox and you don’t even know where to start, it’s time to consider inbox management services.  Your VA can set up Outlook rules to divert incoming mail to different folders so you don’t even need to see stuff that doesn’t concern you.  He can then process sales, responds to enquiries and answer all those fiddly questions that suck up so much of your day.  Once you’ve ditched the red flags, he can archive your inbox and you can start each day with a blank screen – ahhhh, the benefits to your blood pressure alone are worth it!


3. Social Media Scheduling or Management (save 1-3 hours per week)

Whether it’s finding amazing content or uploading your own amazing content, a great VA can do it efficiently and get you great engagement and virality.  This is the one area where it pays to do some research before choosing a VA.  Not all social media managers are created equal!  This has the added advantage of keeping you away from the Facebook temptation when you should be working.  Think how much time that could save you!


4. Chasing Payments (1 hour per week)

There is nothing so awkward as chasing payment because your job is to form happy, friendly relationships with your customers and clients.  Having a “middle man” allows you to be firm with slow payers without jeopardize all your hard relationship-building work.  And, let’s face it; it’s an AWFUL job – which wouldn’t prefer to get someone else to do it?


5. Project Management (dozens of hours per project)

Most businesses don’t even realize that they need a project manager!  Project management isn’t just for gigantic corporate affairs; it could be something as simple as running a promotion on Facebook, pricing insurance, leasing a shop front or building a new website.  Why spend hours organizing a promotion when you could be spending hours closing sales and sourcing new product?  Your job is to lead your business forward; your Virtual Assistant’s job is anything that holds you back.