Virtual assistants are not just there to take care of your daily mundane administrative, clerical, and such tasks. They can do much more than scheduling meetings and making phone calls. Your business can benefit if you know well enough to get the most out of your virtual assistant services.
We have brought together a list of ways in which you can get the best out of your virtual assistant services and create a meaningful working relationship. You will not only save up so many precious hours in the day, but with a competent team member, you will also experience your business successfully expanding.
One of the best ways to get to the best out of your virtual assistant is to delegate effectively. You must hand over to them several of the most time-consuming tasks. Ensure that you save at least two precious hours for yourself each day in the process. You need to identify tasks that qualify as big savings. You must allow your virtual assistant to handle your social media for you, manage your calendar, take care of the minor blogging tasks, manage your emails, take care of your marketing list and basic bookkeeping and also handle the customer support. You may also delegate other tasks such as writing transcriptions, researching data, creating blog posts images, updating membership sites, moderating forums, and so on.
Effective communication is another key factor in getting the best of your VA. Make sure you thoroughly and efficiently communicated all instructions about all tasks delegated. This is an even more essential requirement when you are training your new virtual assistant. You should discuss with your virtual assistant and set aside a time each day where updates and feedbacks can be given and taken.
A business owner must not make the mistake of providing merely mineral instructions to the VA and then expecting them to function on their own and produce unsatisfactory results. Detailed answers to every potential question must be given. The better you communicate, the less likeliness of suffering through back and forth emails and repetitive follow-ups.
One of the best ways perhaps of gaining the most from your virtual assistant is to first train and educate them in your ways. You must seriously consider continuous education for your VA to reap many benefits for your business in the process.
When you allow your VA to learn new programs, skills, and technologies, you ensure that your business remains strong in the industry, current and competitive. In fact, it also makes your VA feel that they are growing career-wise and would excel and stay strong in their career under your employ. What could be a better deal than this?
One important way to solidify your virtual assistant's commitment and encourage their sense of being respected is to welcome their feedback. You must make it a point to let your virtual assistant feel confident in sharing their suggestions, opinions, and contributing ideas on a project. You should ask them for their input regarding the advancement of business processes.
You must also remember that merely asking for feedback is not enough. Make sure that you listen positively to make the VA realize their feedback matters to you. If you find soundness and wisdom in their feedback, make it a point to act upon it.
If the feedback would brainstorm more power for your business and be beneficial for growth, there is no reason to delay acting upon your virtual assistant’s feedback.
As a business owner, it is important to not think of your virtual assistant as merely a contractor or a hired help for the business. Remember, they are to be a team member. Consider them a partner, an equal who needs to understand your needs and treat your business as their own. They need to be completely committed to the successful growth of your business and provide the best of their skills. Your virtual assistant needs to know you close, and you also should be well aware of their personalities, backgrounds, culture, etc. since it's a remote work relationship; it requires a lot of understanding, working around time zones, and distance.
A strong understanding will ensure better communication and more openness in business matters. Your VA will work efficiently and confidently when he/she knows well enough what your expectations are from them, what standing of working you maintain, and all other tiny details. A successful work relationship does a successful business.
You need to set key performance indicators to set a standard of performance for your virtual assistant. Break down specific goals into strategies that can be managed. For example, you can ask the VA to increase the number of satisfied customers and define the target with a specific number. If you have data on the number of dissatisfied or unhappy customers, you can ask your virtual assistant to reduce that number. For example, if you have 600 unhappy customers, you can give your VA the target of bringing that number down to 500 or 450 in a month.
Of course, the targets you set should be based on data. The numbers stated above are just an example. You need to create targets based on proper research and data analysis. While the targets should be challenging, you must make them achievable as well.
Another example could be setting an increase in your Facebook following by 10% each month in the next quarter as the KPI. If you create such strategies specifically for your virtual assistant to meet your goal, you produce a metric by which you can measure the performance given by your virtual assistant at a specific time.
KPI’s also work well to analyze the impact and volume of the work being done. For example, if your virtual assistant successfully applied the quarterly strategy you designed, but it failed to get you more listings, then you would know that the strategy was flawed, and other measures are called for.
Once you have designed a KPI, document it so that both you and your virtual assistant are clear on the specifications of it.
At the end of the day, you need to make sure you have found a virtual assistant that efficiently meets your goals and does a brilliant job of the tasks you delegate. If you follow these steps, your business will undoubtedly flourish and expand under the successful teaming of you and your virtual assistant.