An effective personal virtual assistant will free up your time and ensure that you can complete tasks at a lower cost.
There are some serious benefits to having a VA take on some tasks for you - the cost savings make hiring a VA very practical. You won’t need to incur the costs to advertise for a new employee… a personal VA doesn’t need benefits or vacation pay, and even will accept jobs for just 2 hours of work… There is no minimum requirement for the amount of hours on any particular job with a lot of personal virtual assistants.
However, despite these benefits, a lot of businesses do not feel comfortable with using a virtual assistant. People can be scared at the idea of a virtual business relationship, but there are so many great communication tools available to bridge the virtual gap between you and the VA. Do not allow reservations about using new technology prevent you from outsourcing some work and saving some money and time! Decide upon the method of communication you will use when communicating with your personal virtual assistant - video chat? Skype? Instant messaging? How comfortable do you feel communicating online? By telephone? - many VA’s offer toll-free phone numbers. Learn about new communication tools on the net and you need to ask yourself a few more questions…..
People often do not ask themselves the right questions before contacting a VA. To successfully find a great virtual assistant, you need to find a way to remove your skepticism…. The best way to do that is by asking yourself questions about the job the VA will complete and by researching VA’s in general….
Get organized before you start your search for a personal virtual assistant….
What are the specific tasks that you need the VA to complete? Detail the project that you need the VA to complete. This will greatly assist your communication with the Virtual Assistant.
What is your budget? How much can you afford to pay for your personal virtual assistant? Carefully detail the project or task you need completed, and assess the amount of time it will take to finish the job… This will help you provide a solid man-hour assessment, arming you with an indication of how much the task or project will cost…
What is your time worth? Figure out what you can save by outsourcing some work to a personal virtual assistant…. Think about how much extra money you could make by working instead of handling tasks that can easily be outsourced. For example, if you make $160 an hour, you can free up some time by paying a VA $50 an hour to handle some work for you, providing you with the ability to make even more money instead of doing the tasks that a VA can complete! For instance, let’s say 4 out of every 10 hours you charge out are for administrative tasks that could be outsourced to a VA at a much lower rate ($50/hour), you are currently charging 10 hrs x $160 = $1600. If you outsourced 4 hours to a VA (4 X $50 = $200), you will gain the ability to make more money.
You have now gained back 4 hours to charge out at $160 (4 X $160 = $640). So you now have the potential to make $2040 for your 10 hours rather than only $1600.
Answering some of the questions in the post can ensure that you will make the right decision when hiring a personal virtual assistant … If you are considering a VA, check out my right hand virtual assistant.
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