How a VA can help you grow your business

A Virtual Assistant (VA) is someone who could make a huge difference to your business. You pay them only for the work they do, which makes them a cost-effective addition to your team. However, they can offer more than just value for money - they can take on the non-fee-earning tasks that take up so much of your time and sometimes your energy, giving you more capacity to focus on growing your business.

How much does your time cost?

In purely business terms, think about your hourly rate and your value to your business. There are a lot of jobs that have to be done but don’t actually contribute to your company’s income, yet you probably do them yourself anyway - organising your calendar, replying to standard emails, keeping track of your expenses, sending marketing emails, replying to comments on social media etc. 

The more time you spend doing these things, the less time you have to do the income-generating work. And often you’ll get interrupted when you’re mid-task, which means you completely lose your train of thought. Psychologists have calculated that it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus on a task after a major interruption - and that’s if you don’t get another interruption before you’ve managed to get back on track. Unsurprisingly it’s been found that people who are constantly interrupted have “higher levels of stress, frustration, mental effort, feeling of time pressure and workload”. 

This means that the time you have available to focus on your fee-earning work could be considerably shortened. You may find yourself spending working hours dealing with admin and queries, so you have to devote more of your own free time to working on your core business - and this is when you’re more tired and more likely to make mistakes, thus reducing your earning potential. 

Hiring a VA to handle all the work that will distract you from doing what you do best can therefore be invaluable in helping you focus on your own tasks. They can organise meetings for you, reply to simple requests on your behalf, book travel and accommodation, etc., while you concentrate on getting new clients and growing your business.

VAs can directly help your business grow too

In order to grow your business, you need to find new clients. There are a number of ways your VA can help you increase brand awareness and bring in new business:

Organising events - If you’re launching a new service or product and want to promote it to existing and potential clients, your VA will help you organise an event, whether it’s an in-person event or a webinar. While you concentrate on your presentation, they will be able to organise the practicalities, invite guests and promote the event, and they will deal with issues on the day, giving you more time with your clients.

Social media - Many blueumbrella VAs are happy to manage social media accounts on behalf of their clients. They will make sure new content is posted regularly and will engage with followers on a daily basis. This matters because it’s a reflection of your customer service - the better the interaction on social media, the more loyalty you’ll get from your followers. Worldwide, 59% of consumers have a more favourable view of brands that respond to customer questions on social media, which applies to B2B brands too. In addition, by posting on social media on a regular basis, your VA can help you position yourself as a thought leader, which increases trust in your brand.  

Research - Waiting for clients to contact you isn’t the best new business strategy, and sometimes you have to go out and find them for yourself. Your VA can help with the initial research to investigate people and businesses you can target. They will save you a lot of time by eliminating the ones that aren’t worth pursuing, so you can concentrate on winning lucrative business from hot leads. Your VA can also do background research on new clients and suppliers to make sure there are no issues that might be of concern, potentially saving you a lot of trouble and expense further down the line.

If you would like to know more about how a blueumbrella VA can help you grow your business, please feel free to get in touch.