Virtual Administrative Assistant: A Definitive Guide for Entrepreneurs

Administrative tasks are often tiresome, consume valuable organizational resources, limit productivity, and harm businesses. In-house workforce administration typically costs businesses more than per person annually. 

Consequently, businesses fail to devote enough time to focus on their clientele since 72% say they spend most of their time in tiresome administrative activities.

A virtual administrative assistant can be what you need if you want to make the most of the time to expand your company rather than keep it afloat.

What Is a Virtual Administrative Assistant?

A virtual administrative assistant offers administrative support services such as database upkeep and organization, calendar management, appointment scheduling, email management, and more.

They work remotely by offering businesses a robust menu of assistance and handling the day-to-day tasks they don’t have the time to do.

10 Tasks A Virtual Administrative Assistant Can Handle

A virtual administrative assistant helps businesses to keep their administrative efficiency in an optimal state 24/7. They handle administrative areas of your business, saving you time and money. Their tasks include:

1. Appointment Setting

As an entrepreneur, umpteen priorities vying for your attention, often make it hard to schedule appointments. A virtual administrative assistant sets meetings with prospective customers so that your best closers can seal the deal through personalized communications.

2. Document Formatting

A virtual administrative assistant ensures that your documents are formatted correctly and according to your specifications. Along with fonts, indentation, and margins, they check to see if the formatting components are correct. A virtual assistant can manage your document format requirements for both legal and corporate documents.

3. Transcription

If you want to get away from manual transcription or planning to swap traditional transcription methods, it’s time to embrace virtual administrative assistant service. Virtual administrative assistant services have certified transcriptionists who can work as an extension of your team, transforming the content from voice format to written records within the stipulated time.

4. List Management

It might be difficult for an entrepreneur to keep relationships with every client when they have a vast consumer base. A dedicated virtual assistant manages your contact list and can furnish an up-to-date contact list without duplicates or outdated contact information.

5. Custom Reports

A virtual administrative assistant can provide tailored reports for each recipient at every level of the hierarchy if your in-house team is overburdened with report creation. To make reports to your specifications, a virtual administrative assistant also handles the presentation elements.

6. Data Entry

Businesses must frequently manage their data, which takes time. For e-commerce, bookkeeping, CRM, or simply a simple spreadsheet, a virtual administrative assistant provides virtual data entry, maintenance, cleaning, deduplication, or manipulation.

7. Secretary Services

Administrative tasks may quickly take up most of your working day, neglecting more key duties. A virtual administrative assistant can perform different activities, including editing and formatting reports, setting up mail merges, and creating tables, images, and charts.

8. Market Research

While it takes time, market research is essential to any organization. A virtual administrative assistant conducts interviews, creates and analyzes surveys, and researches target audiences online.

9. Email Management

Every firm deals with a barrage of emails every day. Managing these emails can take a lot of time, which causes you to get behind on projects and end up working longer hours to catch up. A virtual administrative assistant can relieve your workload by ensuring you don’t have to sift through spam and send out quotes and bills on your behalf.

10. Answering Calls

Businesses rely on a virtual administrative assistant to handle calls, qualify prospects, and address client issues. A virtual assistant ensures that your company’s operations operate smoothly, providing more time to concentrate on business growth.

Why Hire a Virtual Administrative Assistant?

Often businesses remain in a dilemma of whether to hire a virtual assistant. So why exactly do you need a virtual assistant? Take a look at some powerful benefits of hiring a virtual administrative assistant.

Save Time

Every business owner wants more hours in their day. However, clerical tasks eat up their time. To this end, a virtual administrative assistant handles a gamut of recurring duties, leaving you with more hours in a day.

Reduced Operational Costs

Entrepreneurs spend oodles of money on administrative operations that include office space, office supplies, and more. By hiring a virtual assistant, you can substantially reduce your capital needs.

Studies reveal that virtual administrative assistants can save a business up to 78% of operating costs.

Preserves Entrepreneurial Sanity

Mindset is everything for an entrepreneur. When administrative work gets piled up, entrepreneurs become overwhelmed, which affects their work. A skilled and reliable virtual assistant can take the burden off your shoulders by handling all the administrative work.

Press For Attention’s founder, Greg Simpson, is aware that his strengths “are in invention and text.” He claimed that when he concentrates on his core competencies, he is “much more productive as a business owner and far more innovative as a consultant.” Considering it a win-win, he outsources all administrative work in his company.

Access to Skilled Staff

A virtual assistant understands your business. They are adept at fulfilling administrative tasks, enhancing productivity, and helping you meet your business goals. Office Beacon offers vetted virtual assistants with experience in catering to the unique needs of businesses.

Also read: 7 Unbeatable Reasons Why You Need a Virtual Assistant

5 Signs You Need a Virtual Administrative Assistant

Entrepreneurs often encounter this thought “When do I need a virtual assistant?”  How can you tell whether you’ll get enough productivity from a virtual administrative assistant? Here are some signs that you may already need one and didn’t know.

1. The Exorbitant Costs of Hiring Employees

If you’ve been stressed out and burned out doing work. And, you often realize that you need assistance, but cannot afford to have a full-time employee. In such situations hiring virtual assistants can be more cost-effective than hiring a full-time employee.

When it comes to the in-house employee, you have to manage long-term payroll with employee benefits irrespective of workload. In contrast, when you engage a virtual assistant, you only pay for the tasks or hours needed without paying for any additional advantages.

2. You Lack Time to Commit to the Important Tasks

After addressing all the administrative responsibilities, business owners have no time left for work related to making money or pursuing their passions. Administrative tasks are necessary, but if you want to boost sales and revenue, you should focus on your areas of expertise.

If you don’t have enough time to handle your essential and high-impact activities, hiring a virtual assistant is the best decision.

84.4% of business owners claimed that hiring a VA has improved their operations.

3. You Lack the Skills to Handle Certain Tasks

Another reason for hiring a virtual assistant, you might not have any specific understanding of your field or business tool. You might take a while to perform research, leaving you with less time for important tasks. A good decision in these circumstances is to hire a virtual assistant.

4. You Often Miss Out on Business Opportunities

Making business decisions won’t be possible with your skills alone. Additionally, administrative work takes up much of your day. You can use the extra time a virtual assistant gives you to pursue your professional goals and do the research to create a better business plan.

5. You’re Failing at Customer Retention

It is difficult for businesses to achieve goals when they are short on time. You might have more time to devote to improving customer retention with help from a virtual assistant. Using a virtual assistant could make creating new plans and executing them easier.

12 Essential Skills to Look for in a Top Virtual Administrative Assistant 

How can VAs become skilled administrators? What qualifications should entrepreneurs look for in a VA? The following are the twelve administrative support skills that make the best virtual assistants stand out:

Technical Skills

• Software competency
• Well-versed with online tools
• Filing & records management
• Research skills

Conceptualization

• Time management
• Problem solving
• Organization
• Resourcefulness

Interpersonal Skills

• Communication
• Negotiations
• Emotional Intelligence
• Adaptability

How to Get Started with A Virtual Administrative Assistant?

These are some reasons why you might need to work with a virtual administrative assistant. It’s more productive, saves money, and guarantees that you can have a skilled staff without taking on the risks of hiring a full-time employee.

Then what are the steps to hire a virtual assistant today? Here are the key steps:

1. Choose a trusted outsourcing partner, like Office Beacon.
   • Over 22 years of experience & expertise
   • Trusted by 4000+ clients
   • 5,500+ staff offering 150+ operational support services

2. SPEAK WITH US: Schedule a day and time that works best for you to learn more about the Office Beacon services.
3. Relax. 
4. Office Beacon’s team will analyze your business goals and identify your staffing and software needs.
5. Office Beacon will source the perfect virtual assistant/s who can meet your specific requirements.
6. The team lead sets KPI expectations, trains and monitors your staff, and oversees your project.
7. They share weekly quality reports and bi-weekly feedback emails on your staff’s progress.

Conclusion

A skilled virtual administrative assistant can be an asset to your business. They save you a lot of time and money. Many entrepreneurs presume that they can manage alone. However, instead of wasting time on trivial tasks, you can hire a virtual administrative assistant to help you scale your business without exhausting your budget.

Written by Sabeeha Banu

Sabeeha is an avid reader, writer, and poet with experience writing in various genres. She is adept at delivering write-ups that drive engagement. In her free time, you can find her soaking in the mesmerizing beauty of nature and weaving her thoughts.