Best Business Expert » Virtual Assistant

Get more done… Mad Scientist Style!

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:47:46 +0000

Some days, when you look at your schedule, you probably think that an extra pair of hands would be helpful. Unless you’re a mad scientist working in your mountaintop laboratory, it’s not likely that you’ll be able to attach an extra pair of hands and arms from your shoulders any time soon. [Insert mad-scientist-style cackling laughter here]. You need another set of hands to help you get more done, and you’ll need a person to go with them.

Many solopreneurs, especially those who have been in business for a while, want the benefit of some helping hands but are understandably reluctant to give up any control of their business. So a business partner is out. Business owners also don’t want to have the trouble of retaining an employee to take on part of the work (i.e, to become the customer service department or the marketing department). They consider hiring an assistant, which is probably the right first step. But even then there are choices:

When you hire someone to work on-location, you’re faced with more expenses than just their salary. There’s overhead (they probably need a computer and a place to work), there are benefits (they will probably want some kind of medical insurance, pension plan, and vacation days). On top of that, you’ll need to sort through resumes, interview them, and do the paperwork when you decide to hire one of them. (Oh, and if they get sick, you’ll need to either cover their work yourself or find someone to temporarily replace them).

That’s why a virtual assistant is better. Even if a VA bills for the same as (or even a little more than) the person who shows up at your office, you’re saving a tremendous amount of money:

No additional phone line
No computer or printer
No desk or office supplies
No additional light/power/heat charges
No interviews and resumes
No sick-day replacements

Further, say ‘your’ hourly rate is $50/hr but you’re spending your time doing things that a Virtual Assistant can do at a fraction of that cost = waste of money because you could spend that time doing something much more profitable to your business while a VA handles those tasks.

And consider the work they do: When you think of an onsite assistant and the work they do, you might think that they can answer the phones, take dictation (if anyone does that anymore), write reports, and fill orders. But virtual assistants tend to have these basic skills and oftentimes many more. Some VAs are trained in social media marketing, article writing and distribution, website maintenance, bookkeeping, a combination thereof and more. VA teams usually have specialists to cover each field of need so they can ensure all parts of a project are completed with the necessary experience or even help each other out.

Onsite assistants cost more time, money, and effort from the business owner! A VA costs less time, less money, and less effort… and in nearly every case is qualified to do more! It’s a winning equation for business owners so ContemporaryVA is on a crusade to help business owners save time, money and effort and successfully grow their businesses.

We’re ContemporaryVA, a Virtual Assistant Firm that has been in business for over seven years, providing high quality virtual assistants to small and large businesses around the world. Our VA’s support our clients with all kinds of business-building services because our VA’s are trained to provide all of our clients with all of the services they need. Our VA’s must go through an apprentice program in order to qualify to become a VA and each VA works closely as a team with other CVA assistants to share knowledge and best practices. We even have an internal instant messaging system so that we can quickly reach each other!

Here are a couple of examples to show you how some of our virtual assistants are helping businesses grow:

–> A freelancer needed a bookkeeper for her business. She was going to hire one to come in a few days a week but realized that a virtual assistant cost less. So she contracted with ContemporaryVA and passed off all of her bookkeeping to her virtual assistant. Soon, the freelancer discovered that the VA was also fully trained in IM-based customer service so the freelancer had the VA provide 9-5 online chat support to any customer who contacted the freelancer through her website. In a sense, her VA is the customer service department for her business.

–> One consultant started with ContemporaryVA simply because she needed help overcoming her growing backlog of work. Within months, she discovered that her highly skilled virtual assistant could take on her entire marketing effort. Her VA already knew most of the programs she was using (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and the consultant showed her what steps she took to interact with prospects in those places. She passed her entire marketing effort to her VA and that allowed her to focus more on billable hours. In a sense, her VA is the marketing department of her business.

–> Another business owner, who runs a series of ecommerce websites, needed to get on top of all of the emails he had to answer. He contacted ContemporaryVA for help and the virtual assistant took on some of that work. In time, however, the business owner discovered that the VA was far more skilled than in just customer service so he expanded the VA’s assignment. Now, his VA actually runs 3 of his ecommerce websites, handling nearly all customer communication, marketing, and order-filling. In a sense, his VA is the business manager of 3 of his ecommerce sites.

Virtual Assistants make sense! Using one means that you free yourself up to actually Run Your Business instead of Running in Circles – and you’re saving money while doing so.

Contemporary VA

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

Beyond Hitting the Wall: Hiring your first employee

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:30:40 +0000

In the last blog we talked about how businesses can hit a wall and how business owners need to figure out what they want to accomplish in their business before they move forward. And one of the solutions to moving past that "wall" is to hire someone.

The hiring possibilities are wide open, thanks to our highly connected world. This gives business owners a huge advantage because they no longer have to hire whoever is fits the equation: local + skilled + broadly capable + has potential to grow with the business. Instead, they can find people on the web who are tightly skilled in just one area.

In our earlier post we gave the example of Mary who runs a web-based store selling hand-painted decorations. She can hire a virtual assistant to do a variety of administrative and customer-facing tasks. She can also find someone who can do some of the hand painting.

Depending on what your business needs are, you can probably find someone online to do the jobs you need, no matter how specialized they are. In fact, the more specialized the jobs are, the easier time you’ll have finding someone to do it.

Aside from an assistant, you might consider hiring a marketing guru, a sales associate, a bookkeeper, a webmaster, and a telephone receptionist. Going from a "small business" mentality to a "big business" mentality doesn’t mean that you have to hire all of these staff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Using sites like Elance.com and Guru.com, or finding part-time contract staff through Monster.com, allows you to put experts into all of these roles while building slowly. You can even utilize a Virtual Assistant Firm that has individuals focusing on their areas of specialty.

So here is how to do that effectively:

1. Figure out what roles you want to fill. Start with non-revenue-generating activities that you perform right now and make those among the first things you delegate out. Also, consider things that you might not enjoy or might not be good at. Mary, from our example above, might be great at hand-painting decorations but might not be good at sales so she might want to hire a commissioned sales person.

2. Get onto Elance or Guru (or find a site that provides some of those services, like Contemporary VA for a virtual assistant) and look for service providers in the areas where you need to focus. Don’t make the all-too-common mistake of hiring the lowest priced professional. There’s a reason that they are the lowest priced! You may not need a "gold-plated" professional who charges an arm and a leg but you should find someone in the upper-to-middle price range who will likely deliver the best service for you.

3. Set out your parameters. Describe what you want to accomplish. Most importantly (and often overlooked) describe your vision for your business and how their service or deliverable fits in with what you do. That way, they’ll have a clearer understanding of what they’re contributing to and maybe they can draw from their own expertise to give you some ideas that you didn’t consider yourself.

4. Set up goals and a deliverable calendar for each role based on the types of things they need to get to you. In the case of a marketer, this might be easier; in the case of a sales person, this might be more difficult. (The marketer will need to deliver marketing materials to you within a certain date but it might be unrealistic to expect the salesperson to deliver customers to you within a certain date; instead, expect them to report back to you on how many they contacted or how many presentations they made).

5. Review the project with your professionals from time to time. If things aren’t working the way you envisioned, solicit feedback from them to make it work or find a new professional.

By hiring this way, you can move your business past that wall in a way that makes sense without over-committing yourself to an employee who shows up each day at your office expecting to get an assignment from you.

Contemporary VA

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

What do Successful Small Businesses Have?

admin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:16:16 +0000

People. Yes, it’s pretty much that simple.

Starting and managing a small business, or any business, doesn’t have to be rocket science. It’s simply a matter of creating a team, with each person contributing their knowledge and expertise which will combine with everyone else’s to be your vehicle to success.

And a team doesn’t have to break your budget. A team can be as small as two people or as large as ten or a hundred people. Dealing with many small business owners, and large business owners, that’s the one thing I hear again and again - "I couldn’t do it all myself". Technically, there are those few that may be able to do it all themselves, but for the larger part of the business population, they brought in someone to either handle the tasks they simply didn’t need to be bogged down with because it hindered their ability to focus on the bigger tasks at hand in growing the business; or, to handle the things that they simply didn’t have the expertise in.

No matter what your business, what point you are at in your business, how much you do or don’t know, or how much or how little help you need – you simply need "people". (Reminds me of that commercial "I’ve got people!")

You might need someone to bounce ideas off of – this can alone can make such a tremendous difference. You might need someone to hand off your administrative tasks to. You might need someone to do your marketing for you. You might need someone to handle your books. Maybe you need someone to handle customer support, do research, or any number of other tasks running a business requires.

Can you really do all of these things yourself, efficiently and effectively? I suppose it’s possible, again, for a few but surely they don’t sleep or their business takes ten times as long to take even the smallest step forward.

Many very successful businesses started with just two to a few people getting it off the ground, each contributing in their area of knoweldge. These days, with the ability for many people to contribute to a business from their own home or office, many businesses are starting out with the owner and one Virtual Assistant.

Costs are cut because there is no overhead, no paid breaks and lunches, no benefits or any of the extra benefits an "employee" would drain out of your pocket. You pay for the work they actually do and that’s it.

Even multi-million dollar businesses are using VAs these days. A VA can do all of the tasks above and anything else you need done, from writing to assisting with your website and so much more. You can have them do as little or as much work as you need or can afford.

The benefits of a VA to any size business are immeasurable. You can get started with a VA for any task you need and you can easily stay within your budget by working with your VA to determine what they can accomplish for you within your budget. Maybe they work two hours per week for you; maybe they work 40 hours a week for you – it’s TOTALLY up to you.

All you need is "people".

Karen J. for Contemporary VA

Help Me!

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:09:11 +0000

Small business owners tend to be know-it-alls and do-it-alls, because most of the time, that’s a necessity. In order to truly be successful with your small business, you generally need to micromanage every facet and aspect of your business, or else success will elude you. After a while, though, running a small business, or perhaps even a medium business, doing everything can get rather tiresome.

When this happens, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to get help. Oftentimes the best help can come in the form of a virtual assistant (VA). A virtual assistant can be known by many different names, including an online personal Assistant, virtual secretary, virtual administrative assistant, or virtual office assistant. They are all essentially the same.

A virtual assistant is better for small business than a traditional assistant in many respects. One of the best benefits is that, usually, you can hire a virtual assistant on a contract basis, which means they will work on a specific project for a specific length of time, and you can go back to them for various projects. Additionally, you can contract them to work on specific tasks constantly. More often than not, getting help this way, from a virtual assistant, is much more cost-effective than hiring a traditional administrative assistant to work with you day to day or even part-time at your business location.

What does the "virtual" mean in virtual assistant? A virtual assistant works remotely, and primarily on the Internet. For example, your primary communication method with your virtual assistant will likely be email, however, most virtual assistants are flexible in meeting your needs, and if you need to speak to them by telephone, that is likely not a problem. A virtual assistant can complete the same tasks as an administrative assistant, they simply complete it remotely and submit it to you virtually through email, though many virtual assistants will also submit projects via fax, and even telephone if you just want a quick update.

Since virtual assistants work in their own space, and frequently in a completely different state than the businesses for which they work, you do not need to worry about providing space, a computer, office supplies, and anything else that you would need for a traditional assistant. This is yet another benefit to your business bank account.

One of the most renowned virtual assistant firms is Contemporary VA. Not only does Contemporary VA offer virtual assistance, they also offer bookkeeping assistance. In fact, they even offer easy, do-it-yourself small business bookkeeping software.

Remember, we will consistently bring you the most recent, must-have information, so come back frequently. After all, we’re your Best Business Experts. You don’t want to miss what’s coming next.

Your Best Business Expert,

Lisa on behalf of Contemporary VA