Internet has brought about many changes to the way we conduct business. One of the major impacts in this regard has been the position of an administrative assistant – now virtual assistant. Many business owners would be tempted to opt for these VAs to handle their daily business aspects, unfortunately due to the novelty of this idea, are skeptical about exploiting this opportunity.
It is not uncommon to have many small issues that bug us all day and we would really like a magical genie to sort them out. The reason’s pretty simple. If you save time on these petty issues, you can spend that on other more important aspects that could generate more income for you. Secondly, you can avoid unnecessary distractions that may hamper your regular working hours. Depending on their specialty, the VAs can be your magical genie.
Let’s say for example, your mail box. With its growing importance it also seems to be attracting more spam mails. How you wish if some one could actually throw away those spam mails. Probably your mail server has a spam filter, but it just is not good enough – it never is. A major problem with spams is not that they occupy space in your mail box, but that the more important mails may get lost amidst them. This can have serious implications on your business. Imagine deleting a red flagged mail or a customer service mail along with a bunch of spams. That could be one of the most embarrassing and damaging things to do; but not unlikely. A good VA could pre-screen your mails, clear the spams and sort the important mails for you to view. A cleaner, better organized mailbox is any day preferable as it can help boost your productivity. What’s more if you are someone on the move, you can have the critical mails forwarded to your handheld device immediately. That would be just perfect wouldn’t it? No software can give that service reliably, but a good VA can.
Another common problem that managers or business owners tend to have is the host of meetings that they attend and the amount of information that they are exposed to. It is easy get lost in this labyrinth of data. A good solution to that could be to have all the meeting recorded and sent to your VA. The VA can transcribe the meetings and add your views to it. If there are some actions items on your part, then your VA can actually work on them like adjust your calendar, send out mails, and intimating you about the important or urgent things to complete.
Talking of calendars, is yours cluttered with too many thing that are disorganizing your schedule rather than organizing it? Do you have your important meetings and events hidden among a bunch of regular work items? As a result, do you end up running late or completely missing those events and meetings? If that sums you up roughly, well then why not look at a VA to help sort if out for you. Specialized VAs can sort out your jumbled calendar to highlight the important ones. Besides they can also be your reminders to make sure that you never miss or go late to the important events and meetings.
VAs don’t necessarily have to stick to just simple administrative work. If they are good and you can engage them fruitfully, you could actually use them as team members to discuss your ideas and thoughts. If you are one of those entrepreneurs bursting with ideas with no way of implementing them, get in your VA. They can help you think clearly, add their own views, help you plan and implement your ideas and who knows you could be translating more plans to practice. That means more avenues to make money and more revenues. It may just pay to “pay a VA”.
So you see, you can benefit from a VA in many ways. All you need to do is introspect and find out the aspects where you would like to rub the lamp and get a genie. Once you know that get a good VA and breathe a sigh of relief.