How To Find A Virtual Assistant


Ready to hire a virtual assistant? As a business owner, you’re looking to scale your organization, grow revenue and reduce costs. You’ve probably also heard that a virtual assistant costs about 60% less than a comparable full-time employee, and offers up to 40% higher productivity as well.

These are compelling reasons to hire a virtual assistant, and for many jobs ranging from administrative work to telemarketing, a VA working remotely is a perfect fit. 

The next question is the big one: how do you find a virtual assistant — and more importantly, where do you find the right VA to help your business?

Start By Determining Your Niche & Your Needs


To begin with, many virtual assistant services providers offer specialized services tailored to a specific industry — so if you run a real estate firm, you’ll want a real estate virtual assistant as opposed to a more generalized VA.

VAs who don’t specialize in a field can take care of various business tasks, from managing email accounts to bookkeeping to scheduling meetings. For their part, real estate VAs can handle all of those duties as well as assignments that are particular to the industry.

Specifically, they generate and nurture leads, the lifeblood of the real estate business. Indeed, they can make cold calls persuasively and confidently. And, by screening prospects carefully, they can give you a sense of those individuals’ levels of interest. That way, you can speak to the most promising leads yourself.

On top of that, your VA can follow up with people in personalized and tactful ways.

On busy days, you can redirect calls and live chats to your VA. He or she can also organize direct mail campaigns, write blog posts and run your social media marketing efforts.

These assistants won’t produce promotional materials haphazardly. Rather, those items will be unified. They’ll support and enhance one another, forming a lucrative growth stack.

Furthermore, VAs can prepare any number of documents, including a blended organizational chart, quarterly earnings statement, monthly conversion report and business outcome statement.

As a result, you can concentrate solely on your leadership duties and on building your company. You might even be able to take a day off every now and then!

These pros will also save you money as you don’t have to give them full salaries and benefits packages. Each year, a virtual assistant will cost you about a third of what a comparable in-house employee would.

Therefore, if your operation is small right now, you can more effectively compete with larger agencies.

Finding the Right Virtual Assistant

Real estate is all about location, and locating an excellent real estate VA can be tricky. Consider the following points:
  • You want someone who works during your business hours.
  • You need a professional who speaks English — and perhaps another language — fluently.
  • You must hire a person who’s educated experienced, motivated, disciplined, responsive to your messages and adept at time management.
That’s just for starters. In short, the expectations are high and many.
One way to find a VA is to search the internet for freelancers. Freelancers may be more affordable, but it can be difficult to know how qualified they are. Thus, don’t hire such a VA without verifiable references.

It helps to request work samples. Can your freelance candidates send you samples of documents, letters and emails they’ve written? Are they willing to do a mock phone conversation? Pretend you’re a potential real estate buyer. How do your applicants speak to you? Are they knowledgeable and convincing?

You might even set up a trial period, maybe one that lasts two or three weeks. In that time, you and a promising candidate can find out if you’re truly right for each other.

Another option is to contact a company that trains and employs real estate VAs. If you choose a reputable organization, your VA should be reliable, hardworking and skillful. And, since you won’t have to search for an ideal freelancer, you’ll save time and potentially avoid frustration.

For instance, unlike most of its competitors, the VA company MyOutDesk has in place a highly rigorous screening process for all job candidates. It involves a series of interviews as well as an FBI-grade background check. And, once an experienced candidate is hired, he or she must undergo thorough and intense training. Altogether, only about 2 percent of applicants end up working for the company.





Comparing Virtual Assistant Services

If you are ready to welcome some much-needed help into your life and business, here’s what you should be mindful of:
  • Pricing — Although you may be passionate about what you do, at the end of the day, you’re in business to make money. That’s why you’ll want to ensure you’re getting the best bang for your buck. You’ll want to ensure that you’re getting good value for your money, providing that each dollar is as productive as possible. Unfortunately, many business owners opt for the most affordable option and pay for it in the long run. The key here is value — what are you getting for the money you spend?
  • Accountability — In order to ensure accountability, you need to work with a virtual assistant services company that provides their professionals with the right infrastructure. When your virtual assistant fully understands their role and responsibilities, they will feel as though they’re a part of your team. By working with a professional virtual assistant service, you can rest easy knowing that they are well-trained and regarding accountability, their progress can be tracked.
  • Skills — How skillful a virtual assistant is can make all the difference on a day-to-day basis. That is why you should invest in virtual assistant services that are built on an extensive recruitment process. For example, at MyOutDesk, out of the 22,630+ applications received, only 2.2 percent were hired. If you want your company to grow and be the best it can be, you need the best help available.
  • Training — Pay particular attention to a company’s culture concerning their training opportunities. Once hired, it is imperative that virtual assistants are provided with critical training so that they can maximize their skills, education, and experience. The more training they have, the more it will benefit your business.
  • Invest in a company that goes the extra mile — At the end of the day, virtual assistants take their careers very seriously. However, they also require the same level of work-life balance that everyone else does in order to remain on top. That is why MyOutDesk takes care of each valued virtual assistant. By receiving extra perks such as paid time off, health coverage, and a fully optimized support team, they can take better care of themselves and in turn, perform to the best of their ability.
Finally, for more information, you could sign up for a MyOutDesk Double Your Business Strategy Session whenever you’d like. It’s both complimentary and exceedingly informative.

Original Story: https://www.myoutdesk.com/how-to-find-a-virtual-assistant/

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