Finally deciding to hire a virtual assistant? Great, this intricate step will be an essential milestone for your business’s growth and continuous success. First, how can virtual assistants help your business?
Hiring a virtual assistant saves you hours of work, cuts back on costs, and effectively helps you focus on the essential tasks that maximize your business’s productivity. Virtual assistants are highly skilled at performing a wide range of tasks. Although this can be a major advantage to your business, you also have to make sure that you can work flawlessly with your virtual assistant. You can do this by polishing their skills and aligning them with your goals and expectations.
You can start constructing the most efficient working environment and ensuring the best work output with these 5 successful tips for working with a virtual assistant.
1. Keep Communication Open And Provide Clear Instructions
The best way to use a virtual assistant to create a productive working environment and improve your business’s growth ability is when you communicate with them.
Communication is key to a successful business team. Before issuing a task to your virtual assistant, you should make them perfectly understand the task and the results you expect. Create clear instructions for the job that needs to be done and regularly check on your virtual assistant to observe the progress and the final result.
You should also take the time to air out your company’s goals and align them with your virtual assistants so they can work with you towards achieving them with you. This ensures that your virtual assistant is fully informed of the workings of your company, and the tasks to be assigned. It also helps you create trust and confidence in your virtual assistant.
Most virtual assistants are experienced professionals who have worked in multiple companies so they bring valuable skills to your business. Utilizing those skills by communicating effectively all your business needs will help you grow your business and form a long-term working relationship with your virtual assistant.
2. Delegate Your Tasks Effectively
When delegating tasks to your virtual assistant you can try using a catalog to help make things easier. Create a list of all the tasks and projects you would like your virtual assistant to fulfill. After completing your catalog, you can start delegating them on a scale of preference, from the most important tasks.
Generally speaking, the knowledge and skills a virtual assistant should have are numerous. Having worked in several business enterprises and gathering experience. VAs from renowned companies like Shrewd Virtual Assistants are highly skilled in performing administrative and marketing tasks like bookkeeping, digital marketing, tax return and preparation, social media marketing and management, office management, and more.
Virtual assistants can effectively perform a wide range of projects and tasks, so by delegating your tasks to them you can be sure of a successful outcome.
3. Provide Suitable Deadline
It is imperative to create and share a workable deadline with your virtual assistant. The roles of a virtual assistant not only involve creating the best results always but providing these results on time. In the case of delegating a task or multiple tasks with deadlines, you should prioritize communicating with your virtual assistant on time, to ensure that the deadlines are met.
You can do this by communicating the suitable deadline at the same time you are delegating a task to your virtual assistant. Just as well, if you have created a daily task with your virtual assistant, you should make sure they are fully aware of your expectations and results and are also equipped with the right technology to perform effectively.
Virtual assistants are humans, which means, setting an impossible deadline alongside a pile of work may not be feasible. When you provide a suitable time frame for your virtual assistant to complete assigned tasks, it makes work easier and also creates the best results.
4. Utilize The Appropriate Working Tools
How does your virtual assistant help you perform tasks effectively and promote your business’s growth? Providing the right tools for your virtual assistant team is like a double-edged sword. It helps your team work together more effectively and simultaneously increases your business’s productivity and efficiency.
You can utilize communication and service platforms like zoom, google drive, Dropbox and others to ensure your virtual assistant works constructively. Shrewd virtual assistants have access to numerous equipment and tools to take advantage of marketing trends and to also ensure effective working conditions. You should ensure to keep your tool sets concise and simple and acquaint your virtual assistant with any special tools you’d like them to utilize.
5. Be Sure To Document All Your Process
Although this may sound like a daunting and stressful task. Documenting every process with your virtual assistant from the start of your working relationship will save you major errors and essential time in the future. Documenting processes help you keep errors minimal and also ensures faster, more effective training sessions when you want to hire a new set of virtual assistants.
The best part of documenting your processes is that your virtual assistant can also be assigned to accomplish that. It also helps you know how to work with a virtual assistant long term and also becomes an investment towards the quality of your business team and working environment.
Final Thought
Taking the time to get to know your virtual assistant and knowing how to work with your virtual assistant can provide enormous advantages to your business’s growth rate. Virtual assistants like the Shrewd VAs make working even easier as you’ll be able to save crucial time, and money while your company also grows steadily and becomes more productive.
Implement these successful tips while working with your virtual assistant and create a seamless and efficient relationship with your virtual assistant for however long you wish you to maintain the partnership.
