Five Ways Virtual Assistants Help Build Your Small Business

by ​Daryl Kate Dizon, Guest Contributor

Picture this. You are a business-minded individual who’s passionate about fashion. So after taking a course in fashion designing, you’ve decided to build your own clothing line.And while there are tons of stuff to consider to kickstart your brand like hands-on designing for instance, you may miss to see the marketing part. So where do you start then?

Studies recorded more than 50 percent of startups or small businesses failing on its first four years with incompetence as the number one cause of these failures. This is one of the reasons why virtual staffing has become a trend in most businesses today. Hiring a virtual staff to help you grow the seeds of your business serves as a backbone to most successful ventures today.
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While most studies say that Virtual assistants help in igniting the fire of success for startups or small businesses, a lot of others may also need their help. For instance, large businesses who have loads of work to do and would need an extended member of the team, or self-employed individuals who wants to make a progress even when they work from their homes or even those who needs assistance for research.  

WHAT ARE VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS?
Virtual Assistants (VA), from the word “virtual” means receiving help from a skilled professional who works remotely from their location. Hiring one ensures a smooth workflow in your business, offering you all the convenience you need. According to a research report, the growth of online working, as with virtual assistance respectively, might soon reach a $5 billion worth by 2018. This is because of the high demand of remote staffing.

There are many reasons why business owners - big or small, seek for help from virtual assistants. To mention a few; money matters, work overload, limited resources, and execution. With these things, virtual assistants are of obvious help to businesses especially startups or small ones in such ways that:

1. LESS COST. One of the greatest challenges of new business setups would most likely be related to money. Business ventures require a lot of investments like office spaces, office equipment, utilities, manpower and fringe benefits such as paid vacations, insurances and the likes. But with a virtual assistant, you are able to save more especially in terms of operational cost. Thus, it becomes a worthwhile investment. Think about the benefit of paying only for what you need.  
2. TASK VARIATION. Tracing back to history, virtual assistants was first brought into the mainstream in the year 2005. Over the years, these people have become skillful with a variety of tasks ranging from administrative, financing, contact centers, to even digital marketing tasks. Surprisingly, some virtual assistants have the capability to do multitasking, and thus, allowing you to save more but still getting the same quality of work your business would need.  
3. AVAILABILITY. Hiring virtual help gives you the benefit of paying only for the productive time of the assistant but with the assurance that you get to reach your VA whether it be on a Saturday or Sunday night as long as you have agreed with your assistant about the meeting ahead of time. Unlike having regular employees in an office, the availability of your assistants could be very flexible. Whether you only need three days of the week assistance, or a 10-20 hour assistance per week, it’s alright. This is most especially helpful with startups who, in the first few months, still has a lot of things to do other than focusing on marketing content or designing graphics.  
4. QUALITY WORK ASSURANCE. Unlike a regular 8-hour employee who may only be productive on his first 6 hours of work and spends the rest hours hovering over the internet using the company’s resources, VAs strive their hard to utilize their time to give you quality work. This is actually a mutual relationship between a client and an assistant where the client gets quality services in exchange of a longer term of contract with the VA.  So imagine paying for the right price in exchange of great satisfaction.  
5. ADDITIONAL EXPERTISE. Though there are some virtual assistants who work as freelancers, there are still those who opt to be part of a company which houses these skilled VAs together. The best thing about seeking help from those companies is that, these individuals also go through a number of training and thus, honing them towards their maximum potential. With this, it is expected that the assistants you may hire have an ocean of knowledge for different types of services. In addition, the assistants, as trained to communicate and deal well with clients, may be able to make suggestions that would help boost your business. ​

WHERE TO FIND EFFECTIVE VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS
Across nations, there are millions of available remote assistants online. But large companies would most likely prefer those assistants which are employed by an established company.

A virtual assistant company is any company that houses all equipped individuals who would cater to different staffing needs of your business. These companies, aside from saving you from the burden of creating an office for your business and paying for a number of additional resources such as office essentials, workforce training, and individual employee salaries, ensures that they look for virtual assistants who are best fit for the job description you have provided.

Keeping the business in line with the intensified competition in the market, the services provided by virtual assistants may be: Data Entry/Encoding, Remote Assistance, Back Office Staffing, Researching, Paralegal, HR Administrator, Bookkeeping, Accounting, Sales Executive, Appointment Setting, Customer Service Representative, Technical Support, IT Helpdesk Officer, Chat Support, Web Designing, Mobile Designing, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Specializing SEO, Content Writing, or Graphic Designing.​​

Author Bio:

As the words flock in like butterflies on her mind, Daryl Kate Dizon strives to put all these together to form one great and creative content. Graduated with a Degree of Mass Communication with Media Communications as a major, she is now making her passion a profession by working as a Content Writer/Social Media Specialist at Blueprint Business Solutions, an innovative staffing solutions provider situated in the business district of Mactan Island, Philippines.