What do you think is the most logical thing to do when you find yourself swamped with mundane tasks? You hire a Virtual Assistant! VAs are the “angels” of entrepreneurs, helping them free their time, allowing them to focus on the key activities in their business. Trust me, hiring a VA would do you a lot of good in the coming years as you scale up your business.

Assess your pain points

VA services are gaining popularity inside the business process outsourcing solutions industry. Virtual assistants are there to help you manage your day so that you get to grow your business.

To know what your pain points are, you need to identify the tasks that are causing you so much stress despite being of little importance to the actual offering of your business. These tasks commonly include taking calls, answering emails, setting appointments, managing social media platforms and writing content, just to name a few.

While these tasks are necessary, they are not crucial to your core business. For example, while it is important to do accounting every day, accounting per se does not contribute to the value you give to your customers (unless of course your business is providing accounting services).  Investing a lot of time in that task every day can mean missing out opportunities to engage people with your services.

Delegate tasks that others can do for you

What you need to realize is that a few minutes daily could accumulate to a whole lot of hours over time. For example, a 15-minute daily task actually equates to 60 hours annually! So even though it might not seem like much to deal with at present, it is still best to delegate these to ensure that you’re making every minute of your day count.

Go through your “pain points” list and delegate the tasks that others can do for you. Doing this will make you more efficient as a business owner.

Get to know your business and industry

When you decide to outsource you shouldn’t do it blindly. To get the best virtual assistant, you have to look carefully at your business processes. Where, how, and when are you ushering customers to your business? When you are clear about these, you can address the vital requirements for your VA like what time you want them to come in for work, the specialisation and skills they need to have and how familiar they are with the tasks you are assigning to them.

Always remember that virtual assistants are here for a specific purpose – and that is to help you focus on your business. It’s not just about ease of work, but redeeming the joy in what you do.