Scale Up Your Business with Virtual Staff
This is how I did it.
Like most businesses, my first one started with a staff of one. Me.
Not long after putting my business idea into motion, it became pretty obvious that the amount of work required to launch a business is more than a one-person job.
However, to keep costs down I pretty much did everything myself. But even in those early days I had an eye on adding staff to take over some of the things that were important, but time consuming and not the best use of my time.
In my case this meant marketing. I’m great at creating quality content, but not the best at actually marketing and selling it. I have worked really hard over the past ten years to get better at both, but nowadays i have a team that does most of that work, keeping me free to do what I do best, which is create and deliver content.
For me it was never a question of using virtual staff to scale, because throughout my 15 years with Wells Fargo, I was in positions requiring me to work remotely. Knowing that a big chunk of the worked needed to grow a business can be done from anywhere with an internet connection, my first 2 hires where empowered to work remotely a significant portion of the time.
From those original two employees, to setting up my first virtual team for a client of 6, to now days having a team of over 100 home-based employees working from all over the globe for over a dozen clients, I get how to scale a business using virtual staff.
I know that scaling up your business can be rewarding but also over-whelming at the same time. I’ve been there, but now I have this down to a science, Hiring a VA (virtual assistant) can offer a helping hand to accommodate various crucial aspects of your business such as Digital Marketing, 24/7 Customer Support and Operations for a lower wage and operational cost then having someone work in an office.
Let me break down some of the benefits to scaling a business with virtual staff into the following areas:
1. Ease of Use
2. An Extra Hand
3. Organization Building
4. Keeping Costs Down
Ease of Use
Hiring a virtual assistant from a VA Service company like Sonic VA is a lot simpler compared to when you hire permanent employees as you scale up your business. If you are not looking for a permanent employee but you need an extra hand in dealing with your business operations, Virtual Assistant is the best possible solution.
The use of a virtual assistant services affords a company cost efficiency and transparency since they are charged on the basis of the usage. Most of the VA Service Providers follow a pay-per-task or pay-per-hour strategy which makes it an ideal resource for companies of all sizes.
An Extra Hand
As you scale up your business there will be an inevitable increase in workloads hence the need for additional employees to offer an extra hand. Hiring a permanent employee, yourself can be complicated, time-consuming and not to mention very costly.
Hiring a virtual assistant can give you the flexibility to assign work whenever there’s a need. To add to that, all virtual employees are already knowledgeable and skilled which will not only remove the burden to train them yourself but also allows them to perform with higher efficiency and stay productive.
Organization Building
Most companies and entrepreneurs spend a lot of time on administrative tasks such as encoding, calendar scheduling, sending follow-ups and so on.
Simply put, the owners spend a lot of time where they should not be spending time at all and should focus more on building their business strategy, expanding their business, providing specialized services.
Hiring people to perform these mundane tasks could be costly. Ideally, virtual assistants would be the best human replacement for this purpose. For Example:
· Digital marketing and content creation are critical for businesses to develop their brand value and reputation — and, of course, sales. However, it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to create and manage value-added content. A professional VA can manage your content expertly, develop sales-oriented data for your business and also manage blog posts regularly to name a few. Driving higher rate of user engagements and growing your followers will result to a higher sale. Virtual assistants also do a better job of optimizing content accurately for search engines and increasing your business’s online visibility.
· 24/7 Customer Support. Hiring a Virtual Assistant from a different time zone can help with customer relationship management tasks during the time you can’t cover. Allowing your business to scale further out of your usual target locations.
The type of virtual assistant you hire should depend on what skill sets you need to achieve your business goals. If you have multiple customer service needs in your business, you should tailor your job request for each need to find the person that is right for the job.
Keeping Costs Down
In the end, by employing virtual assistants, companies have greater chances of saving operational and infrastructure costs. Sonic VAs allow business owners like you to use the fund to expand their business like testing new products, expanding global reach or even opening up new location.
If you liked this post, check out the video version here:
Daniel Meyer heads both Sonic Analytics and Sonic Virtual Staffing, sister companies that deliver both data analytics solutions and virtual staffing to businesses in the United States and the Philippines. With over 20 years in Big Data and Virtual Staffing, Dan is one of the most sought-after public speakers in Asia and offers big data coaching and analytics training seminars on both sides of the Pacific.
Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized organizations looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.
Sonic Virtual Staffing (www.sonicva.com) brings virtual staffing solutions like graphic design, social media management, bookkeeping and specialized virtual assistants for authors and professional speakers to small and medium sized organizations looking to scale on a budget and looking for 24/7 staffing options.
When not training current and future analysts, you can find Dan championing the use of analytics to empower data-driven citizenship by volunteering his expertise with schools and non-profits dedicated to evidence-based social progress.
