A Virtual Assistant or VA is a person who is hired to work on an hourly basis, only when his services are needed. He is not a regular full-time employee with overhead expenses such as employee benefits, taxes or office equipment to purchase and maintain.
A virtual assistant comes in handy for small business owners who cannot afford to hire a lot of employees especially in the start-up stage of operation. Small business owners, by hiring virtual assistants, can achieve the following:
• Cut costs - The expense of hiring a full-time employee goes over the salary intended for the position. Overhead expenses will have to be added in the employment cost. The business will have to pay for his sick and vacation leave, get him medical and other form of insurances, pay for the company’s share of his taxes, and others that will easily jack up the cost of hiring him. A virtual assistant is paid only for the assignment he is hired for, no frills, no benefits whatsoever. Once the assignment is completed, he goes and will come back only when there is a new task to peform.
• Greater efficiency - The virtual assistant will not be hindered by the normal requirements in the work environment. He works solely for the reason he was hired for and as such he can accomplish his work faster than regular employees of the business. He may be hired for the purpose of identifying operational problems and being an ‘outsider’, he can do so without the constraint regular employees may face such as pressure from management or other sectors.
• Focus on Cash Flow - A small business owner can concentrate on his major task of accomplishing business goals or objectives and leave the routine operations to a virtual assistant. Such functions such as bookkeeping, correspondence, information technology maintenance or development can easily be assigned to a virtual assistant who will stay only until the task is done.
• Maintain marketing efforts - Marketing could easily be assigned to a virtual assistant. This will be a lot cheaper than retaining a marketing or advertising form. The virtual assistant can be tasked to target a particular market segment that is within his area of expertise. Another virtual assistant may be hired for another segment.
• Top-notch customer service - Virtual Assistants may be hired to conduct market satisfaction surveys, analyze business or market trends, offer appreciation gifts to customers and respond to customer queries.
A virtual assistant will be able to free the small business owner from the minor tasks of operating a business and concentrate instead of the major functions that will spell the difference between business success or failure.
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