One of the questions I recieved asked for tips on finding and using virtual assistants.

A Virtual Assistant, also referred to as a VA, is technically an administrative assistant. They handle a wide variety of tasks and work to make life and work easier for the busy professional. In most cases, VAs are contracted by small business owners and entrepreneurs.

The key difference between a virtual assistant and an administrative assistant is the fact that the VA is an independent contractor or self-employed individual, while the administrative assistant would be your employee.

 When you use a VA, you do not have to worry about taxes, insurance, and a variety of other expenses as you would have to with a traditional employee. Furthermore, a VA takes responsibility for their own equipment and needs, which means further savings for you.

Before choosing a virtual assistant, you need to be clear about just what they’ll do for you, as well as your own responsibilities. Furthermore, you should know whether or not you really need a VA.  Ask yourself some questions to find out:

1. Are you having trouble meeting deadlines?
2. Are you overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do?
3. Do you find that you need more help, but cannot hire due to lack of resources or space?
4. Do you not have enough time in the day to get things done?
5. Are you focusing more on administrative duties than you are income-producing activities?
6. Are you spending your time doing minimum wage work?

If any of these apply, then yes, you might have a need for a virtual assistant.

What Does A Virtual Assistant Do?

A VA has many duties.  They are there to help you and your business succeed. Aside from traditional administrative duties, they are also there to help you in outsourcing. When you need more help, whether it is to complete projects on time or because you lack experience in a certain area, a VA can help you find someone to get the job done.

Other duties include:

•           Preparing Documents – such as correspondence, presentations, reports, statements, and so forth.
•           Data entry
•           Research
•           Bookkeeping
•           Billing
•           Reminders
•           Mailings
•           Emails
•           Transcription
•           Appointments
•           New Client Services
•           Paperwork
•           And much more.

As you can see, a virtual assistant can literally be the backbone of your business.

What should you look for in a virtual assistant?

Because the VA will be working closely with you, the first thing you want to look for in a VA is a personality that meshes well with your own.  Here are some other things that you want to look for:

1.         Experience – this is an important factor, however, just having experience as a VA or administrative assistant is not enough. You will need to look for experience in tasks that you will specifically need. The services provided will vary from one virtual assistant to the next, so be sure that they offer services that you will actually need.

2.         Organized – Organization is an absolute must. You need your VA to be able to organize your projects, and quickly. You need them to know where everything stands when asked and be able to provide you with an update at the drop of a hat. This does not mean that they have to memorize everything, but having things organized will make their life, as well as your own, so much easier.

3.         Training – Having someone who is a certified virtual assistant or who has taken classes specific to the title is a good idea. Of course, you can also look at experience or degrees if they exist. This goes right along with experience. When they have the right training, they will be more efficient and valuable to your business.

4.         Has The Ability To Meet Deadlines – Deadlines are important to any business. If you must meet deadlines regularly, be sure to choose a virtual assistant that takes responsibility and meets any deadline that you set.

5.         Communicative – You need a VA that will maintain communication with you regularly. They should report to you, by any means that you choose and keep their channels of communication open and clear during working hours.

You can start finding the right VA now.  You can start your search with websites like International Virtual Assistants Association ( http://www.ivaa.org ) or sites with freelancers, like www.elance.com.

Technorati Tags: outsourcing, virtual assistant, virtual assistants

Question 1: How can I develop a detailed direct mail marketing plan for prospects, clients, and referral sources?

Question 2: How can I establish a daily/weekly/monthly regimen for administrative/office work, networking events, preparing income/productions goals, and review these on a regular basis?

In Developing a detailed plan for the above you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What method am I going to use for prospecting. An example: Who do I want as a client and where can I get a list of companies or individuals I have defined? 
2. For clients, what methods can I use to communicate with my clients on a consistent basis? The answer could be sending reports, articles you’ve come across, anything that you feel will be of use to your client.  The objective is to communicate with them consistently so that you are always in their minds.
3. For referrals, you must approach them initially without attempting to sell something.  You want to get together with them to share information.

For establishing a regimen for question two, you should decide what time of the day is better spent to doing administrative work, attending networking events, etc.  In other words, what hours of the day are better for producing income, and what hours of the day are better for administrative activities.

Most business owners reach only a fraction of their income potential because they spend most of their day doing low pay-off activities.

Recently I spoke at an Insurance Company Convention and when I asked some agents what their highest-payoff activities are, many of them replied: “Seeing prospects and clients.”

In fact, some of them told me they could make up to $1,000.00 an hour or more when they are in front of prospect and clients.  But when I asked, “How many hours do you spend seeing prospects and clients in your average work day they said, ‘Less than two hours.”

They explained the reason they could spend only about two hours a day seeing prospects and clients is that they have to use most of their day trying to get appointments, doing administrative duties and paperwork, putting out fires, and taking care of other low payoff activities.

To turn this situation around, you will need to set up your business in such a way that it will allow you to do your highest payoff activities during most of your day, and here it comes…“Delegating the rest of your low payoff functions to your staff, professionals, independent contractors, or freelancers.

So, my suggestion for increasing your productivity is to figure out ways to delegate your low payoff tasks to somebody else.  Maybe you can find a virtual assistant to help you with administrative tasks. For instance, you could go to Elance.com and put in the keyword “virtual assistant” and find assistants to do work for you for as low as $5 per hour.  You can find almost any type of help you want there.  You main task is to define clearly what type of help you need and how to qualify the freelancers before you start outsourcing your work.

It’s best to start freelancers out with small jobs to test them first.  For the ones that work out at first, you then give them bigger jobs, and so on.  If you are in a hurry, you can give the same job to two or three freelancers to see who does the best job, then go with the best the next time.

Don’t try to outsource all your work at once.  This is a good way to create chaos in your business.  Take a planned approach and find the right outsourcers for one aspect of your business at a time.

I always get bored with administrative chores. 

So my suggestion to you is to delegate those chores you listed to other individuals, freelancers, or professionals that can do the tasks, and generate income by concentrating on prospecting, nurturing clients, and working on referrals.

In terms of getting organized, I’ve found that there is no one way to use “time management” that works for everyone.  And even if you find a system that works for you, you still have to modify it to fit your work and life style. 

I think that one of the things that hamper most people with “time management/priority management” is the search for the ideal system.  Once you give up the search for the ideal system, you’ll move faster to finding what works for you.

However, the system you come up with will change as you and your business changes.  It is never a final solution.

I think that if you follow the fundamentals of “time management/priority management”, you can come up with the best system for you.
Here are two FREE resources that can be a great help for you in managing and allotting your time:

• “The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips”, by Francis Wade. Click here to download: www.kenvarga.com/downloads_FREE/newtimemanagement.pdf
• “The Low-Information Diet: How to Eliminate E-Mail Overload and Triple Productivity in 24 hours”, by Tim Ferris. Click here to download: www.kenvarga.com/downloads_FREE/lowinfodiet.pdf

Technorati Tags: freelancers, getting organized, manage time, outsourcing, time management