Now that you’re engaged with ConvertMORE, you may wonder if you need, or need to keep, a virtual assistant (VA), and the answer is, “Yes, you do.” In fact, you may need more than one VA depending on the specific needs of your business.
First, let’s define what a virtual assistant is and what they do in a business.
As the name suggests, a virtual assistant is someone who helps you in your business by executing tasks that you do not personally want to do or that you should not do because your time is needed on higher level needs. A VA relieves you from the minutia of time-consuming tasks but not of your responsibility to be acutely aware of what is happening in your business. They are managed, not a manager.
There are many different types of VAs based on their skill set. The key to hiring the right VA or VAs is knowing what skills are needed to execute the tasks you want to have covered in your business.
Here’s a simple breakdown by type with examples of responsibilities.
An Administrative VA:
- Manages your email inbox
- Manages scheduling and your calendar
- Manages personal tasks
- Manages your social media postings
A Technical VA:
- Sets up and deploys broadcasts
- Pulls/compiles top-line reports not directly linked to campaigns (examples: monthly sales totals, refund rate, global opt-in or opt-out rate, etc.)
- Executes various technical tasks such as updating apps or maintaining a secure password system
- Setups Zoom meetings and webinars
- Manages participants or emcees live Zoom meetings or webinars
- Pulls and/or pushes your content, such as Zoom recordings to Vimeo, or to Dropbox for your video editor to pick up
- Repurposes content
- Uploads content to your portal or website
- Manages your affiliate program
A Customer Support VA:
- Handles front-end customer support requests (tickets) and, when needed, escalate tickets to either your technical VA or Team CMC
- Issues refunds and triggers all requisite downstream actions
- Manages your social media or customer groups
- Tracks and reports on customer inputs
The above is not an exhaustive list but a place to get started thinking about what of the above or similar you need to be covered in your business. Once you have your list of tasks you need to be covered, you can begin seeking the right VA or VAs to hire.
Note: your list of needs may pull from more than one of the designated VA types listed above. That does not necessarily mean you need more than one VA. You can find VAs with a breadth of skills enabling them to effectively execute different types of tasks. However, the larger and more complex your business, the more you will need individual, specialized members of the team.
But isn’t that what ConvertMORE does?
Actually, no. ConvertMORE is not a VA provider. Our role in your business is to work with you to strategize and define the “what” and then implement the “what.” ConvertMORE’s tactical team is made up of automation and web development specialists that work with you to build your conversion engines, including marketing and sales conversion engines, profit-maximizer engines, and content delivery portals (value engines).
That said, we can and do support your VA team and help you optimize that important part of your business. Here are a few ways in which we do that:
- Help you find and vet the right VA based on your needs.
- Manage your VA tasks relative to how their responsibilities interface with our work.
- Provide recommendations and templates for various tasks and/or roles.
- Work with you to create SOPs.
- Build into the systems we develop for you methods such as task triggers and single-point, internal support structures to provide efficient, accurate customer support.
- Provide training and how-to documentation.
- Provide Tier 2 support when issues require higher-level review and/or development to mitigate.
You can hire a reliable and effective U.S.-based virtual assistant for between $20 and $45 per hour, with more tech-savvy VAs commanding the higher end of that scale. You can also hire an overseas VA for less than those rates, but in our experience, you’ll be best served with a VA based in the United States.
As a final note, we are always happy to fill in your acute or short-term VA gaps. If you are in the process of hiring a qualified VA or your VA is unavailable for some reason, you can lean into our team to handle tasks that you’d otherwise assign to your VA.