Scaling a small business can feel like a daunting process. You want to expand operations to increase revenue, but you’re also conscious of keeping things running smoothly and maintaining efficiency and quality. The risks can sometimes feel like they outweigh the benefits.
But this is your sign not to be put off!
Scaling your business can be incredibly rewarding, if you put the right foundations in place first to ensure success. With this in mind, Virtual Assistants are a great asset to any expanding business and can help you scale much more effectively.
Here’s why…
Scaling your Small Business with a Virtual Assistant
Boosting Productivity and Efficiency
Scaling your business often requires a boost in manpower – but if your team is small and already stretched to its limits in terms of workload, that boost can feel impossible to achieve.
Enter, virtual assistants! As virtual assistants, our services are designed to enhance productivity and efficiency without officially expanding your in-house team. VAs can pick up routine tasks that take up large chunks of time. Take admin, for example. The average small business owner spends up to 33 hours per month on admin tasks. What else could you be doing with those 33 hours if someone else was to take on your business tasks?
By investing in a virtual assistant, your processes become more streamlined, behind the scenes tasks like admin are completed efficiently and accurately, and most importantly, you free up your own hours that can then be poured back into strategic growth.
Boosting productivity and efficiency is a vital aspect of scaling your business, and it’s far more achievable with some targeted support from the right virtual assistant.
Specialised Skills and Expertise
Scaling your small business often requires you to turn your attention to a specific area of your business. For example, if you’re looking to expand your reach and audience base, digital marketing may become your focus. But if you’re not a digital marketing wiz, this can feel challenging.
Virtual Assistants come with a range of skills and expertise, making enhancing certain aspects of your business far easier. For example, a VA with experience in managing successful digital marketing campaigns can plan and create engaging content, mange your social media presence, engage with your audience and potential new customers and feedback on analytics for further improvements.
Having this expert support in certain areas of your business really is invaluable when it comes to scaling. Consider which business functions will help you reach your business goals and invest in a virtual assistant with expert skills and experience in that area to ensure optimum results.
Supporting Flexibility
Scaling your business isn’t always a linear process. There will be times when workload increases significantly, but there may also be times where these increases tail off. Virtual Assistants can help facilitate this flexibility, allowing you to manipulate their hours and designated tasks accordingly.
For example, if your new product launch goes well, you may have an influx of admin to complete. Your virtual assistant can pick up this work and keep things running smoothly. And, when the launch is complete and things quieten down again, you can either reduce their hours or ask them to focus on other tasks like data entry or marketing.
This flexibility allows you to do what you need do to scale your business, without worrying about the implications of fluctuating workload. A virtual assistant will simply move with the expansion and contraction of your business as and when is necessary.
Cost-Effective
A big consideration when scaling your business is cost. As you pump more funds into your business to grow it, concerns over paying staff and making a return on your investment can begin to niggle at you. However, as we’ve already discovered, virtual assistants are incredibly flexible, meaning you never pay for more than you need.
The majority of virtual assistants ask to be paid by the hour or number of tasks completed, meaning that this is completely within your control. If they’re not working, you’re not having to fork out.
The remote nature of virtual assistants also adds to their cost-effectiveness overall, as it eliminates expenses related to office space, equipment, benefits or training.
Scaling your business can be costly, so reducing expenses by investing in a virtual assistant can contribute to the overall success of your scaling.
Small Business Support with The Edwards Company
Scaling your small business is daunting and exciting in equal parts and, with the support of a virtual assistant, entirely possible. For more information on how our Virtual Assistant services can help support the scaling of your small business, please do not hesitate to get in touch.