Your Virtual Assistant can help you with on-line Shopping Cart programs!!

Many small business owners have product for sale.  Products can consist of tangible “touchable” items like books, CD’s or DVD’s.  Products can be digital too like e-books and MP3 downloads.  Products can also be service or event based like counseling time, coaching time, seminars, webinars and workshops.  All of these items can be managed online through your website and programs called “shopping carts”.  There are several shopping cart programs you can subscribe to, 1Shopping Cart is just one to name for the moment.  Your VA can create items within your shopping cart and create a link to be put on your website.  Customers then can purchase or register right through the website.  Your VA can also set up “auto responders” so that your customers receive immediate messages regarding their purchase.  You can also use the shopping cart for reports on your product sales, tracking your customer’s purchases along with sending global “news blasts” to the data base that has been created by your customers.  Having a shopping cart is a great way to begin to automate your business and employing a VA to run it can even makes it more hands free for you!

Your Virtual Assistant can help you with E-mail Blasts and Newsletters!!

Are you one of those business owners that are finding precious time lost in their day/week just in creating E-mail Blasts or monthly Newsletters to their contact database.  Why not hire help for this task?  V.A.’s can help design and maintain your monthly mailings (yes even real paper mailings as well as digital)!  There are several software options out there to create monthly/weekly mailings like Constant Contact, Swiftpage Aweber, iContact and Get Response just to name a few.  Personally, as a VA that has used all three types mentioned, I prefer Constant Contact.  It is easy to use and maintain.  The reports are very easy to follow.  As far as Outlook, there is a limit as to how many contacts you can send to at one time and it will shut you down to prevent spamming.  Swiftpage integrates with your Outlook so you only maintain one database but it was difficult for me to manipulate and create Newsletters. I also feel the look of the Newsletter was not as “pretty to the eye” as the Constant Contact templates.  Aweber and Get Response offer a double opt in feature for your newsletter or email receivers to help protect you from “spam” reports.

Virtual Assistants are HUGE Contributors to the Success of Their Clients

Virtual Assistants take on the non-core tasks that busy entrepreneurs are finding themselves bogged down in.  A Virtual Assistant can free up time for that busy entrepreneur allowing him or her to build their clientele.  What would other areas would you be able to focus on in your business, as a business owner, if you had help with emails, customer service, scheduling and confirming appointments, invoicing and payment reconciling or any other administrative task that slows you down and takes up your time?

Who Uses Virtual Assistants?

Associations, Foundations & Organizations

Attorneys

Business Consultants, Writers, Sales Reps

Coaches—Business & Life

Contractors—Plumber, Electricians, etc.

Corporations

Entertainment Industry—Producers, Actors, etc.

Event Planners

Home-Based Business Owners

Import/Export Consultants

Marketing Companies

Non-Profit Organizations

Religious Organizations

Retail Shops/Stores

Specialists—Accountants, Attorneys, Architects, etc.

Travel Agencies

Just to name a few!

Your Virtual Assistant can handle your Calendar!

Appointment Scheduling, confirming and follow-up are several ways a VA can help a business owner maintain their calendar.  How many appointments have you double booked, missed or had down on the wrong day?  Hiring a VA to coordinate your calendar and make sure you are on task is a great way to alleviate some of the stress.  You can direct your clients, costumers or business associates to contact your VA, either by email or phone, and set up appointments there. Or you can contact your assistant to follow up with people and schedule appointments.  There are several software products out there today VA’s work with that will “share” a calendar so you both have access like Google calendar and Outlook just to name a few.  Step back from the center workings of your business and look around, is this an area that  can be handed off and help “distress” your life?  It is not as hard to delegate tasks as you think….

What is a Virtual Assistant (VA)?

A Virtual Assistant, or VA, is a highly skilled professional who provides administrative support and other services to executives, businesses, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and others that might have more work than the time to do it.

VAs work as independent contractors.  VAs  use different forms of leading technology to communicate work assignments and the completion of them, such as, Internet, email, disk transfer, and sometimes even regular mail, overnight shipping and even pick-up and deliver work if in a local area.

VAs services will typically include email handling, database management, “shopping cart” data entry, invoicing, appointment scheduling and confirming, customer service, webinar moderator, general follow-up with customers of their client, reminder services, bulk mailings, and information processing.  They can also include such tasks like; meeting and event planning, desktop publishing, bookkeeping, web design and maintenance and paralegal tasks.  The services VAs offer to the business and corporate worlds today can be endless!

Take a moment to look at your business and the non-core tasks that are taking time each day and each week – can any of them be delegated in order to free up your time to build your business?

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