Hire a Virtual Assistant Archives

Hire a Virtual Assistant Archives - Virtual Latinos

15Jun '20

Our In House Expert Lists Four Reasons Hiring a Virtual Latino Assistant Will Benefit You

Anyone who has operated a small business is well aware of just how many daily tasks are necessary to achieve success. Between financial reports, accounting, hiring, payroll, scheduling, client meetings, and client communications, it can often seem like you don’t have time to sleep at night, let alone get started on the tasks that will actually grow your business. Worse, attempting to be a jack of all trades often leads to the other half of the old adage, “master of none.” In other words, spreading yourself too thin on too many tasks has the unfortunate effect of making you less effective in your efforts on each one.

It’s a scenario all too common for entrepreneurs and other business owners, and one that often has unfortunate consequences: 20% of small businesses fail within their first year; that figure grows to a full 50% by year five. While the reasons vary from poor customer outreach (14%) to an inadequate team (29%), it’s clear that attempting to handle everything yourself does not bode well for the future of your business. For that reason, more and more small business owners are recognizing the value of hiring a virtual assistant.

What to Consider When Hiring a Virtual Assistant

A virtual assistant can help you with any of the daily tasks of doing business – from managing customer communications and handling administrative duties to providing customer support, sales, marketing, and much more. What’s important is that you assess your strengths, your areas of need, and then determine which tasks you’ll benefit from outsourcing to a virtual assistant. Then, you’ll be able to focus on the key ventures that will help you grow your business.

While there are a number of purported top virtual assistant companies in existence, however, it’s essential to choose a legitimate, quality business. When Jaime, our in-house expert, was first starting his own marketing company, he decided to outsource some of the administrative tasks to a virtual assistant; upon a recommendation from a friend, he hired an assistant from the Philippines – a decision that had unfortunate consequences. The virtual assistant had relatively poor English skills, was all but unreachable during North American business hours, and provided almost no return on our expert’s investment. Although we’re aware this doesn’t happen to everyone working with Filipino VAs, it does happen to many (including various existing Virtual Latinos clients).

From this experience – as well as his subsequent, much more successful experiences with hiring Latin American virtual assistants, our expert has agreed to provide his insight regarding how to hire a virtual assistant as well as why you should choose a Latino virtual assistant for your outsourcing needs. Consider these recommendations when making your final hiring decisions:

1. Time zones make all the difference

As Jaime learned the hard way, utilizing a virtual assistant halfway around the world can have some unfortunate consequences; hours of operation differ wildly from those of a North American business, such as in the US or Canada, and you or your customer base may not be able to reach your virtual assistant during operating hours. Conversely, Latino assistants live and work within the same time zones as you do, allowing you full access to develop internal relations, address productivity, provide customer outreach, and more. Better yet, the entire Virtual Latino team is located in the same few time zones, allowing excellent cross-communications via phone, email, or video conferencing.

2. Excellent English skills are non-negotiable

Our experts stress the importance of full English proficiency for any virtual assistant you hire. Besides the obvious advantages of hiring an assistant with fluent, non-accented English to aid in your most crucial client or customer service communications, it’s essential to ensure your virtual assistant reads and writes English flawlessly and can adapt to English-language tech in the virtual age. Virtual Latinos hires only highly English-proficient assistants so that each can handle tasks such as cold calling, sales, tech support, customer service, blog writing, marketing, lead generation, general administrative, and more with ease.

3. True bilingualism is a selling point for your business

With over 85% of US businesses relying on Spanish-language employees to conduct business with America’s growing Spanish-speaking population, it’s crucial to recognize the importance of the business you stand to gain by including Spanish-speaking support options. While proficient in English, Latino virtual assistants can easily switch to Spanish if required in the operations of your daily business. According to Jaime, “Being fully bilingual is an opportunity for businesses to offer Spanish services – having someone who speaks both fluently and clearly is important.”

4. Consider the cost savings

While Jaime’s first Filipino virtual assistant experience was a costly failure, yours doesn’t have to be. In fact, Virtual Latinos offers significant cost savings compared to hiring a US-based assistant. For qualified virtual assistants based in the US, the going rate is $25 an hour on average. If you compare pricing from $5 USD/hour for a Latino assistant, you see a 30 to 80% discount even compared to US minimum wage, which is a huge factor to consider!

Virtual Latinos Is Your Source For Quality Virtual Assistants

Recognizing the benefits of outsourcing some of your daily tasks of business is the first step towards shifting your focus towards activities that will grow your business and hiring the right assistant is the second. Ensure your success with Virtual Latinos – our skilled, fully bilingual and English-proficient assistants from locations like Mexico, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico provide you with expert services at an affordable rate. Contact us today to learn more about how we can serve you.

The Growing Trend of Telehealth Options and How a Virtual Assistant Can Improve Your Healthcare Clinic Outcomes

Virtual Latinos

Tips & How To's

6Jun '20

How Hiring Virtual Assistants from Latin America Can Help Grow Your US-based Healthcare Business

Now more than ever, we see how global healthcare affects us all. Technology has brought us to the point where even doctors telecommute into patients’ exam rooms and emergency room beds. Imagine being a stroke victim in a rural area, with no on-call neurologists for 300 miles. A doctor can now teleconference directly into your room from a major city to help with your diagnosis and treatment. Patients are more than willing and able to accept this level of care from their doctors. Why shouldn’t we be utilizing virtual assistants just as much, if not more, for much less dire circumstances in health care?

All market reports seem to suggest that the need for virtual assistants in global healthcare is strong and only growing stronger, with extreme growth expected between now and 2028, particularly in the healthcare industries within the United States. Furthermore, with over 40 million Spanish speakers in the U.S., the demand for bilingual services is high and also only growing.

Here are some other trends we’ve identified suggesting the need for global healthcare offices to hire virtual assistants:

Multilingual support in health care tools for virtual assistants is increasingly necessary and relevant.
There is an increased focus on the development and implementation of conversational virtual assistant tools for ease of communication.
The demand for technologically-advanced solutions to our healthcare needs and issues is high.

All these trends indicate that hiring a virtual assistant, particularly in the healthcare field, is not only a smart move, but a prudent investment for health care businesses in the United States.

Benefits of Working with Virtual Latinos

There are many benefits of investing in Latino virtual assistants to improve the outcomes of your burgeoning telehealth clinic or one you plan to start. Here are a few to consider.

Bilingual, Multi-cultural Support for Your Service

All our virtual assistants are bilingual and multi-cultural. This means that our virtual assistants are uniquely qualified to translate among those realms – between patients and their doctors and nurses – who may not all have grown up within the same language or culture or may not talk about their health problems in the same way. This also has an overwhelmingly positive effect for your business, in terms of serving communities that have been historically underserved and misunderstood, which is enormous. It’s also just good business; you are able to reach that many more clients, effectively, organically growing your office.

General Administrative Support

Virtual assistants can do anything a person behind a computer in your physical office can do, without taking up space or resources. They can audit patient charts, establish new medical records, and even do digital intake. These are truly good effort and time-saving procedures to have in place, virtually. Having a virtual assistant who can do this, and in more than one language, only makes it a better investment.

Marketing Tasks and Announcements for your Healthcare Business

Most healthcare workers are concerned with just that: healthcare. There is no reason for most to know how to deal with marketing, promotions, or available services. This is one of the places that a virtual assistant can step in to promote your services. Trust our team to handle marketing. Virtual assistants can grow your business while you care for patients. Updating social media and other content creation are tasks that can be achieved from almost any location in the world.

Phone services

Virtual assistants can always answer the phones for you, in both English and Spanish, to schedule appointments, answer questions, and discuss patient options. Anything your offices do over the phone, can be done via your virtual assistant. marketing virtual assistant

Leverage the Benefits of a Latino Virtual Assistant for Your Healthcare Business

Investing in a virtual assistant from Latin America for any business will open many doors, but that is particularly true for those in the healthcare industry and considering the current state of medical care. A Latino virtual assistant can streamline your daily tasks more efficiently and can open up your healthcare clinic to a greater population. Grow your healthcare business by simply including more options.

Grow Your Telehealth Business With a Latino Virtual Assistant Today

If your healthcare business needs some backup with the constancy of new patients in the present medical environment, get help and grow your business by investing in a Latino virtual assistant. Contact Virtual Latinos today to hire a dedicated virtual assistant for your global healthcare business – whether telehealth continues to be a norm for your business or just a temporary solution to the pandemic that is affecting all our lives, a virtual assistant can improve patient outcomes while growing your base. All our Latino virtual assistants are hand-picked, bilingual, and fluent in English and Spanish. Over 90% have completed a 4-year college degree, which allows us to boast that we have the top virtual assistant services available at Virtual Latinos.

How Virtual Assistants Could be the Key to Your Small Business Staying Afloat through COVID-19

Virtual Latinos

News

6May '20

Why You Should Hire Virtual Assistants to Help Expand Your Reach

These are not easy times to be a small to medium business owner. In the face of the rising COVID-19 global pandemic, many of us are left with questions about what moving forward during and after this crisis means. Perhaps the biggest question of them all being:

“How do we move forward, quickly, before getting left behind?”

We get it. Many small businesses are in the process of having to completely re-structure their day-to-day operations, which is a lot of work and takes a great amount of logistical coordination. Think about some of the changes we’re seeing in so many small businesses in the past months:

In order to just stay open, restaurants are shifting over to online ordering with take-out and delivery only.
Yoga studios are moving their classes to Zoom, Skype, and other platforms.
Accountants are telecommuting with their clients and solely accepting digitized documents.
Various places of worship have begun to offer streaming services and private video counseling rather than meeting in person.
Many small retail shops are finding themselves jumping into online e-commerce, some for the very first time.

These kinds of expansions can feel intimidating to small business owners, even given appropriate amounts of time and under the best of circumstances. However, whether your business is considered “essential” or not right now, it is probably time for some overhauling of your processes. Our world is changing and adapting to that fact is more important than ever.

At this moment, the common thread we see in businesses that are thriving amidst the COVID-19 pandemic is the ability to adapt and incorporate technology into their daily operations and in their deliverable products. Technology is more accessible than ever before, and it’s allowing so many businesses to reach wider audiences and brand new markets.

Remote work has never seen such high numbers – and it’s not just in the U.S.; it’s around the world, and the current global pandemic has created an increased necessity for it. While there is no way to make your small business completely “pandemic-proof,” there’s one easy step you can take to keep the chaos of the moment at bay as you move forward – you can hire virtual assistants (and do it without breaking the bank).

Regardless of what kind of business you run, chances are that you need extra help right now and aren’t necessarily in a position to hire more in-house staff. Do you dream of being able to delegate tasks like email or database management? Is a ringing phone keeping you from managing other tasks? A Virtual Assistant might be the solution to many (if not all) of your problems.

What Are Some of the Benefits to Hiring a Virtual Assistant?

Probably the single most important thing a virtual assistant can do for you is provide relief from the day to day processes that slow you down from actually running your business. We are all feeling a little overwhelmed these days, but imagine if you had an assistant who could take a few tasks off your hands every day and lighten your workload? There are many benefits when you hire a Virtual Assistant, some of which you may not have even imagined (yet).

Virtual assistants already know how to work remotely

In a time when remote work is new to many, it won’t be to your virtual assistant. It’s likely that they’ve been working remotely for much longer than most. Virtual assistants can help streamline the process for you and won’t need the training or long “onboarding” time that is typical of a new employee, especially in a remote environment.

If your entire business is shifting to a remote-work model, as many are, they can also help you train your current employees to do so efficiently. This is vital in maintaining clear communication within any company, and a virtual assistant is just the kind of person who can facilitate this for you.

Handling all of your marketing tasks just got easier.
Do you spend an inordinate amount of time writing promotions and putting together other marketing content? There are virtual assistants who specialize in this and can handle the work for you, from afar. This includes:

Web Design
Many small businesses don’t update their websites as frequently as they want or need to due to lack of time and/or ability. If you hire virtual assistants, they can do this for you. They are well-versed in most standard webtools and can quickly update your website to reflect the daily changes in our lives (and your business) during a global health crisis and beyond.
Social Media Monitoring
One of the major time-sinks that many small business owners lament having to worry about is social media. Whether it’s post updates, keeping stories current, comment monitoring, or responding to customer questions and reviews, it’s time consuming and not necessarily the best use of your working hours. Virtual assistants know their way around social media, since, in addition to having formal backgrounds in technology and media, most of them have grown up with it. They can help you improve your content, increase engagement on your posts, and chat with your following.
Blog or Newsletter Writing
If your small business maintains a blog or sends out a newsletter, you know how easy it is to get behind on updates, especially when daily operations take precedent. Whether you’re a flower shop or a property management company, chances are, you need to be reaching out more to your clients, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Let your virtual assistant help create regular blogs or newsletter posts to keep your public informed and aware of what you offer and what (if anything) is changing.
Branding, Graphic Design
If you are one of the many businesses moving to e-commerce, you have undoubtedly realized how important both branding and graphic design are. Many virtual assistants specialize in these areas and can do the work for you at a fraction of the cost of a graphic design firm.

Aside from the various marketing-related tasks you can have taken care of when you hire virtual assistants, there are still many more daily and weekly items to consider being able to free yourself of.

Payroll
Managing payroll can be time consuming, especially for small business owners who may not have a dedicated division or staff member to handle it. This is another task that a virtual assistant can take on, so you don’t have to.
Customer Support
Virtual assistants can and do regularly handle customer support for small businesses from property management companies to yoga studios and even accountants. If your accounting firm were to go entirely online, wouldn’t it be nice to have a dedicated staff member to contact clients and prepare them for what they’ll need to have digitized before your video chat with them?
Employee Support
If you are changing day-to-day operations of your business but keeping your staff on (remotely or otherwise), this is a really great way to make sure they feel supported. A virtual assistant can field any questions your staff might have and be the central hub for announcements, changes, and updates.
Market Research
Even if you are unsure which direction to take your small business in during a global pandemic, a virtual assistant can find this information for you! Market research on similar business types is essential to see what is working and what isn’t in these highly unprecedented times.

Other Reasons to Consider Hiring a Virtual Assistant

Those are the most common tasks that bring businesses to seek out virtual assistants, but they are more aspects of running a business that they can take off your plate. Here are a few such tasks.

Scalability
Virtual assistants work within your budget, on short-term contracts, so there are no hidden fees or obligations. For example, if you are a restaurant owner looking for lots of tech support for the first month or two of implementing on-line ordering, your virtual assistant can help you establish a system that works for you and your staff, then decrease their hours as needed. This is a big selling point for many small businesses because it allows them to have an expert consultant involved in the process, helping to increase revenue, but with diminishing labor costs over time. Of course, once you start working with a virtual assistant, it’s entirely possible that you’ll find more for them to do, as it becomes clear what a valuable asset they are to your company.

Handle any tasks you might not know how to do, and/or don’t have time to learn
With time and study, of course, you could become a social media guru or an expert programmer, but most small business owners don’t have that kind of time, especially right now. If, for example, you need to convert your small retail storefront’s website over to e-commerce, and fast, you’ll want someone who already has experience doing this. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. Virtual assistants can help facilitate making this transition and set it all up for you, so all you have to do is mail your product out to your customers. They can even set up and schedule any video conference calls you may need to have but were too busy to figure out how to organize.

Increasing your company’s reach through website localization
Many virtual assistants are bilingual, which means that they can also help you to localize or translate your website and services into another language and provide support in that language – organically growing your business. With there currently being more Spanish-speakers in the United States than in Spain, this is a huge market reach that you may not have considered before. Think about being able to reach 50 million more consumers, instantly.

Whether Your Business Is Retail or Accounting, Virtual Assistants Can Help

From marketing tasks to employee support and market research, a virtual assistant could be the key to adapting and growing your business in uncertain times. Many of the businesses we see thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic are doing so precisely because of their embracing technology. Top virtual assistant services are leading in many of these technological charges, as they have the expertise that most small businesses need with years of experience in the field.

If you’re wondering how to hire a virtual assistant, Virtual Latinos can help! Our certified team is at the ready for any of your virtual needs and can help you start growing your sales today.

10 Accounting Tasks to outsource to a Virtual Assistant

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

22Apr '20

It’s a common scenario in the small business world: The owner and staff become overwhelmed with the number of accounting tasks to be accomplished every day. Between managing cash flow, analyzing business finances, prepping for tax season, reconciling the books, and preparing for the unforeseen, there’s much accounting work to be handled—and it can quickly become overwhelming.

The truth is that this type of busy work can eventually hold your business back from accepting new clients and focusing on more important work that could bring revenue. Many companies have discovered that outsourcing accounting work to a top virtual assistant service is a cost-effective and efficient way to overcome this common obstacle.

What Are the Most Common Accounting Tasks?

Your business probably requires the completion of various daily or weekly accounting tasks to cover the many different responsibilities involved in making your company a success. You may have someone supervising your systems and analyzing information. Another employee may spend most of their day preparing statements and organizing invoices. Someone else may oversee analyzing your payroll and account books, ensuring that your online systems are accurate and secure.

All of these jobs take up valuable work hours that you could put to better use. This is where a virtual personal assistant can help.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help?

Entrepreneurs and small business owners around the nation are finding these 10 bookkeeping duties easy to outsource to virtual assistant companies, and that doing so is economically beneficial to their businesses. Consider using a virtual assistant to ease the burden of responsibilities such as:

Processing Accounts Payable. Vendor bills and invoices can pile up quickly. Keeping on top of them is essential to maintaining your reputation and keeping your business running smoothly. Hiring a virtual assistant can take this task off your hands and make sure your accounts are always organized and paid.
Processing Accounts Receivable. Receiving payment from your clients is clearly a necessary duty that must be completed on time. Virtual assistants use your accounting and bookkeeping software to make sure your invoices are paid and coordinated with your financial statements.
Reconciling Credit Cards and Bank Statements. Reconciling your financial records and business bank accounts is a delicate process that is essential in your bookkeeping procedures. A virtual assistant can help you to avoid any discrepancies and keep your accounts in the black.
Double Checking the Accuracy of Others’ Calculations. Working with numbers is unavoidable for most of your employees at some point in their workday. Virtual assistants can go over any calculations your staff has performed to check for any small errors that could lead to large problems in the future.
Payroll Management. Accuracy in processing payroll for your company is a must if you want to keep your staff happy and your books accurate. A virtual assistant can remove the worry of accurate payroll accounting and handle it on time and as needed.
Paying Bills. Most businesses have overhead required to maintain operations. Paying company bills on time and in full is another tedious accounting responsibility that a virtual assistant can handle for you with ease.
Preparing Financial Statements. Financial statements such as balance sheets, trial balances, and profit/loss statements are critical records to ensure your company operates at its optimal potential. A personal virtual assistant will create and archive these records for you, so they are ready for your analysis and use at any time.
Numerical Data Recording. All the numbers involved in your business endeavors can seem like an enormous obstacle to track. A virtual assistant can compute, classify, and record this data and provide it to you in an easy-to-work-with format that benefits your company and eases your mind.
Double-checking Transactions. With the flow of company funds out to vendors, bills, and company payroll, and into the company as revenue from the services you provide, there are bound to be occasional minor errors. A responsible virtual assistant can check and verify all the transactions your company makes to ensure accuracy and avoid any problems that could arise due to human error.
Reconciling Vendor and Client Statements. Keeping track of your paid and unpaid balances, and those which are owed to you, can be easy and stress-free with a virtual assistant. A trustworthy virtual assistant can remove the worry of maintaining your reputation among vendors and collecting from your clients.

Consider Virtual Latinos: Your Connection to an Accounting Virtual Assistant

Your business can benefit from outsourcing these accounting tasks to a Virtual Latinos virtual assistant with accounting experience. Start your business on the road to greater financial success through more efficiency today. Contact Virtual Latinos to discover the steps to making this possibility a reality for your company.

10 Most Common Jobs Companies Outsource to Virtual Assistants

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

21Apr '20

If you are a busy entrepreneur or business owner who’s working hard to achieve your goals, you probably understand that outsourcing the jobs that consume crucial working hours is a viable and beneficial solution to many obstacles you face. If you want to grow your business and maximize revenue, it’s wise to consider which jobs are commonly outsourced before you take steps to hand these responsibilities over to a top virtual assistant company.

What Is Outsourcing?

The act of outsourcing jobs is basically subcontracting an outside company or person to handle certain jobs, tasks, or responsibilities. These tasks often use company time that employees and owners could use more efficiently to achieve company goals and exceed clients’ expectations.

Outsourcing doesn’t necessarily mean sending your work overseas, or offshoring, as many people think. It often involves hiring local accountants, freelancers, and even cleaning services. Virtual assistants offer other essential services that many companies need. Outsourcing consistently proves to be a cost–effective option, as many of the duties contracted save businesses from paying salaries and benefits to employees. The work can be accomplished by paying contract fees to the subcontractors for completion of duties.

What Jobs Can You Outsource?

If the idea of increasing company productivity, saving on labor costs, and providing higher quality services to your clients appeals to you, consider these 10 jobs that you can outsource to top virtual assistant companies like Virtual Latinos:

Writers. If your business is paying writers to produce company web content, you may benefit from outsourcing to freelance writers. Many businesses, including newspapers and magazines, currently take advantage of outsourced writers. Virtual Latinos can connect you with a writer who offers mastery of the English language and excellent grammar skills.
Personal & Executive Assistants. Hiring a virtual personal assistant is quite possibly one of the most beneficial and profitable decisions a business owner can make. From accounting and bookkeeping services to scheduling, managing emails, and answering phone calls, a virtual assistant can benefit your enterprise and cut costs in many areas.
Tax Preparers. Many companies hire tax preparers via online services to handle this tedious task and ensure that they are prepared for tax time. With a client’s financial information and knowledge of tax laws, a knowledgeable virtual assistant can help you prepare your documents for tax season, saving you both time and money.
Web Programmers and Designers. Bureau of Labor statistics indicate that computer programming is the job that companies most often outsource overseas. In countries like India, workers often perform these tasks for a pay rate as low as one tenth of what American workers are paid.
Call Center Reps. Both inbound and outbound calling is a popular job to outsource in recent times. Companies often use this service to offer promotions, take surveys, and provide product and customer support. Virtual Latinos virtual assistant can handle your calls with the professionalism and knowledge you would expect from an in-house team member.
Data entry. Data entry is a relatively simple job. It doesn’t require specific knowledge of company operations, but it often takes up valuable time and racks up company labor costs. For this reason, it is one of the most commonly outsourced jobs.
Business Process Outsourcing. A very commonly outsourced job is business process outsourcing (BPO), which can include various time-consuming tasks. Accounting transactions and filing health care paperwork affect your business’ efficiency, and these jobs are often outsourced overseas. A nearshore virtual assistant who works in your same time zone can be a significant benefit to your business.
Human Resources. Human Resource managers handle many tasks in any burgeoning business. In addition to hiring and onboarding, they handle employee benefits and payroll. Many third-party companies offer these services and have the knowledge and technology to do it effectively and cost-efficiently.
Web Maintenance Assistants. If you need help keeping your website current and updating simple aspects of your site, paying a full-time staff member to take on this task is an unnecessary expense and use of valuable time. Outsourcing developers and designers will benefit your bottom line.
Graphic Design Assistants. Many companies subcontract graphic design work to freelancers instead of hiring full-time employees to meet their graphic design needs.

Let Outsourcing Save Your Company Time and Money

As you can see, outsourcing job functions that don’t require full-time employees is an increasingly common practice. The 10 commonly outsourced jobs we’ve listed here are only a few of the possibilities that your company could hire a virtual assistant to accomplish.

A Virtual Latinos virtual assistant would be a great start to saving your company money and freeing up valuable time that you or your employees can use to increase business, completely satisfy clients, and increase company profits.

Reach out to us today and discover the benefits of nearshore outsourcing and how we can help you maximize your business’ revenues by hiring virtual assistants.

Virtual Latinos: The Best, Most Affordable Virtual Assistants in the US Time Zones

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

26Mar '20

Hiring a virtual assistant can be a great choice for any small business owner, but the process of finding the right virtual assistant can be incredibly challenging. Many small business owners have struggled with bad virtual assistants due to various issues. Typically, these conflicts come down to the quality of services provided in proportion to the cost of securing those services. Many virtual assistant services simply do not provide the results small business owners expect, leading to excessive expense and serious frustrations.

When hiring a virtual assistant, business owners should carefully weigh the value of the services provided by the assistant with the cost of securing the assistant’s services. It’s also vital to consider future growth and how the virtual assistant can help small businesses succeed in the future. One small business owner ran the gauntlet of different virtual assistant services, ultimately discovering that Latino virtual assistants offer incredible value and long-term benefits that virtual assistants from America and the Philippines simply cannot match. This small business owner who invested in an American virtual assistant agency quickly discovered that the value of the services provided did not justify the high price point, and hiring this company ultimately hurt the small business’s profitability.

Common Problems With Virtual Assistants in America and the Philippines

When a small business owner chooses to invest in a virtual personal assistant, they should weigh available options for virtual assistant services carefully. Many American-based virtual assistant solutions offer decent quality work but charge very high price points. They do this because they focus on providing convenient outsourcing rather than offering true partnered service providers that want to see clients grow their businesses.

Many companies outsource their virtual assistants from overseas. The small business owner who struggled with the American agency then turned to a company in the Philippines but encountered a host of new problems. While the virtual assistant agency in the Philippines offered a much more attractive price point than the American agency, the small business owner quickly realized that the virtual assistants from the Philippines did not possess a strong understanding of North American business practices nor complete fluency in the English language. Additionally, the virtual assistant based in the Philippines worked in a vastly different time zone, resulting in many scheduling conflicts. Ultimately, these drawbacks resulted in lost productivity and cost the small business owner about as much as the more expensive American virtual assistant agency.

When a small business owner needs top virtual assistant services, it can seem challenging to find the right balance of value and price. The small business owner soon learned that where the American and Filipino virtual assistant agencies failed, a Latino virtual assistant agency could succeed.

Benefits of Working With Latino Virtual Assistants

Small businesses have a tremendous opportunity to break into international markets with the right support. The small business owner who struggled with American virtual assistants and the agency based in the Philippines eventually discovered that Latino virtual assistants offer an incredible value, balancing expert-level assistant services with an attractive price point and a host of additional advantages.

Working with a Latino virtual assistant means unfettered access to a dedicated virtual assistant accustomed to working in North American time zones. There was no need to worry about scheduling conflicts common with the agency in the Philippines, and the Latino virtual assistant provided easier access to Latin American markets like Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. The Latino virtual assistant was fluent in English and Spanish, making translation and coordination between different business partners and customers across both continents faster and more reliable.

Why Choose Virtual Latinos?

Latino virtual assistants from Virtual Latinos offer unbeatable quality. It is essential for any business owner to keep expenses as minimal as possible, but the stress of handling every day-to-day responsibility can eventually cut into productivity and profitability. The cost of hiring a Virtual Latinos virtual assistant easily pays for itself thanks to the unmatched level of value Virtual Latinos offers.

A small business owner can expand to new markets with greater confidence, reach a wider customer base thanks to Virtual Latinos’ expertise in dealing with both the American and Latin American business markets, and avoid the excess expense of hiring American virtual assistant agencies and other hassles that typically come with outsourcing assistant services overseas.
Hiring a virtual assistant for small businesses through Virtual Latinos is a cost-effective option that can streamline business operations, open the door to new markets, and increase a small business’s profitability in several ways. Contact Virtual Latinos today to learn more about the benefits of hiring a Latino virtual assistant.

Hire a Virtual Assistant for Customer Support, Cold Calling, and Follow-Ups

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

13Feb '20

Sales is a demanding field, no matter what industry it is in. It’s not uncommon for a high-performing sales team to become so bogged down with administrative tasks and housekeeping issues that they lose time that should have been spent actually selling. Sales teams should consider the value that top virtual assistant services can provide.

The right virtual assistant can lighten the burden of administrative tasks so sales teams can focus on selling their products and services.

What Can a Virtual Assistant Do?

A virtual assistant can provide all the services a sales team would expect from a typical office assistant, but the virtual assistant provides these services remotely. Thanks to the internet and the speed of digital communication, telecommuting is more popular than ever. Companies can retain top talent from a much wider pool of international candidates thanks to remote work. A sales virtual assistant will have the experience necessary to understand a sales team’s needs and address them appropriately.

Many virtual assistant companies in the US offer remote services, but they tend to charge exorbitant prices for these services. Overseas virtual assistant companies may offer more attractive prices, but sales teams that rely on virtual assistants from the Philippines or other overseas nations often contend with time zone conflicts, language barriers, and unfamiliarity with the North American business landscape.

What It Means to Hire Virtual Assistants

A Latin American virtual assistant offers the best of both worlds. Virtual Latinos offers virtual assistant services that rival most American companies in terms of quality and outshine overseas companies in terms of price. To boost your team’s sales performance with a valuable investment, consider some of the ways a virtual assistant can assist your sales team:

Your virtual assistant can build expense reports, helping you track your operational expenses without sacrificing time your sales team could spend actually selling.
A virtual assistant can handle scheduling, manage your sales team’s calendar, and book required appointments.
Virtual assistants can handle your customer relationship management software, allowing your team to easily track relationships with all your clients.
A virtual assistant can take care of cold calls and also act as a receptionist for your sales team so no customer call goes unanswered.
Virtual assistants are experienced with demanding research, helping a sales team break into new markets more efficiently.

These are only a few examples of the benefits a virtual assistant can provide to a professional sales team. If you decide to find a virtual assistant to shoulder the administrative tasks that keep your salespeople from actually selling, you should have a functional plan for leveraging your new virtual assistant to maximum effect.

Steps for Increasing Sales With a Virtual Assistant

Increasing sales should be a top goal for any sales team. A virtual assistant can be a tremendous asset in this effort, but it’s important to follow the right steps when it comes to increasing sales with a virtual assistant:

1. Determine your needs. Before you hire a virtual assistant, determine what you expect the virtual assistant to handle.

2. Assess your budget. Find out how much your team can afford to spend on a virtual assistant. It’s essential to get a good return on the money you invest.

3. Find the best virtual assistant. Many virtual assistant companies exist all over the world. Each offers different services and different price points. Virtual Latinos offers vetted professionals, English proficient and in the same timezone. Contact us, and we will find the best for your needs.

4. Train your new assistant. Once you hire a virtual assistant, conduct an onboarding process and make sure the assistant knows their role and responsibilities within your sales team.

5. Delegate administrative responsibilities. The primary function of your new virtual assistant should be to assume administrative responsibilities so your salespeople can focus on selling.

6. Treat your new assistant as an employee. You will get the most value out of your virtual assistant if you welcome them as if they are part of your in-house team.

7. Enjoy higher sales. A dedicated virtual assistant takes the pressure off your sales team so they can perform better, lightens the burden of your administrative responsibilities, and can ultimately boost your profitability.

These steps will help you ensure your sales team gets the maximum possible value out of your new virtual assistant.

Why Work With Virtual Latinos?

If your sales team has designs to break into markets in Central and South America like Mexico, El Salvador, or Costa Rica, a virtual assistant with experience working in both North America and Latin America can be a tremendous asset. Virtual Latinos offers cost-effective virtual assistant services to sales teams across the U.S., offering time zone alignment, language fluency, and expert-level sales support services. Contact us today to learn more about how a Virtual Latinos virtual assistant can help you boost your sales performance.

Experienced Virtual Assistants: Our VAs have worked with big US Companies

Many of the Virtual Latinos VAs from Central America have previously worked in big call centers – where they worked for big US companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and many others. They have received training in cold sales, lead generation, customer service, and many other tasks and know how to work for US companies.

Top 30 Tasks to Outsource to a Virtual Assistant in 2020

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

30Jan '20

Business owners in every industry face countless concerns every day. Handling customer relationships, building a strong internal team, cultivating solid business connections, marketing, payroll, and so many other things require time, attention, and resources. For example, the average small business owner will take on many tasks to get a new business up and running. This can be exhausting for any business owner. One of the best ways to overcome this stress is to find a virtual assistant.

Virtual Assistants Can Lighten the Load for a Business Owner

If you have struggled to handle the myriad concerns that come with building a business, virtual assistant companies like Virtual Latinos can be fantastic assets that lighten your burden and allow you more flexibility to build your company with top virtual assistant services. If you’re overworked, you may be costing your company money in lost productivity.

Virtual Assistants Can Assist With Business Communication Tasks

When small business owners hire virtual assistants, they can start delegating these tasks to ensure timely completion and the consistent attention they require. Some of the business communication tasks most commonly outsourced to virtual assistant services include:

Scheduling meetings and appointments
Prioritizing your emails, responding to emails, setting up email filtering, and weeding out spam email or other unimportant emails
Posting job ads, fielding job applicants, recruiting other team members, and preparing training manuals for new staff members.
Attending webinars and reporting back to you
Creating, launching, and maintaining email marketing campaigns
Sending thank you cards and invitations
Liaising between you and other team members
Participating in online discussion board conversations, acting as your brand expert, and establishing professional connections.

These are just a few of the possible ways your virtual personal assistant can help with your daily business-critical tasks.

Allow Your Virtual Assistant to Help With Content Management

A marketing virtual assistant can be a tremendous asset to any business owner struggling with content development. Many business owners have found greater success with their content marketing strategies by investing in virtual assistants and delegating content-related tasks to them, such as:

9. Handling social media updates and responses.
10. Creating and maintaining a content calendar to schedule and post content.
11. Writing and editing blog posts, press releases, and other published content.
12. Conducting online research, analyzing consumer and customer trends,
and increasing SEO impact with keyword research.
13. Bringing more people to the business website by implementing sound SEO strategies.
14. Examining competitors and developing content that capitalizes on market trends.
15. Creating graphs from spreadsheets and presentations for team members and clients.

Virtual assistants can assist with content management in countless ways, but their capabilities do not end there. The best virtual assistant services can also handle various personal and administrative tasks for business owners.

Delegate Administrative and Personal Tasks to Your Virtual Assistant

Many business owners focus so much on the nuts and bolts of running their companies that their personal obligations may fall to the backburner. A virtual personal assistant or virtual admin assistant can assist with these tasks and offer relief in some surprising ways, including:

16. Organizing your calendar and creating and maintaining your everyday to-do list.
17. Purchasing items for personal or business use.
18. Conducting basic data entry.
19. Helping with sales tasks
20. Helping with financial management, paying bills, setting up automatic payments, and managing bookkeeping.
21. Organizing files, building databases, and creating basic reports.
22. Analyzing performance statistics and results.
23. Prepping for meetings and recording meeting minutes.
24. Transcribing messages or other deliverables.
25. Conducting travel research and booking travel arrangements.

Business owners won’t need to worry about neglecting their personal obligations or handling too many administrative tasks at once when they invest in top virtual assistant services.

Virtual Assistants Can Assist With Customer-Facing Tasks

Of course, one of the best benefits of hiring a virtual assistant is ensuring better customer experiences. Virtual assistants can help accomplish this in many ways, such as:

26. Creating, sending, and tracking invoices.
27. Representing your brand.
28. Gathering customer feedback.
29. Answering phones.
30. Engaging with potential and current clients on social media.

If you’re a business owner feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of daily tasks you must complete to keep your business running, stop trying to handle everything yourself and delegate some of these tasks to a dedicated virtual assistant.

Take Advantage of Virtual Assistant Services to Grow Your Business

Stop losing productivity due to spreading yourself too thin and hire a virtual assistant from Virtual Latinos for a cost-effective and reliable addition to your team. Our virtual assistants are bilingual and very familiar with working in the US as well as Latin American markets like Costa Rica, Mexico, and El Salvador. Contact Virtual Latinos today to learn more about our online virtual assistant services for business owners today.

4 Ways Latin Virtual Assistants Can Help Nonprofit Organizations

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

14Jan '20

Can a Virtual Assistant Make Your Days More Efficient?

How A Virtual Assistant Can Help You Manage Your Busy Workdays
Non-profit work is a demanding position. From seeking funding opportunities that further your mission and vision to preparing budgets and presentations for board meetings, non-profit project directors often find themselves wearing multiple hats. The virtue of the field, especially with budget constraints, often requires non-profit workers to serve as CEO, accountant, professional writer, and HR expert on the same day. What if there were a more efficient way to manage your daily operations, so you could focus on reaching more people in need? A Latin Virtual Assistant can help.

1. Streamline Your Funding Processes

Anyone working in the non-profit sector knows that steady funding from diverse sources is essential to the growth of the mission and even helping fund employee payroll. Virtual assistant companies can help, for example, by keeping in touch with both individual donors and funding organizations. Your virtual assistant can even generate new leads by creating content that speaks to your current and potential donors. Why not use one to draft your next fundraising letter or even help you design and execute your next giving campaign?

2. Save Money on Payroll

Non-profits already contend with shrinking budgets and little financial wiggle room, so the idea of hiring a virtual assistant might raise some eyebrows. However, a virtual assistant can actually help your company save money by outsourcing necessary work and saving on employee taxes and benefits. With a virtual assistant from Latin America by your side, you can find the expertise you need starting at $5 US an hour. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about payroll, workers’ compensation, or insurance.

3. Improve Exposure to Your Mission

The best virtual assistant knows not only how to streamline your business processes, but also how to improve your brand awareness. As a 501 (c)(3), you know the amount of passion, vision, and drive it takes to improve your community. Does that passion and dedication translate to your potential and current donors? A marketing virtual assistant can work to promote your non-profit’s brand online and in the community.

For example, a VA can produce optimized content for your blog that keeps your community in touch with your campaigns and needs. You can connect a person in need with your services, as well as tell stories about community members your organization has impacted, compelling donors to further your mission. Best of all, a virtual assistant can coordinate all your content across multiple channels, including social media.

All nonprofits have compelling stories to share. However, sometimes nonprofit directors are so close to the mission they do not know how to explain their work adequately to their audience. A virtual assistant can work to translate your passion into vignettes that allow the public to see how you make a difference in the lives of others every day. Our Latino virtual assistants can create and disseminate professional graphics, narrative blog posts, and more. Best of all, they can also upload the content for you based on your preferred calendar, so you can focus on what’s most important.

Review from a Non-Profit Virtual Latinos Client:
“Virtual Latinos brings you the best of the best, we really get a chance to lay out our dreams and goals to our virtual employee, and watch these brilliant people express themselves… Jaime and the team are always there for you.”
-Tete Henriksen from Surround Sound Love

4. Engage With Social Media

In today’s technology-rich climate, a presence on social media is essential. Regular social updates are a crucial aspect of donor attention and retention, and that trend doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. A VA can create social media content that ties in seamlessly with your other communications and overarching digital strategy.

Don’t have a digital strategy? Our virtual assistants can help with that, too. A virtual assistant can help you determine your primary goals for digital; for example, is it community engagement? Building your brand and solidifying its reputation? Recruiting participants to your programs? Fundraising? Once you determine your objectives, your VA can create and schedule social media postings. Aside from maintaining connections with current and potential donors, your postings could help align people in need with your work.

Nonprofits are made up of dedicated teams of individuals united by a common goal: to make a difference in their communities. Virtual assistants can help alleviate the burden of managing everyday business processes and allow more time for grassroots work. Latino Virtual Assistants can help with content creation and management, scheduling, and even social media marketing. You’ll save time and money on things like payroll, benefits, and insurance.

Help your Non-Profit, Hire a Virtual Assistant

Our Latino Virtual Assistants come from many different countries like Mexico, Chile, and Guatemala. Wherever your non-profit mission takes you, Virtual Latinos can help you get there.
Our virtual assistants are college-educated and skilled. We can take on different aspects of running your non-profit, from digital strategy to copywriting. Learn more about us and what makes us different.

How to Boost Your SEO With the Help of a Virtual Assistant

Virtual Latinos

Hiring

20Dec '19

4 Reasons to Hire Virtual Assistants for Small Business SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessity for any modern business of any size. However, many small business owners struggle to keep up with the tasks necessary to ensure their businesses keep running, such as hiring new employees and training them, tracking inventory, establishing business contacts, and much more. It can be easy for a small business owner to neglect the importance of SEO. Others don’t want to neglect it; they are just unable to dedicate the necessary time and effort into ensuring the business website continues to rank well in search engine results.

How Can Virtual Assistants Help With SEO?

The average small business owner typically wears many different hats during the initial phases of getting a company off the ground. For example, a business owner may handle both the customer-facing side of a business as well as administrative tasks behind the scenes like payroll, paying bills, managing inventory, and cultivating strong relationships with vendors and service providers.

A business owner may have some grasp of SEO and its role in modern digital marketing but simply does not have the time or energy to take on yet another business-critical task with the attention it deserves. They want their businesses to rank well in search engines. One of their best options may be to hire virtual assistants.

Consistent Attention and Effort Are Crucial

Modern SEO requires constant effort and attention; it is not something you configure once and forget about as search engine algorithms and customer behaviors are constantly evolving. Successful SEO for small business hinges on capturing a local market by ensuring relevant searches always lead customers to the business and a small business virtual assistant can be a tremendous asset in this effort by taking SEO-related tasks off a small business owner’s plate so the owner can focus on growing the business.

Delegate Your SEO Tasks to a Virtual Assistant

Most virtual assistant companies offer virtual assistants capable of handling a wide range of services that can alleviate the stress of running a business. Small business owners can delegate tasks accordingly to the virtual assistants they hire, including some of the basic but essential parts of crafting successful SEO strategies. A virtual personal assistant can lighten the load on a small business owner by completing various SEO-related tasks, like:

1- A virtual assistant can handle keyword research. Businesses need to constantly track the keywords they rely on to rank well in search engine results. Delegating regular keyword research to a marketing virtual assistant can help ensure the business is not overbidding on hyper-competitive keywords and that they are leveraging the right keywords in their published content for better search engine rankings.

2- If you’re a small business owner struggling to craft valuable, high-ranking content for your website geared for SEO, find a virtual assistant to create and maintain a content publishing calendar. This can help keep your content creation team focused while providing you with trackable benchmarks to see how your SEO strategies improve over time.

3- A virtual assistant can keep track of guest posting and link building opportunities. Linking your content to high-quality, valuable content related to your industry builds your authority and can help you rank better in search engines, but it requires a great deal of time and research that many small business owners simply do not have most days.

4- Virtual assistants can easily handle social media posting for a small business, connecting with potential local customers and cultivating strong relationships by answering their questions and concerns as quickly as possible. Many small business owners create profiles on Facebook and other social media sites, but too often forget to pay close attention to what people are discussing on their pages and customers may feel neglected.

Small business owners in any industry cannot afford to let their SEO strategies fall by the wayside. Hiring a virtual assistant can be a fantastic solution for any small business owner struggling to find the time to dedicate to SEO. The investment a small business owner makes in a virtual assistant will pay off tremendously in the long run with time, resources, and energy saved, affording the owner with more freedom to focus on running the business.

Don’t Sleep on Small Business SEO – Hire a Virtual Assistant Today

Virtual Latinos offers small business owners access to top virtual assistant services with experienced, professional, and SEO-savvy virtual assistants. Some of the marketing virtual assistants we connect to our small business clients actually run their own Latin American marketing agencies in Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, and all over Central and South America. Others are dedicated and hardworking freelancers with extensive and diverse experience in the world of modern SEO.

Contact Virtual Latinos today to learn more about how hiring a remote virtual assistant for small business can take your SEO strategy to the next level.