Hire a Virtual Assistant Archives - Virtual Latinos

Tag: Hire a Virtual Assistant

Client Highlight: Q&A with Productivity Expert Marcey Rader

Tips & How To's
14Nov '20
0

We’re happy to start this new series of questions and answers with some of our Virtual Latinos Clients. For our first guest, we got the honor and privilege to chat with Marcey Rader from Raleigh, North Carolina, founder of Work Well. Play More! Marcey shares some of her wisdom on being able to reach and live a productive, clutter-free, healthy lifestyle, as well as tips on how to help other business owners and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses

Q&As:

  1. Please share a brief description of your business, how you got started, and why you chose it?
    I own a productivity and health coaching and speaking company. Before starting my business seven years ago, I worked in pharma/biotech clinical research for fourteen years and was a corporate trainer and training manager. People were always asking me how I did it all – work, ultra-race, have a relationship and shut down with inbox zero every night. It made sense to do what came naturally!
  2. What types of businesses or people do you work with?
    Many of my clients are in the pharma/biotech space, but I’ve worked from manufacturing to finance, from North Dakota to Dubai. People in all businesses want boundaries, better focus, and healthy behaviors in their lives. I work with small business owners as well as corporate professionals, typically manager level and above.
  1. What are the top 3 keys to your business success?
    I surround myself with key people. When I was starting, I thought I couldn’ afford a virtual assistant. I firmly believe that because I hired one early on, I am much farther along than other people that started at the same time. It allows me to focus on the big picture. I’m also very persistent, but not in a pushy way. I have systems for follow-up that work well for me. Lastly, I take time for myself. As much as I love what I do, I know that the creative part comes from being away from the business.
  2. Who would you consider your key team members or key roles for your business success? (Marketing, Sales Specialist, Admin, Cold-callers, etc?)
    My full-time virtual assistant has been with me for five years. She does all of my website, marketing materials, and administrative tasks. I know how to do these things on my own, but they are not an effective use of my time. I recently hired a concierge for client-facing activities. A concierge means my clients receive an even higher level of service, and I can focus more on coaching and speaking than program logistics.
  3. What unique value propositions do you offer your clients?
    We declutter the mind, body, and business one habit at a time.
  4. How do you measure your business success, and how do you try to improve it?
    My client’s success is our success. I have a strong track record of promotions, business growth, and health improvements with all of my clients. I also have eight Specialists on my team, all of whom own their own business. Being able to give them work means I’ve been successful. And of course, there is always revenue. Tangible success is also paying all your bills and having plenty of money to sock away and even play!
  5. If you could go back in time 10 or 20 years, what would be the #1 tip of advice you’d give yourself?
    At 36, I was starting to hit a low point where my job was killing me, I had gone into early menopause from a high-intensity, high-stress lifestyle, and my marriage was suffering. I was the primary breadwinner and thought there was no way I could leave my job behind. I would tell myself to walk away. Your health and marriage is a priority. You’ll find a way to make money, and you’ll be happier doing it. It won’t be easy, but you’ll be more fulfilled in your life.
  6. What’s the #1 tip you’d give other entrepreneurs or business owners looking to grow their business?
    Hire a virtual assistant! Don’t wait another day.
  7. Would you recommend others to hire a virtual assistant (VA)? and if so why?
    I recommend it several times a week. I am a strong advocate of working in your line of genius and giving others opportunities they may not have. That’s why I like working with Virtual Latinos, because I know I am giving someone work in a country that isn’t as economically strong as the US.
  8. What are the best tools and systems you recommend for working with a VA?
    I like Asana for project management, Google Chat for instant message, and Voxer for voice and text messaging.
  9. Do you have any tips or advice for anyone who’s starting to work with a VA for the first time?
    Start capturing video screen shares of all the tasks you are doing to handoff. The video makes the training more accessible, and since you are doing it anyway, it doesn’t take up much more time.
  10. What do you think about the future of businesses in regards to hiring VAs as part of their team?
    I don’t like the term virtual assistant because it’s underwhelming. They are so much more than assistants. I think COVID-19 has put to rest the fear of hiring people remotely because so many people had to go remote. It doesn’t matter if they are down the street or a time zone away! Anyone can hire and feel confident with a virtual assistant.

Here’s Why You Should Consider Hiring a Virtual Assistant to Grow Your Cleaning Services Company

Hiring
13Nov '20
0

If you run a cleaning business, you have probably noticed that as your business grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with some of the details and menial tasks involved. You may be overwhelmed by tedious work that you don’t have the time for, work that’s necessary to keep things running smoothly. You have likely realized that you need more help, but hiring local help for these duties can be expensive and impractical. If you haven’t considered it before, it may be time to think about hiring a small business virtual assistant. These experienced professionals are a cost-effective choice that you can hire to perform part-time services to reduce the workload on your full-time staff. This increases your employee productivity, and in turn, improves your bottom line.

How Do You Know if You Need a Virtual Assistant?

When you are trying to decide if you should hire a virtual assistant, it is vital to look at the duties your assistant could take on to make your job easier and give your staff more time to focus on their priorities.

Look at the Duties a Virtual Assistant Can Perform

  • Answering phone calls and providing quality customer service, including special service requests, rescheduling, sales, quote callbacks, and handling complaints
  • Advertising your business on social media
  • Focusing on high-priority tasks
  • Answering customer questions on your website chatbox
    Managing your accounts receivable, invoices, payments, emails, and following up with clients who are behind on payments
  • Managing your payroll
  • Checking with customers on their satisfaction and encouraging them to leave positive reviews, and in the case of poor reviews, working with the client to see how you can improve their experience
  • Sending customer surveys to gain additional feedback
  • Implementing new software programs and assisting with training staff on these systems
  • Assisting with your hiring process by listing open positions, collecting applications, and scheduling interviews
  • Scheduling customers next cleaning appointment
  • Ordering new cleaning supplies
  • Tracking cleaning supplies inventory
  • Scheduling cleaning staff
  • And more!

How Do You Train a Virtual Assistant to Meet Your Needs?

Every business is different, and it is vital to have a plan for preparing your virtual assistant for the tasks you expect them to perform so that they can help your business become more efficient and bring in more revenue.

Training Tips for Your Virtual Assistant

  • The first step in ensuring that your virtual assistant will handle the jobs you expect of them is to list the tasks you want them to perform. Create a task list and prioritize the more important items, so they know which items should be completed first. It may benefit you to choose the daily tasks that take up the most of your time that you could spend on more meaningful endeavors. Be sure to pace your training program so that your assistant doesn’t feel overwhelmed right off the bat.
  • Train your virtual assistant on the specifics of the way you like your phone answered, and prepare them with a list of commonly asked questions and the responses you wish them to provide to clients. It is easier to have this information in a well-organized folder than asking them to memorize responses right away.
  • Be sure that your virtual assistant knows what you expect of them in terms of phone call response time and how quickly you expect them to respond to emails, text messages, and other communications. Be careful not to set unrealistic expectations—your virtual assistant is human, so don’t expect more than you would from any other employee.
  • Take time in the first few weeks of working with your virtual assistant to get to know them and build a trusting employer/employee relationship. Have weekly meetings to check in and see how things are going with them. Monitor them from a distance so that they don’t feel that you are micromanaging, and be understanding if they make a few mistakes at first.

Call on Virtual Latinos to Help You

Once you see the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for your cleaning business, doing so will help your business to grow. Virtual Latinos is one of the top virtual assistant services that can connect you with college-educated, bilingual virtual assistants from countries like Uruguay, Argentina, and Mexico. Our company has built a reputation for trustworthy, cost-effective virtual assistants that improve customer service, employee productivity, and help businesses grow. Call us today at (619) 317-1198 or visit our website to find out how we can help your cleaning business.

Physicians! Increase Your Bookings and Show-up Rates by Hiring a Latino Virtual Assistant

Hiring
6Nov '20
0

Your priority as a physician is helping your patients get well, but you can only help them when they show up for appointments. On top of that, you have payroll and overhead costs to meet to keep your practice running. If you are not staying fully booked, there will be less money coming in to ensure the success of your office. There is a great, cost-effective solution, however, that can help improve your bookings and make sure your patients are there for their appointments. Latino virtual assistants from countries like Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Nicaragua are ready to help you succeed. These professionals are college-educated and bilingual, a huge plus in the United States, where nearly 17% of the population is of Latino descent. As you set out to find a virtual assistant, keep these details of how they can help in mind.

How Do Virtual Assistants Bring in More Patients?

There are various ways that Latino virtual assistants can help manage your medical practice and increase productivity effectively. Still, the most important benefit that they can bring to your office is increased bookings and show-up rates. Consider the ways that they can affect your patient schedule.

Satisfying Patients so They Come Back Again

Patient experience. If patients are not happy with their first visit to your office, chances are they will not return the next time they need medical attention. To make the doctor’s office visit more pleasant, virtual assistants can ease patients’ worries about seeing the doctor. Many people are anxious about medical appointments, and long periods in the waiting room only add to their fears and frustrations. Virtual assistants help streamline the scheduling and patient load from outside the office so that your waiting room is not full of people, and all necessary paperwork is taken care of before the appointment. When the clerical work is out of the way, and the schedule is not too busy, patients get more one-on-one time with the doctor and feel more at ease.

Increasing doctor-patient communication. When you only have time for a brief visit with your patients, it is difficult to gain a grasp of their unique circumstances and needs. This often makes patients feel that they are not getting the best care available. A virtual assistant can improve this experience for both doctor and patient by gathering information and documents beforehand, which allows you more time to get to know your patients and their specifics. When patients feel that you truly care about them, they are more likely to return to your office.

What Other Tasks Can Virtual Assistants Do?

When you are looking for the best virtual assistant, keep in mind that there are many ways they can benefit your daily operations. Many physicians find that they save a great deal of money by hiring virtual assistants to perform clerical work because they are typically part-time and offer affordable hourly rates. Look at some of the other tasks that a Latino virtual assistant can perform for your medical practice.

  • Online research
  • Live Interpreting & Translation
  • Data Entry & CRM/EMR management
  • Posting on social media
  • Organizing files and photos
  • Managing email accounts
  • Health Insurance Claims, Billing & Coordination
  • Patient tracking
  • Editing, writing blog posts
  • Creating presentations
  • Organizing spreadsheets

Virtual assistants have a wide range of skills and are often ready to jump in and help in any capacity. These are just a few of the many office tasks that they can handle when you are looking for an extra hand without hiring another in-house staff member. Best of all, virtual assistants are always on task. Since these assistants work remotely, they tend to be very focused while they are on the job. Without the distractions of the office environment, they are adept at getting a great deal of work done in the hours they put in.

Virtual Latinos Can Help

If you are wondering how to find a virtual assistant, Virtual Latinos is here for you. Visit our website or reach out to us at (619) 317-1198. From answering phone calls and scheduling daily tasks to manage data and billing, there are many ways our assistants can help your practice grow. Our virtual assistants are educated and experienced professionals who can increase your office productivity, get more bookings, and ensure that patients show up for their appointments. Call us today to find out what we can do for you.

Virtual Assistants: The Key to Customer Service Success

Hiring
31Oct '20
0

The daily routine of running a business can be very overwhelming. When you don’t have the proper support to allow you to run things efficiently, you lose track of items in your inbox, end up late for meetings, and see your level of customer service fall below your standards. If you find that you are facing these issues, it is time to consider hiring a virtual assistant. You will see a difference right away in your productivity, but more importantly, your customers will be more satisfied.

How Can a Virtual Assistant Help You Improve Customer Service?

When you want to hire a virtual assistant to improve your customer service, it is essential to consider the skill set you are looking for in your virtual support professional. Virtual assistants are experienced professionals who can take care of tasks ranging from handling the phones to paralegal assistance and project management. Here are a few benefits our clients find when they hire a virtual assistant.

External Communication Point

If you run into problems at the office or things become backed up to the point that you miss calls, a virtual assistant gives your customers another point of contact. Even if they are only able to leave a message, they will be happy to have gotten an answer.

Paperwork Organization

When you are forging new client relationships, there is always a great deal of documentation and paperwork such as contracts and proposals to track. A virtual assistant can distribute all your paperwork and gather it promptly to keep things running efficiently.

Invoicing

A virtual assistant can stay on top of your invoicing and reconciliations so that you can reach out to clients promptly and resolve any issues.

Client Relations

Virtual assistants can reach out to your clients when you are stuck in a meeting or running late, can reschedule appointments, even meet with your clients’ assistants to compare notes and ensure that you are on the same track with meetings and project plans. Your virtual assistant can also keep your client details up to date in your customer relationship management software (CRM).

Additional Point of Contact

When you hire a latino virtual assistant, you give your clientele another way to reach out with questions and concerns when you are busy. They can offer assistance with topics they are familiar with or get the client in contact with you if it is necessary. They are also able to keep track of your social media and email accounts so that urgent issues are addressed promptly.

Is a Virtual Assistant Necessary When Other Staff Can Do the Work?

Employers often don’t realize that their employees’ productivity is stifled because they feel overworked. As a business grows, many staff members take on additional hours to get their work done, but they have trouble focusing on their tasks because the overtime becomes overwhelming. The issue at hand is that most times, employees will not tell their employer that they feel overworked, so the cycle continues. Hiring a virtual assistant is a great way to stay ahead of the game, keep your employees happy, and help everyone be more productive. On top of that, you are more likely to keep your valued staff when they feel like their workload is less, and that is vital to keeping your business consistent and your customers happy.

What Is the First Step When You Hire a Virtual Assistant?

When you decide on a virtual assistant that you wish to hire, you should send them a letter that lays out what you expect from them and what their duties will be. They should sign off on the letter as an agreement to the conditions of their employment with your company. You can tailor the letter to your specific needs, but here are a few details you should be sure to include:

  • Note that they must be in a quiet place, free from distractions if they will be answering phone calls for your business.
  • Know the bandwidth necessary to access your internal systems, and inform them that they must have the internet strength to accommodate your systems.
  • Inform them that you must be able to contact them during the agreed time frame that they will be working each day.
  • Inform your new employee that work attendance is mandatory during their scheduled hours, and that missing work may result in a warning call.
  • Discuss the possibility that your virtual assistant’s power may go out, or they could lose internet access, and how this will be handled should it occur.

If you seek a virtual assistant to improve your company productivity, be sure to reach out to Virtual Latinos today at (610) 317-1198. Our virtual assistants from countries like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala can be a great addition to your team.

Country Highlight: Colombia

Tips & How To's
23Oct '20
0

Find Your Ideal Virtual Assistant in Beautiful Colombia

Located in the northwestern portion of South America, Colombia is one of the most beautiful and culturally vibrant countries in the world. It boasts nearly 1,800 miles of coastline to the north and west, divided into Pacific and Caribbean coasts by the country of Panama. As a result, the area provides world-class beaches, competition-level surfing, sailing, and scuba diving, and all the adventure, recreation, and sunbathing you’d expect from a tropical destination of its caliber.

Further inland, Colombia retains its tropical climate, which makes for some of the best coffee production in the world. This coffee culture and its focus on persistence and work ethic permeate the Colombian way of life, and together with African, Afro-Caribbean, Spanish, and Catholic influences, serve to make Colombia the diverse mix of traditions it is today. With this central focus on dedication and work ethic, young Colombians of all backgrounds appreciate the ever-increasing growth of the local economy—the third-largest in Latin America.

Why Do Highly Motivated Colombians Seek Remote Employment?

While Colombia’s economy continues to grow, many Colombians continue to seek remote employment. Remote work offers several benefits for potential employees here, including:

Payment Based on US Standards

Despite the recent growth in the Colombian economy, its citizens experience several wage and currency-based advantages by working remotely in the US. Currently, the United States offers minimum wage and average task-based wages that are nearly five times what is offered in Colombia. This aspect makes becoming a VA a smart business decision for Colombians like Luis Lunar, whose favorite experience thus far has been “working hard all week to then find out that my boss wants to reward me with a big bonus on my next paycheck.”

Increased Access to Work

Whether they’re residing in a remote area of Colombia without ready access to a city and its associated job markets, or are located within one of Colombia’s most congested cities, traveling to and from work poses an issue for many Colombians. Not so with remote work – “I have the flexibility of working at home while I’m giving all my skills and effort on making a big company better,” says Lunar.

Improved Professional Development and Work-Life Balance

Remote employment can provide Colombians with professional development opportunities that may not be readily available in Colombia itself, including English-speaking international business contacts and networking benefits. “I have the best team, the best client and I feel so productive all the time! I get to work with a girl from the Dominican Republic and it is so nice to meet people from other countries while doing something that you love and helping a business grow,” says Cristina Cancino, a Colombian VA. Best of all, these benefits are available while at home, allowing a better work-life balance – “I love working from home because it is very useful during these times of COVID,” says Cancino.

How Can You Benefit From Hiring a Colombian Virtual Assistant?

Deciding to hire a virtual assistant from Colombia can benefit you and your business in two significant ways.

A Colombian Virtual Assistant Can Perform a Variety of Tasks

Hiring a virtual assistant takes the burden of the daily tasks necessary for success away from your schedule so you can focus on growth opportunities. Virtual assistants can perform tasks like:

  • Clerical work. If you or your business depends on the completion of paperwork, processing of digital files, assembling of client records, or other clerical tasks, a virtual assistant can ease the burden of these workplaces on your daily schedule.
  • Communications. Virtual assistants in Colombia are fully bilingual in both English and Spanish and can handle incoming phone calls, customer service inquiries, and email communications.
  • Marketing. Whether you need help with social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, or something else, a marketing virtual assistant from Colombia can provide you with what you need for success.

A Colombian Virtual Assistant Provides the Right Mix of Work Ethic and Approachability

Hiring a virtual assistant from Colombia allows you to access the deeply ingrained work ethic that comes naturally to Colombians as a result of the aforementioned cultural influences and values. These values translate to several positive qualities that make Colombian virtual assistants a particularly good fit for US-based clients, including:

  • Productivity. Our clients say Colombian VAs are hardworking and extremely able to train other VAs to perform their tasks as well. “This is where you see [the VAs] have an excellent working knowledge of their job assignments,” says client Jeff Craig of DC Law.
  • Dedication. Colombian VAs have proven extremely dedicated to both completion of the task at hand and learning more about the job in general.
  • Communication. As fully bilingual English and Spanish speakers, Colombian VAs have responded exceptionally well to clients who prioritize open communication and camaraderie.
  • Warmth. Colombians VAs are among the most personable remote workers in the world, a quality that transmits well to your clients. “Having someone showing empathy and understanding to your clients is always a plus,” says Jeff.

Choose Virtual Latinos for Your Colombian VA

Choosing Virtual Latinos as your virtual assistant agency means you’ll have access to the best bilingual virtual assistants in Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries. These locales are within the same time zones as the US and allow streamlined communications as well as close cultural ties between the two areas. Together, you and your VA can help you achieve the success you’ve been striving for. Contact us today for more information.

Four Ways VAs Can Help Your Law Firm

Tips & How To's
16Oct '20
0

If you operate a successful law firm, you’re fully aware that the day-to-day operations of a law firm require much more than court appearances and important meetings. As a lawyer, you face an enormous amount of clerical work and other time-consuming tasks that can take you away from crucial meetings and bog down your schedule if you can’t delegate correctly. Fortunately, hiring a virtual assistant (VA) for your law firm can relieve much of the burden by outsourcing many essential law firm tasks.

A VA can provide much more than the surface value of completing the tasks assigned. A VA’s influence can improve multiple internal aspects of your firm, which can help you improve your efficiency and grow your company. We’ve compiled the most important unseen benefits a VA can have for a law firm here.

Benefit #1: Time and Money Savings

One of the primary reasons lawyers give for hiring VAs is the time saved by delegating non-core tasks to a virtual legal assistant. Client Jeff Craig (DC Law) says, “Regarding the reason why I hired the VAs in the first place, which was for intake calls and retaining clients, I have seen how my numbers have increased with the help of the VAs I hired through Virtual Latinos.”

Besides, compared to the cost of hiring a legal assistant locally, the relative price of an affordable virtual assistant is remarkably lower. For smaller firms and solo lawyers, the ability to pay a VA for a variety of smaller tasks is much more cost-effective than hiring in-office personnel to perform smaller jobs throughout the day. In addition, lower cost can be attributed to the reduction in overhead that results when you limit in-house personnel, including:

  • Reduced use of infrastructure
  • Reduced use of resources
  • No responsibility to offer employee benefits

Benefit #2: Enhanced Services for Your Firm

When you hire a virtual legal assistant, you’ll reap the benefits of an experienced VA, readily equipped with the software necessary to work with you. In most cases, there’s no need for extensive software training, setup, or other clerical duties upon hiring. Instead, a quality VA will invest in the resources necessary to perform the job efficiently.

Client Kalani Hawks (Hawks Villafranca Law) says, “My VA is phenomenal; she’s so self-motivated and able to provide the support I need, so I can focus on my business without being bugged out in administrative details that will prevent me from growing my business. She’s also part of [my business] as she’s constantly providing ideas and feedback for me to improve my growth as well.”

Benefit #3: Excellent Customer Service Quality

Virtual assistants can provide several top-quality customer service benefits to help keep your clients feeling satisfied with your law firm’s dedication to their cases. Your VA can remain diligent in completing many day-to-day client-facing tasks while you focus on the cases at hand or engage in firm growth. Customer service-based duties your VA can handle include:

  • Information gathering
  • Client form completion
  • Regular client follow-ups regarding their case
  • Client notification

Additionally, bilingual VAs can interact with Spanish-speaking clients, facilitating communications between client and attorney, and completing the translation of all case-related information. Client Beckie Moriello (Raleigh Immigration Law Firm) says, “Hiring a VA from Virtual Latinos has helped me achieve goals in the sense of getting staff that is more economical for me, capable, professional, and bilingual. I was able to find good bilingual people who follow directions and do as I ask them to do.”

Benefit #4: Improved Work/Life Balance

The final benefit of hiring a virtual assistant for your law firm is perhaps the most intrinsic to your firm’s success—reducing the impact the work of growing your firm can have on your personal and family life. Since many solo practitioners and small firm owners must dedicate a great deal of time to both clerical work and growth-based activities, hiring a VA can help you strike the ideal balance. Best of all, a VA can help you ensure all client work and work to grow your firm is on track while you attend to important personal business.

Choose Virtual Latinos to Meet Your VA Needs

When you’re searching for virtual assistant companies with dedicated virtual assistants, look no further than Virtual Latinos. Our focus on Latin American countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela) means each virtual assistant is within two time zones of your law firm. This enhances their availability to handle all the duties that a legal assistant or customer service provider must provide. Additionally, each VA is fully bilingual in Spanish and English to ensure proper care of your Spanish-speaking clients. Reach out today to begin hiring your virtual assistant, and grow your law firm with the help of Virtual Latinos.

5 Ways Virtual Assistants Can Fast-Track Your Insurance Company’s Success

Tools & Resources
9Oct '20
0

In today’s digital era, brick and mortar locations are quickly becoming increasingly irrelevant. After all, most clients simply check the status of their insurance policies or submit claims via mobile apps or online websites. That leaves you with staff taking up most of the real estate in your offices. But is this arrangement necessary? Or is it time for you to take your business to the next level?

If you’re looking for a solution that will cut expenses, reduce your workload, and help you become more digitally savvy, the answer is easy: Hire virtual assistants. After all, not every task in your company requires an insurance license, and once hired, managing your virtual assistant is a breeze. Said assistant can take care of all the busy-work in the office, freeing up your schedule to tackle more important tasks, and when you’re working with Virtual Latinos, they can do so at a fraction of the usual cost.

What Benefits do Virtual Assistants Provide to Insurance Companies?

1) First Point of Contact for Clients

Clients will have questions every time a policy update is mailed. They’ll have much more trust in your company if you’re able to respond to those questions promptly. But balancing other responsibilities means you won’t always be available to take that call. Hiring a virtual assistant allows you to keep the lines of communication wide open and helps your clients feel like you are genuinely invested in hearing what they have to say. Our Virtual Latinos are in places like Colombia and Honduras, which have the same time zones as the US, so they’ll have no trouble receiving calls during US business hours.

After speaking with a client, the assistant can determine if the situation has been satisfactorily resolved or if the caller needs to be redirected to the appropriate division of your company. The ability to screen these calls cuts down on the number of interactions you need to address, while still giving your clients the impression that your company is there for them when necessary.

2) Manage Your Schedule

In addition to being that first point of contact when clients call or other staff members reach out, your assistant can also take care of your scheduling. By reviewing your calendar and availability, an assistant can add meetings to your schedule as needed. Instead of wasting your time trying to figure out how to squeeze in three appointments in a busy week, you can simply check your schedule every day to confirm what’s scheduled and leave it at that.

If circumstances change and rescheduling is necessary, your assistant can take care of that too. By reaching out to the affected parties to confirm the meeting is being rescheduled, you show that you respect people’s time.

3) Research and Data Collection

While you concentrate on taking care of any urgent situation, your virtual assistant can spend time performing research and collecting data. For your operation to run successfully, it’s crucial to have access to updated marketing information. Working with a virtual assistant agency enables you to keep track of upcoming trends and industry changes and stay competitive in the field. With Virtual Latinos, most of our assistants have robust marketing backgrounds, making them uniquely qualified to handle this task.

Virtual Latinos’ virtual assistants are fully bilingual, college-educated, motivated individuals. Their skills in English are equal to their expertise in Spanish, and they can handle complex documents full of technical language with little issue.

4) Data Entry

In the insurance industry, there are large amounts of information you will collect from clients during their time with you. Most of this is submitted via filled out forms. And while a lot of the process is becoming more automated, there are still quite a few things that a machine can’t do. A dedicated virtual assistant can take the time to pore over paperwork and perform the necessary data entry services for quotes, claims, and other such processes.

5) Social Media Management

Social media is the ultimate tool when it comes to promoting your company and your brand. But using social media properly involves a lot of time and commitment. What users love about the platform is the interactivity, which entails ensuring they have a constant cache of fresh, relevant content prepared and can respond to comments to your posts regularly. Virtual assistants can take care of providing these updates and scheduling posts to prevent your page from becoming stale. They are also able to take the time to respond to comments, as well as take note of any trends across social media that might have an impact on your company.

Hiring the Right Virtual Assistant for You

With so many choices for virtual assistants online, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. We help simplify that choice by providing a unique service within the industry. Not only are the assistants on our team thoroughly vetted and hand-picked to ensure they are incredibly qualified for the task, but they’re also far more affordable than any alternative. Given the differences in costs of living between the US and, say, El Salvador, the same dollar amount that would be considered extremely desirable for a paycheck in Latin America is simultaneously extremely affordable in the US. With Virtual Latinos, you can hire virtual assistants for as little as $5 per hour, though we have multiple pricing options for whatever your needs may be.

In addition to being cost-effective, our assistants’ language skills will allow you to grow your business even further, providing better support for any Spanish-speaking clients and partners. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the country, and being unable to provide services in Spanish is a considerable setback.

When you’re ready to take the next step for your insurance company, all you need to do is reach out to us so we can get started on pairing you with the best virtual assistant for your needs. Contact us today!

Three Common Problems Between Clients and Virtual Assistants—and How to Solve Them

Tips & How To's
30Sep '20
0

If you’re anticipating joining the growing remote work movement to help your business succeed post-pandemic, the benefits of virtual assistants are numerous. However, as with any business relationship, there are potential pitfalls as well—and it’s essential to be aware of each to avoid issues. To help provide better insight and a clearer path to avoiding problems after you hire virtual assistants, we’ve gone straight to the source.

Virtual Latinos asked our VAs, “What are some of the most common issues between a VA and a client? How can a client go about solving them?” Here are the top three:

Issue #1: Communication

Communication is a common issue for many business relationships of all types, including VA/client relationships. The nature of remote work—with its focus on technology versus in-person contact—can provide additional barriers to communication. “Building a strong communication path since the beginning is a challenge, especially while you work with someone remotely,” says Jennifer Salazar, a Virtual Latinos VA.

To establish excellent communication from day one, Salazar recommends the following:

  • Be clear and concise. You have goals and expectations, and your VA must understand them to meet or exceed them. Do your best to communicate goals clearly from the beginning—and in a way that makes your expectations the primary focus of your communications.
  • Establish a schedule. Salazar suggests asking your VA to briefly summarize his or her activities at the end of the day. Alternatively, you could even schedule daily check-ins and check-outs, so both sides are clear regarding work completed and work outstanding.
  • Perform periodic internal follow-ups. Set a schedule to perform a formal follow-up with your VA—ideally at the one-month, three-month, sixth-month, and one-year milestones. “This will help clients and VAs to see the improvements or challenges they are facing while working together and also find a way to solve them,” says Salazar.

Issue #2: Productivity

Potential productivity issues—the ability to perform consistent, high-quality outsourced work and do so efficiently—are key concerns among professionals new to hiring remote workers. Fortunately (and contrary to popular belief), productivity tends to be even higher for many remote workers than it would be if those same workers were confined within an office setting. Still, that doesn’t mean you should simply assign project after project and then disappear until its due date.

So, how can you ensure your VA is performing as expected and working efficiently when you can’t see them working? Salazar recommends these strategies:

  • Institute a training process. If you want your VA to perform well, you’ll need to train them to do so. Make sure you provide your VA with the necessary resources and information from the beginning and enable them to learn about how your company—and the tasks they’ll undertake—needs to operate.
  • Utilize management tools. A great resource to help your VA manage time, tasks and more is the use of task management and time management tools. “For task management, some good tools are Trello, Asana, Teamwork, and Infinity; for time tracking, try Clockify, Toggl, Hubstaff, and Time Doctor,” says Salazar.
  • Hold short meetings. Often, productivity and excellent communications go hand in hand. Hold brief daily check-ins or weekly meetings to discuss which projects are finished, which are underway, and which may take more time and resources to complete.

Issue #3: Time Difference

The final barrier between a strong, productive relationship between client and VA are the issues a significant time difference between a client and a VA can cause. “Working with a virtual assistant from the other side of the globe can be pretty challenging, and that challenge typically comes in adjusting one’s body clock to a different time zone,” says Salazar. She notes that when there is a large time zone gap, VAs often need to train their bodies to work overnight or late-night hours, which can lead to a loss in productivity no matter how excellent the VA’s work ethic.

The solution is simple, according to Salazar—“Hire a VA who is closer to your time zone. Both of your schedules can be more synchronized, and your communication level will be more optimal.” For those of us in the Western Hemisphere, that means hiring a virtual assistant in Mexico, Central American countries like Costa Rica and Guatemala, and South American countries like Colombia and Venezuela.

Choose Virtual Latinos to Meet Your VA Needs

Virtual Latinos is one of the top virtual assistant services, dedicated to providing Latin American assistants for your needs. Our focus on Latin America means each of our virtual assistants is fully bilingual in English and Spanish and is located within two time zones of your own to optimize communications and productivity. Contact us today to learn more about how to hire a virtual assistant—and avoid the above VA pitfalls with ease.

10 Ways Virtual Assistants Can Help Property Managers Succeed

Hiring
22Sep '20
0

Working as a property manager requires being capable of addressing a variety of issues at once. While one property faces requests for repairs to structural damage after a storm, another property may need trash removal scheduled, while a third is in need of routine maintenance after being vacated by the previous tenants.

With so many responsibilities to handle, a property manager can become overwhelmed by the more time-consuming, day-to-day tasks, interfering with their ability to do their job effectively. Hiring a virtual assistant can allow you to shift your focus from trivial, routine duties to those most worthy of your time.

How Virtual Latinos Can Help Your Property Management Company

Though working remotely, virtual assistants can handle the same workload as in-person assistants, without the need for office space. However, our virtual assistants go a step further. As one of the top virtual assistant companies, we take care to pre-screen all our applicants to ensure they are qualified for the position. Only 7-8% of our applicants make it into our Virtual Latinos community, and only 2-3% become agency certified. Those selected are educated professionals, tested, and ready to help you get a leg up in the business.

We are prepared to help you find a virtual assistant perfectly suited for your needs. However, you might be wondering how adding an assistant to the team can actively help you improve your business.

What Can A Virtual Assistant Do For A Property Manager?

Our assistants are skilled and flexible and can be placed in a variety of positions to help streamline your operation. Here are just a few of the things one of our assistants could do for you:

1. Handle phone calls
Spend less time answering phone calls. Our assistants live in countries like Nicaragua or Mexico, with very minimal time difference from the US and can handle minor questions, prioritize important requests, and schedule callbacks when necessary.

2. Book property viewings
Keep your properties visible by allowing assistants to handle booking, ensuring you get as much exposure to potential tenants as possible.

3. Maintain a social media presence
Nowadays, prospective renters often turn to social media to find properties in their area, and they are far more likely to engage with an active site than one that is seldom updated. Assistants can keep your social media sites updated with fresh content.

4. Increase points of interaction
Employing a dedicated virtual assistant allows you to expand the ways in which someone can contact your company, such as through a live chat on your site or direct messages on social media pages.

5. Offer bilingual services
In an increasingly multicultural world, it is crucial to be able to effectively communicate in multiple languages. Our assistants are fully fluent in English and Spanish, and they can help clients navigate the intricacies of contract language in a renter’s agreement.

6. Schedule routine maintenance
Though some maintenance operations may require more involvement, routine repairs can easily be handled by an assistant.

7. Handle bookkeeping
Assistants can provide basic accounting services to ensure your staff is taken care of.

8. Process bills and invoices
Get organized by allowing an assistant to keep track of the various contractor and maintenance worker invoices, and stay ahead of your payments.

9. Gather information
Given the nature of their work, virtual assistants can note trends in the types of questions and feedback received. This can, in turn, help you optimize your website or make changes to the information your company provides online.

10. Keep track of renters’ status
In addition to recording responses online, virtual assistants can also maintain a record of the various renters’ statuses, ensuring all rent and fees are paid on time, then sending out late payment notices when necessary.

Other Advantages Of Working With Virtual Latinos

Not only are our services top quality, but they are also extremely affordable. Because of the differences in the cost of living in various countries, a young professional living in Ecuador can earn a stable income at a much more affordable rate for US employers. In fact, our virtual assistant services are 40-75% less costly than those who do the same job in the US, and 30-50% less costly than US freelance marketers or in-house employees. The money saved can then be invested into rising property values.

Looking to save money and improve the quality of your services? We’d be more than happy to help you hire a virtual assistant today and give yourself the time you need to focus on what really matters.

3 Basics of Outsourcing in the Real Estate Business (and Why to Consider a Latino VA)

Tips & How To's
24Aug '20
0

How Latino Virtual Assistants Prove to Be Important in Real Estate

Imagine if, as a real estate agent, your primary job was just to sell properties. No hours spent every week managing online marketing and social media, no scheduling cleaning services, photographers, or landscapers, no booking all of your property showings on your own. If that makes it sound like your life could get easier overnight, that’s because it can. Outsourcing all this work to a real estate virtual assistant would give you just that, so you can turn your focus to where it’s best concentrated: selling.

If you have the opportunity to hire virtual assistants as a real estate broker or agent, it is highly recommended that you do so. They can streamline your business for you and provide true growth potential on many different fronts. If outsourcing some of your workload is starting to sound more enticing, there are three big basics you should consider, going in.

The 3 Big Basics of Outsourcing in Real Estate

1. Identify which of your daily, weekly, or monthly tasks could be outsourced. This may be a matter as simple as figuring out which aspects of your agency do not need to be handled by a licensed real estate agent. For example, a real estate virtual assistant could manage your social media, marketing, client scheduling, landscaping, or other service coordinating, in addition to any number of other activities.

Why hire a virtual assistant from Latin America for your outsourcing?

    • We offer fully bilingual services. At Virtual Latinos, our entire team is fully bilingual. This means they are also able to reach out to a wider range of clientele in the real estate world. Most real estate agencies have a high percentage of clients who speak Spanish. Imagine being able to better engage with and serve a whole new demographic, overnight. A virtual assistant from Latin America can help you achieve that.
    • Latin American professionals working remotely are generally in your time zone. This is a huge benefit that most overseas virtual assistants are unable to offer to real estate businesses in the US. When you work with real estate virtual assistants working remotely from Costa Rica, Mexico, or Peru, time changes are simply not an issue. It ensures the virtual assistants from Virtual Latinos will always be available during your “normal” hours of operation. This means that we are always ready and able to handle any day-to-day real estate tasks that need tending to.
    • The majority of the experienced virtual assistants we work with through Virtual Latinos have spent significant amounts of time in the United States. This speaks directly to their firsthand understanding of American English, and common business practices here, in addition to the nuances of everyday life. In other words, they are uniquely aware of the differences in property types, like condo vs. loft, for example. Our virtual assistants have the necessary experience, not just scripts and theory, to inform their real estate skills.

2. Consider using specific workflow software for coordinating with your virtual assistant. There are many options available for real estate workflow software. Other, more general workflow software is also available, which can help simplify all your communication with your virtual assistants, rather than using texts, emails, and other types of messages on separate platforms to try to coordinate efficiently on a daily basis.

Latin America and the United States share many values, in business, technology, education, and otherwise. When you hire a real estate virtual assistant through Virtual Latinos, you can be assured that they not only understand the culture of the US, but that they’re also familiar with the technology. 90% of our virtual assistants have university degrees, making them among the most tech-qualified in the world. If you need suggestions for workflow software, for example, our virtual assistants can provide you with recommendations tailored specifically to the needs of your agency. They are professionals, after all.

3. Determine the best means to hire a real estate virtual assistant.

Not all virtual assistants can both meet the needs of a real estate agent and do it in two languages. The virtual assistants at Virtual Latinos are able to provide bilingual real estate services in digital marketing, content creation, social media platform management, reception, booking, and scheduling, among many others. Virtual Latinos can help you expand your agency’s reach in ways you may have not even yet considered.

Virtual Latinos can help you find the help you need to conduct your real estate business more efficiently and in fewer hours. Contact us today to invest in a real estate virtual assistant.

Save Filter
×