Fact or myth? Outsourcing business activities costs money.
Myth -- the fact is, outsourcing your activities to a professional Virtual Assistant team can actually earn you money.
That is, if you do it right.
What you pay your Virtual Assistant team should easily have a ROI for you in terms of added sales and increased free time. When you offload your day-to-day administrative and operational tasks to a Virtual Assistant team, you're freed up to have more sales conversations, focus strategically on business growth and spend more time on lead generation.
Virtual Assistants are no longer a luxury afforded only to business owners with unlimited budgets. On the contrary, there are a lot of flexible, rollover payment plans that make outsourcing work even for the smallest budgets.
What should you expect to pay for a Virtual Assistant? There are two main types of Virtual Assistants -- US-based, All-American teams and offshore Virtual Assistants. For Virtual Assistants based in the U.S., you can expect to find pricing between $30-50/hour. Remember - this is all-inclusive pricing where you don't have to pay the other hidden employee costs. If you want to explore hiring overseas - such as in the Philippines - you'll pay less. The days are gone of $3/hour Virtual Assistants, but you can generally expect to pay about $7-12/hour. (For us, most of our clients choose onshore Virtual Assistants for things like security, communication and hours availability. Sometimes, they're just simply interested in keeping it in America with other small businesses.) You also see Virtual Assistants who specialize in certain platforms in the $50-75/range.
As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. Most importantly, don't try to cut corners and hire a Virtual Assistant who is inexperienced or doesn't have a stable, reliable business that you can count on. Hire a Virtual Assistant who is proactive and will work with you for the long haul. Don't simply focus on the numbers, but consider overall ROI.
Budgeting for tasks and staying in the loop. Most professional Virtual Assistants will use a computer-based time tracking software to keep track of where your time is being spent. They'll send you a clear recap of hours and regular invoices so that there are no surprises. If you aren't sure how much time to budget for a task, ask. An experienced Virtual Assistant will be able to provide an accurate estimate because they should have performed similar tasks in the recent past.
Learn more about our specific Virtual Assistant pricing packages here.
