5 ways to use a virtual assistant service

You've signed up for a virtual assistant service. You may find yourself thinking: "ok so now what do I do?"

I think that it's well known a good leader directs vision and delegates the details to people who are more capable. If you are new to delegating, however, figuring out what can be delegated is tough.

To help jumpstart your thinking here are a five things you can delegate to your new virtual assistant that will make you more productive.

Follow up with sales prospects

Followup is an absolutely critical part of the sales process that without an assistant is extremely time consuming. Using your virtual assistant to be a master at followup is surprisingly easy.

While you are out doing sales calls instruct your virtual assistant draft followup emails and save them in your email's "drafts" folder for you to review. Then when you sit down all you need to do is scan the emails and send them out.

Manage personal logistics

The average executive spends 5 hours a week managing personal logistics like travel and scheduling. This is the perfect type of low value activity that should be delegated.

Create a reference document for your virtual assistant that has critical information like:

• Seat & airline preferences
• Frequent flier account information
• Scheduling rules like "don't book dinners on Friday"
• Key information they will need for appointments or flights (health insurance information, drivers license, etc)

Then the next time you need to travel all you need to do is make one phone call to put the wheels in motion.

For meetings all you will need to do is cc your virtual assistant on an email chain and they will take it from there.

Do prospecting for recruitment

Hiring a new employee is a significant decision that requires a lot of vetting and work to do properly.

Try putting together a checklist of the key information you need gathered. Have your virtual assistant gather this information and put it into a Google spreadsheet for you to review later.

Create data visualizations

You've done the analysis and have the numbers. How do you present them in a context your audience will understand them?

Visualizing data is crucial to making trends and large amounts of data digestible for any audience. Figuring our how to create compelling visualizations can soak up hours of your time but this is why you have a virtual assistant.

Of course creating strong data visualization isn't easy so make sure to get your virtual assistant some high quality (and free) training before they jump in.

Build presentations

Presentations have to be appealing to your audience if you want them to hit the mark. The details and time that go into a strong presentation can be extremely time consuming for others but thankfully you have a virtual assistant.

Send your assistant a few bullets that outline your presentation, make sure they have access to the data and task them with creating a first draft of the presentation.

Once you've gone through a few drafts take it a step further and have your virtual assistant manage a 99 Designs contest to polish it up a bit.

Hopefully some of these ideas will help you dip your toe in the waters of delegation. The good news is that once you start delegating it becomes addictive and you will look for ways to delegate more.