Virtual assistants were first introduced to the business world in 2009 by Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Work Week.” Ferriss taught readers how to work less by outsourcing repetitive or disagreeable tasks to an offshore contractor at a lower hourly rate so you can spend more time on higher-value work, and more time doing what matters to you most like travel and adventure.
The concept gained popularity, leading to a surge of virtual assistant businesses and freelancers providing services—so many that identifying the ideal model and individual can feel daunting.
It makes sense. The average entrepreneur spends more than a third of their work-week doing small administrative tasks that drag them away from their core focus.
There are many ways to hire virtual assistants, onshore and offshore, and this guide will help you sort through the options and find the right solution for you and your business.
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A virtual assistant (VA) serves as a remote administrative assistant for executives, managers, and teams, and is sometimes referred to as a virtual executive assistant—although the two roles are not always interchangeable. The term "virtual" can be misleading because it suggests something that is not real. However, virtual assistants are real people who provide support to executives from remote locations.
Virtual assistant services evolved from traditional business process outsourcing, offering the advantages of outsourcing but a white-glove experience that's closer to having a full-time in-house employee.
From voicemail to email and calendar apps, technology has made full-time executive assistants a rarity and has created the expectation that executives should be self-sufficient.
While you may not need a physical assistant guarding your office door, paying yourself to do work you can easily hand off to someone else at a lower cost and improve your efficiency doesn't always make good business sense.
Advances in high-speed internet, remote work systems that can be accessed from anywhere, and communication tools like chat channels and video conferencing make it easy for executives to hire part-time assistants without office space and full-time employment-related overhead.
It's time to think about hiring a virtual assistant if you're not meeting your business goals because you're spending too much time managing daily tasks, leaving you little time for strategic planning. Many business owners and entrepreneurs tend to do everything themselves to save money. While this approach can be understandable, it often leads to overlooked responsibilities, increased burnout, and a lack of focus on what really matters.
Eventually (as the business grows), they reach a point where the growth stalls because they can't keep up with the executive functions of their business or department.
All of these signs suggest that you're not dedicating enough time to advancing your business. Customers, employees, and family members aren't receiving the attention they deserve. When you reach the stage where you're not invoicing and receiving payments, you're in trouble.
Learn more: 20 signs you need a virtual assistant
The types of work that a virtual assistant does include:
Let's look at the specific tasks virtual assistants can perform in each category.
Explore 26 virtual assistant tasks and duties you can outsource.
Executives typically spend 16 hours each week on routine tasks that detract from activities that propel their businesses forward. This accounts for 40% of their week dedicated to administrative work.
Where does all this time go?
Examples of the time executives spend on admin tasks include:
Additionally, there's the cost of context switching—the time it takes to switch from the email you're writing to reporting, then back to your calendar, into a meeting, and back to email. You can't immediately pick up new tasks. Every time, you lose a few minutes and some focus.
So, what do virtual assistants do? They help you reduce how often you have to context switch. They tackle those outward-facing front office tasks that take up so much of your time.
General admin tasks include:
A virtual assistant can help you regain those three hours each day that you spend reading and responding to emails. They can learn your email preferences, monitor your inbox, notify you when key contacts reach out, and respond on your behalf to messages that don't need your attention.
Other email management tasks a virtual assistant can perform are:
For example, when you travel, your virtual assistant can arrange appointments with important contacts in the destination area. They can also keep track of your preferences (or those of your contacts) for meeting locations and times.
Professionals that use virtual assistants for these tasks include:
Sales virtual assistants and marketing virtual assistants are fantastic examples of team-specific VA use cases! Both teams frequently find themselves overwhelmed with busy work.
Multiple studies show salespeople spend just 11%-36% of their time selling, while most of their time is spent on non-sales tasks. (Insidesales.com: 36% Proudfoot Consulting Group: 11% Pace Productivity: 22% Salesforce: 30%)
This indicates that, regardless of the company, your sales teams likely spend less than half of their time selling. This is far from ideal.
Where does the time go?
According to Pace, a sales leader's time allocation in a typical week looks like this:
A sales virtual assistant can alleviate much of this workload for a sales leader, allowing them to spend more time with customers and prospects.
Virtual assistant tasks unique to sales include:
Marketing teams often feel overwhelmed by routine administrative tasks like managing vendor communications, social media calendars, sending emails, organizing data, and reporting. A Hubspot survey reveals that they spend an average of 16 hours each week on day-to-day administrative work.
A virtual marketing assistant can help:
If your sales or marketing teams have routine, repeatable tasks that are eating up their time, a virtual assistant might be just the solution they need. Marketing companies like Enterprise also report using virtual assistants for trivial day-to-day tasks as well.
Back-office tasks are the essential, time-consuming tasks that take place behind the scenes to support your business's infrastructure and systems.
For example, executives spend:
Back-office work is serious, but it is easy to lose sight of it. Hiring a VA dedicated to getting the correct documents into customers' hands, keeping books up to date, and chasing down delinquent invoices can work wonders on the bottom line.
Back-office operations affect cash flow, compliance, hiring capacity, customer onboarding, and more. Due to the behind-the-scenes nature of this work, it's all too easy to lag behind.
Back-office tasks that a virtual assistant performs include:
The work is essential, or the executives would not be undertaking it. Delegating back-office tasks to a virtual assistant can ensure that everything is handled efficiently and affordably.
CRM management could also be considered a back—office operation, especially regarding forecasting, supply chain management, and inventory control.
Executives spend up to 25% of their time on personal activities at work, and the rise of remote work has further blurred the line between personal and work tasks.
Executives often ask their virtual assistants to take care of personal tasks to increase their productivity, spend more time at work, and spend more time on what matters most to them.
Examples of personal tasks a virtual assistant can tackle include:
Another way businesses utilize virtual assistants is for specialized skills needed either occasionally or continuously. These skills often exceed those typically offered by a traditional administrative assistant; therefore, these roles require extensive training. In this scenario, you would want to hire a virtual assistant whose primary focus is your specialized work.
Examples of specialized virtual assistant skills include:
Some virtual assistants may have experience in one or more of these areas, but they will also have to develop a nuanced understanding of your business and message.
Learn more: 26 tasks you can outsource to a virtual assistant
The short answer to how much a virtual assistant will cost is, "It depends."
The cost of hiring a virtual assistant will depend on:
There are three ways to hire a virtual assistant:
You can hire a freelance virtual assistant through a marketplace like Upwork or a job board like Indeed.com or Craigslist. Upwork lists virtual assistants for as low as $10 per hour, while assistants on job boards start at around $20. A freelancer is typically the lowest-cost option.
Freelance virtual assistants are suitable for short-term project-based work because they typically work for many clients and can't promise dedicated time. They can also be a good way of accessing specialized skills like graphic design or accounting.
Of course, there are some risks associated with this approach. You don't bring them onto your team so you have a lot less control. They may not have the skills you advertise or be strong communicators. Many are in offshore time zones and work while you're sleeping, which makes quality control a challenge—prepare to iterate. Also, you're the boss.
Contract virtual assistant agencies maintain a bench of vetted virtual assistants from which you can choose. Many are seeking long-term work and bulk pricing with monthly retainers. Pricing varies significantly by location—U.S.-based agencies charge between $30 and over $100 per hour. Agencies that connect you with offshore assistants typically start at around $20 per hour.
Most agencies act as matchmakers. There is limited hands-on support for establishing the relationship and ensuring quality control. Furthermore, not all agencies focus on virtual assistants; some provide other services, such as accounting, web design, and graphic design.
Managed virtual assistant service providers hire, train, and optimize the performance of virtual assistants for you. The assistants are employees of the service providers.
An account manager partners with you to ensure the service operates effectively. Most providers are U.S.-based businesses, while the virtual assistants are located offshore, with pricing ranging from $20 to $25 per hour. This high-touch model allows for quick hiring and takes care of relationship building, quality control, and daily training and management, so you don't have to.
Think of it this way. Typically, a managed virtual assistant service gives you access to a primary virtual assistant and the whole support team. A freelancer or agency only gives you a single point of support.
Account managers collaborate with you to document processes and train the virtual assistants on client systems before the engagement. The assistants arrive prepared to contribute from day one. Client feedback is provided to the account manager, who coaches and supports the assistant.
Most also offer backup assistants to step in if the primary one is absent. They focus solely on virtual admins and have dialed-in best practices to deliver predictable results. This can be another way to access specialized services, but the agency may not be able to give you expert guidance in finding a virtual executive assistant.
To summarize, the cost of a virtual assistant starts at:
Learn more: The ROI of a virtual assistant
How you find a virtual assistant is very closely related to the cost and business model that best suits you. Each has its risks and benefits.
There are three ways to hire a virtual assistant:
As mentioned above, if you're looking to hire a freelancer, you can find a virtual assistant directly through a job board or marketplace. Some job boards offer rates as low as $2 per hour, while Upwork prices start at $10 per hour.
The trade-off is easy. When you hire a freelance virtual assistant, you're spending less money but more time and effort managing them.
The advantages of hiring freelancers are:
If you want a local virtual assistant—one you can meet in person and who can perform local tasks like deliveries and errands—you may be able to find a freelancer in your local market.
The disadvantages of directly hiring freelance virtual assistants are time and risk.
You must also know the exact skills and experience you're looking for and create a virtual assistant job description to attract suitable candidates. Defining job requirements can be challenging if you are looking for your first assistant.
Hiring a virtual assistant through a contract agency reduces the time you spend recruiting and vetting candidates. Also, you typically pay the agency in US dollars and don't have to deal with compliance issues if the virtual assistants are offshore.
The rest of the advantages of this model are:
The disadvantages of hiring a virtual assistant through an agency are:
With a managed virtual assistant service, you hire the service provider, not an individual assistant. You get a team—an account manager, a virtual assistant, backup managers and assistants. Managed virtual assistant services start at around $25 per hour.
The main advantage of this model is that all recruiting, vetting, hiring, training, and performance management are off your plate, along with most of the risks of hiring freelancers and contractors:
This model works well for both small business leaders and enterprise teams, but it isn't for everyone.
The disadvantages of managed virtual assistant services are:
Managed virtual assistant service providers bear most of the risk in hiring virtual assistants. The service provider employs the assistants, pays them, and provides benefits and growth opportunities.
This model also attracts businesses concerned about how providers treat offshore assistants, including their working conditions.
Additional Resources: What you need to know about virtual assistant security
Remote virtual assistants come in two broad categories: managed and unmanaged services.
With unmanaged virtual assistants, you need to know what you want the assistant to do and how you want them to do it. Defining what you want is often a challenge for business executives who have many of their processes in their heads. They tend to have difficulty delegating those processes to others.
It can also be challenging to manage the performance of someone in a role you're creating for the first time.
The lift required by other responsibilities, such as payroll, HR paperwork, performance reviews, and giving and receiving feedback, will depend on the hiring model.
Contract agencies often handle some of that, but with freelancers, those responsibilities will be on you. You also must consider the IT security risk of the virtual assistant's computer and network. Managing a virtual assistant requires clear communication, well-defined tasks, and tools that track their work. Many executives and business owners use project management tools and clock in clock out app to monitor hours worked, ensuring that productivity remains high even when working remotely.
The main benefit of a managed virtual assistant service is that the management portion is off your plate.
The service provider:
The model is ideal for those who don't want to manage another employee and can't or don't want to take the time to train and onboard a virtual assistant. It also offers scalability—adding more assistants as needed is relatively easy, usually as an already-trained backup.
The IT security issue previously mentioned is also covered—the managed service provider does background checks and supplies secure computers, networks, and facilities.
Managed VA services typically work on a monthly retainer where you pay for a certain number of monthly hours. They are not ideal for occasional projects like a quarterly report or creative projects requiring fresh design, writing, or graphic design-intensive projects.
If you’ve reached a point in your business where growth is limited by the time you can spend moving it forward, you should probably consider hiring a virtual assistant.
Virtual assistants can be a cost-effective way to do this. They can increase productivity by giving you and your team time back in the day and efficiency by enabling greater focus on growth. (Not to mention the countless other benefits of hiring a VA.)
With some 25,000 virtual assistant services to choose from, finding the right assistant and the right service model can be daunting!
Use this guide to narrow down the options by defining the kind of work want to offload, the relationship you want to have with your assistant, the amount of management you want to take on, and of course the price you want to pay.
Ready to hire a virtual assistant you don't have to manage?