How and What Tasks to Delegate to a Virtual Assistant to Get Your Time Back and Make More Profit
Are you too busy working “in” your business that you can’t work “on” your business?
We’ve all been there…
At this the busy time of the year, you are out there running a few crews, while writing proposals, collecting checks, or dropping stock off to a job.
Or you may be a two-man show, always in the bucket and then doing your estimates at night.
You’ve heard about all these great things that you should be doing and you know they work… but you just don’t have time to do them.
I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB coach and a painting contractor in Massachusetts.
The reason I tell you I am a painting contractor is, I have been in your shoes.
You’re out there grinding and grinding and you hear about this great thing that could help your business.
You try it for a couple of months and then it gets put on the back burner because there is another fire you have to put out…
There might be 3 or 4 things that you should be doing.
You know these things will grow your business immensely but you just don’t have enough time to put the systems together.
There are a lot of things that you should be doing!
Just imagine the administration of your business that isn’t happening, and this is one of the things that could be happening, but you just don’t have enough time for them.
Let’s go through a few things that you could be happening in the background:
- Scheduling & Production Management
- Prepare Estimates and Quotes:
Imagine having everything written out for you.
You have a form you put everything on, but it’s actually getting them to the customer in a timely basis that is challenging.
What if someone else prepared that and all you just have to go through and review it.
If you have your production rates, you don’t have to go through it at all.
You make the proposal. Someone else prepares it for you.
You just glance at it, when it is done and hit send!
Wouldn’t that be a time saver?!
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management):
You have to key everything in and keep it on track.
You know that right now is your busy time but what happens in your slow time?
You might be busy up through Christmas and then you see the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s coming up quick.
If you have everything in your CRM, you would be able to keep in touch with those customers on a regular basis!
- Payroll
- Job Costing
- Website & Blog Content:
What is the content on your website?
Are you actually putting anything new on there?
What about that blog post that you’ve been meaning to write?
You’ve started writing it in the greatest intentions of posting it, but maybe you don’t have time to finish.
Get your blog posts written for you by a virtual assistant that specializes in painting contracting businesses. - Social media management
- Send Out cards:
Staying in touch with the customer with that personalized fun card is so valuable!
A customer may have a birthday coming up.
You can find that quite easily on Facebook.
Imagine getting a card from your painting contractor!
It might sound weird but they are not going to forget you (:
- Video Editing/Blog Posts:
It could be helpful If you have a video or you’re writing a blog.
You might need someone to edit it for spelling and grammar.
Or you might be from Boston and you just don’t pronounce some of the words anymore…
- Email Campaign Management:
How important are email campaigns, monthly newsletters, and contact lists?
We often talk about this. I am going to use Bob’s Store as an example.
I have not been in Bob’s Store in ages but I get an email 3 or 4 times a week.
I like that 20% off coupon, just in case I need a new pair of shoes.
I do not delete it and I won’t unsubscribe.
The same thing goes for your customers. You might be sending them something. They may not be opening those emails but they are a reminder that you are there!
Now we are going to talk about some of the programs you should be utilizing.
I am going to tell you how we can fix all these and get these all done for very little cost.
These are some programs that can help you:
1- Basecamp 2: In this, we have the calendars and we have the projects all organized in place for your crews to see.
2- Pipelinedeals: This one is my favorite. I love Pipelinedeals.
I jumped on to that about 3 years ago and my entire business is found on pipeline deals.
I can tell you every proposal I wrote to a certain person, every card I sent to them, any phone calls we had, are all in Pipelinedeals, great tool!
3- PEP Estimating &
4- Estimate Rocket: It’s a very powerful proposal tool along with PEP Estimating.
5- T-Sheets: A lot of us have our crews punch in and punch out on their phones and if they can’t punch it in or out with a smartphone, they can actually text to punch in and out.
Imagine using this and having someone set this up for you.
6- Quick Books: If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know anything.
You can post jobs here, an area other than Craigslist.
7- WordPress: It’s great for having a blog/website, and that’s what I use.
I’ve produced a lot of blogs on there.
8- Post planner: You need something that is going to continuously post to your social media.
Let’s talk about Facebook, how often are you posting to it?
You might be posting 3 times a day because you have lots of pictures from job sites but then you get busy and you don’t post for weeks.
You should be posting every other day instead of 3 times in one day.
Imagine if someone took care of all of that for you.
9- MailChimp & Constant Contact: These are tools you can use to build your email list of past customers, prospects, etc. You can send broadcast emails to everyone in your contacts or you can create automations.
10- YouTube: You can use Youtube for editing of your YouTube videos.
Get it out there, start posting on your YouTube channel.
If you don’t have one, you need someone to help you set that up.
These are all great ideas.
We also use Google Forms and Google Docs.
How are us busy painting contractors going to get all of these done?
This is all leading up to, “Virtual Assistance”.
You may have heard about a Virtual Assistant and you think that they’re all in another country.
There are a lot of them in another country but we have a great virtual assistant that we recommend and I would like to recommend it to you!
Virtual Assistants can get a lot of systems put in place to help your business run itself for a very a reasonable price.
You could hire them for 4 hours a week, 8 hours a week, or even more.
You can assign them certain tools and projects in your business that they’ll have access to.
They will be able to create content for your social media.
They might need to have access to your CRM. They can send out cards for you.
You can talk about the budget and everything else with them.
They do similar tasks and projects so often that they can execute tasks a lot quicker than we can.
This will save you a lot of time and money because they are not re-learning each program every time they use it, they are already knowledgeable.
I know for myself, I use send out cards.
I love sending out cards but when I want to design a special card, it takes me quite a while and heaven knows if you don’t save it, then you are doing it all over again.
When you have someone doing this over and over, they are not only efficient, but very fast and very good.
We recommend a certain Virtual Assistant, Nadia Burnett with DYB Virtual that specializes in helping Painting Contractor Business Owners.
Click here for more information on how a Virtual Assistant can benefit your business!
Virtual Assistants will free up a remarkable amount of time for you.
Imagine that for as low as $100 a week, you can have all the backend aspects of your business handled for you, without having to lift a finger!
I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB coach, and a painting contractor in Massachusetts.
I highly recommend using a Virtual Assistant.
You can pick and choose the things you want them to do and as you feel more comfortable you can add more and more onto their plate, freeing up your time!
While all of these things will be happening in the background, your business will be growing and growing and things will be getting done.
If you would like to contact me, shoot me an email Ron@DYBCoach.com
You can check out more about DYB coach at DYBCoach.com Send me a message on Facebook, I would love to chat with you.
You can put a comment on the bottom of this article and I would be more than happy to get back to you.
If you would like more information about Virtual Assistants, and the one I recommend, please send me a message, or click here.
Have a great day and start delegating tasks to a Virtual Assistant today, giving you back your time.