Going virtual at the office starting to gain traction

Virtual assistants are gaining popularity, but they aren't the solutions for every entrepreneur or every industry.

V.A.s provide administrative, creative, marketing and/or sales support. They work from home and don't even have to be in the same city or state as their employers. This eliminates overhead costs, such as renting office space, providing health insurance and hiring full-time workers.

Jo Ellen Nash of Nash & Co., a 23-year-old real estate company in Vail, is a firm believer in virtual assistants.

"It has saved about $100,000 off my payroll this last year," she said. "It gets me so much more talent for a fraction of the costs. That, along with accountability and consistency, are the three top advantages."

In April, Nash opened a location in Naples, Fla. With eight V.A.s, more than 50 percent of her office is virtual.

She has a virtual assistant in Lake Tahoe who handles her speaking arrangements, one who is in charge of referrals, one who writes newsletters, two graphic designers, a bookkeeper, an accountant and an Internet manager who oversees her 50-plus Web sites.

"They attend team meetings virtually," Nash said, "(and) I give them perks and benefits like I would anyone that is physically in the office."

The advantages

She said other advantages include no payroll taxes or sick leave and "you don't have someone showing up with purple hair and a nose ring."

"The mistake some people make is they think, 'out of sight, out of mind,'" Nash said. "I think you get out of a virtual assistant what you put into them. Treat them as if they were in the office."

Nash said she thinks that the use of virtual assistants will become common in real estate during the next five years.

Gayle Buske, co-founder and CEO at Team Double-Click, a Ouray- based virtual staffing company, agrees.

Real estate brokers are more comfortable using virtual assistants, she said, because so many work from home and they are used to telecommuting.

But real estate isn't the only industry where virtual assistants are catching on. Buske said psychologists, psychiatrists, speakers and coaches are starting to use the service more frequently.

"When we first started we would spend a lot of time on the phone educating (clients about) what a virtual assistant is and what they can do for them," Buske said. "Now more and more people know what a V.A. is and come to us with a list of things they want done."

Since starting the virtual staffing company in 2000, Buske said the number of virtual assistants she places as contractors has grown from 500 to about 22,000. Rates range from $22.50 to $70 an hour.

Not for everyone

But not every industry is likely to benefit from the use of a virtual assistant, including retailers, because they need someone to greet their customers, and manufacturers, because they handle a lot of products and big shipments, she said.

And V.A.s probably aren't the best bet for a small businessperson who isn't very tech savvy.

"If they don't use e-mail or don't use the Internet very much, they tend to be the people who can't figure out how to delegate to someone who is not in the office," Buske said.

Virtual assistant

Sherry Harmon found a job through Team Double-Click. She works from her home in Colorado City. One of her clients is in New York, and Harmon answers the phone as if she was in their office, though she's never even been to the Big Apple.

The interesting part of her job, Harmon said, is that she has never met any of the people that she works with; she's only seen pictures that they use on their instant messenger accounts.

She said she signed on with Team Double Click in November "about the time the gas prices started sky rocketing and when they closed I- 25 in the snow storm."

Harmon is a member of the Colorado Virtual Assistant Association and the International Virtual Assistant Association.

Networking, collaboration

Both associations provide opportunities to network and collaborate with other assistants and it's a great marketing tool, said Karen Reddick, who started V-&-E-Services six years ago.

After working 25 years in the corporate world, she decided to use her passion for writing, reading and proofreading, along with her certification as a Master Virtual Assistant, to help authors, writers, speakers and coaches achieve publishing success.

Reddick charges a flat hourly rate of $45 and helps about a dozen clients every month.

She's only met one of her clients in person, and she said she is making as much now as she was when she worked full time.

Team Double-Click is 100 percent virtual and consists of about 30 core staff (customer sales, accounting, human resources, client sales reps etc.) that work from home all over the United States. A toll-free virtual phone system routes the calls and the use of client relationship management software connects the staff by home computer.

"The overhead cost for hiring a virtual assistant diminishes tremendously," Harmon said. "I really look for it to become the way of the future."

Copyright 2007 Dolan Media Newswires
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