Most businesses hire a Sales Virtual Assistant to assist their Sales Team in building a more effective sales funnel. The ultimate goal here is to increase the number of leads, improve conversion rates and generate more cash flow for the business. In fact, 71% of today’s C-level executives believe that a productive and highly effective sales team is essential for business growth… So what’s stopping you from outsourcing sales tasks to a Virtual Assistant?
If you’re a business owner or Sales Manager yourself, you’ll know how much legwork goes into the sales process. We’ve witnessed so many Outsourcing Angel clients fall into the trap of spending too much time doing the nitty-gritty tasks such as manually sending out booking reminders, follow-ups and outreach emails while their Sales Team are missing out on the things that matter most, like networking, sales strategy and building stronger relationships with leads.
Benefits of hiring a Sales Virtual Assistant
One of the best ways to finally manage this effectively is to outsource sales tasks to a Sales Virtual Assistant to allow your Sales Team to improve productivity and results.
In this video, our Outsourcing Angel Sales Manager, Heidi, talks about how getting a Virtual Assistant helped her maximise her time and thrive in her sales role. Watch her video or keep reading to learn more about how outsourcing to a Sales Virtual Assistant has revolutionised the way she works.
Sales Virtual Assistants improve productivity
Up to 65% of Sales Managers say that their most prominent work challenge is the lack of time and resources to do their job well. What ends up happening to overwhelmed Sales Executives is a drop in results, faster burn out and a whole lot of added stress! So in order to stay productive, you need to free your Sales Team up from the low-impact and repetitive tasks such as:
Sales Virtual Assistant tasks:
- CRM management using software like HubSpot, SalesForce, Zoho
- Manage calls and appointment bookings
- Sending out reminders and follow-ups
- Leads, prospect and competitor research
- Contacting old leads
- Nurturing warm leads
- Lead generation for cold leads
- Managing after hours support
- Prepare sales proposals and PDFs
- Customer support: online chat tools, managing inboxes
- Manage social media inboxes
- Updating client portal
- Managing and updating LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Organising special occasion gifts to nurture leads
Think of just how much time your team can save when you outsource these tasks to a Sales Virtual Assistant. Imagine your leads and clients being nurtured while your Sales Team is adding more leads to your pipeline – that’s exactly what a Sales Virtual Assistant can help you with!
Let’s improve your Sales Team’s productivity and results today
Book a Discovery Call with our Outsourcing Specialist Heidi and chat about your specific business needs and we’ll find you the perfect Virtual Assistant for the job.
Sales Virtual Assistants can help you manage your sales funnel
Your sales funnel, otherwise known as your custom acquisition process, is the process that your customers go through from the moment they get in touch with your business. This process can require either manual work from your staff or automated processes and the ultimate goal is to funnel your customers from the top to the bottom of the funnel.
Throughout the 6 stages of the Sales Funnel, your Sales Manager is only able to hit sales targets, close deals, on-board happy customers, retain long-term clients, and achieve loyalty if they had the time and resources to manage it properly for every lead. This can be achieved with the help of a Sales Virtual Assistant in the following stages:
| Sales Funnel Stage | Sales Virtual Assistant Task |
| 1. Awareness |
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| 2. Discovery |
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| 3. Evaluation |
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| 4. Intent |
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| 5. Purchase |
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| 6. Loyalty |
|
These sales funnel assistance will ultimately have a ripple effect on the whole company. With more leads and clients comes more revenue and more benefits for existing employees.
Sales Virtual Assistants can improve your conversion rate
With extra helping hands and a solid sales funnel, you’ll notice an improvement in your lead conversion rate. This is because your Sales Virtual Assistant won’t allow your leads to fall through the cracks due to a lack of follow-up or communication.
In addition to this, your Sales Virtual Assistant can take it a step further and connect with your leads and prospects on using your social media account and keeping them warm through engagement activities. This is something that our Sales Virtual Assistant helps our Sales Manager Heidi with on a daily basis and it involves:
How a Sales Virtual Assistant can connect to your leads on Social Media
- Collecting leads details from our email database (after they’ve downloaded a lead magnet from our website or made an enquiry)
- Connecting with these leads on social media such as: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram
- Engaging with the leads on social media such as:
- Liking posts
- Leaving comments
- Sharing content
- Sending Direct Messages (only when appropriate)
While your Sales Virtual Assistant can take care of all those little details, soon all your Sales Manager has to do is simply show up for the sales call and close those deals!
Happier Sales Team and staff members!
High-performing sales professionals don’t just do the job because they have to. They do it because they want to. But sometimes, the overwhelm can suck the joy they feel from meeting people, getting things done, serving clients, and other parts of the role they feel engaged with.
Working with a Sales Virtual Assistant who can help deal with the overwhelm will bring that joy back by allowing Sales Managers to get into the parts that bring the most meaning to their jobs.
Tasks you can delegate to a Virtual Assistant for Sales
When hiring a Virtual Sales Assistant online, the common challenge for Sales Managers is deciding on what tasks to assign. So often, we see sales professionals feel unwilling to let go of some tasks, thinking that it’s better if they do it themselves. But after determining what tasks take up your time, you’ll soon realise the benefits of outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant vs. becoming a bottleneck in the business.
So here are the main areas that you can outsource to a Sales Virtual Assistant:
Sales pipeline management tasks
Running a smooth sales pipeline is a non-negotiable to having an effective sales department or strategy. Admittedly, busy Sales Managers aren’t always the best at building out these pipelines and keeping them up-to-date. However, having a Virtual Assistant manage the pipeline and move the prospects up the list can provide so much value to sales professionals who feel they have no clue where their prospects are in the sales process.
Try getting a Virtual Assistant to set-up and use a CRM like HubSpot to manage and update all the information on your leads. This includes:
- Adding new deals to your pipeline
- Identify qualified leads by assigning lead scores
- Sending personalised emails to your leads
- Set-up email templates and documents
- Scheduling future emails to your leads
- Adding detailed notes about your leads
- Updating your leads’ status and sales stage
- Creating follow-up tasks and reminders
With better sales pipelines, Sales Managers can visually see where prospects are and take necessary steps to get them from discovery call to onboarding meeting.
Administrative tasks
Our Sales Manager Heidi will be one of the first to tell you that she isn’t the type to enjoy administrative tasks. It’s not that she can’t do it, it’s just that Heidi doesn’t find joy in it and it takes away her focus from more high-impact tasks. Fortunately, she has an amazing Virtual Assistant that can do administration with her eyes closed! These admin tasks include:
- Qualifying incoming leads
- Handling emails and appointments
- Creating sales proposals and documents
- Responding to customer enquiries
- Organising meetings and conferences
- Gathering Lead Magnets and resources for leads
- Background research on leads
- Organising special occasion gifts and thank yous
Start outsourcing your admin tasks to a Virtual Assistant today
Book a Discovery Call with our Outsourcing Specialist Heidi and let us know what tasks you want to outsource so we can find you a reliable and experienced Virtual Assistant.
Calendar management
When getting a Virtual Assistant for sales teams, you can also consider outsourcing calendar management work. In Heidi’s case, delegating this to a Virtual Assistant was an immediate game-changer, mainly since Outsourcing Angel serves a global audience.
Managing leads in different timezones
There have been many instances where Heidi needs to conduct meetings and calls with clients living in different time zones. Luckily, her Virtual Assistant takes care of figuring out the time zone differences and finding the best time to get on a call.
So now, it doesn’t matter if Heidi is meeting with a prospect from the United States, the United Kingdom, or other countries outside of Australia, she can show up for the meeting confidently, knowing that her Virtual Assistant has booked the best time for both parties.
Virtual Assistants can also handle other calendar management-related tasks such as rescheduling meetings, booking new appointments, creating reminders and triggers, and so on.
Lead generation & LinkedIn leads
Leads are the starting point of any sales strategy. While there are many excellent prospects for you out there— especially if you have a fantastic product or service— a lot of work goes into finding them and pushing them into your sales funnel. Another way that a Virtual Assistant can help you is by performing lead generation.
An excellent case that brings stellar results for our clients by hiring a LinkedIn Lead Generation Virtual Assistant to help reach out and connect with prospective clients on the social media platform.
Hiring a Social Media Virtual Assistant to create content, engage with others, build your connections, respond to DMs and requests can be a great way to free yourself up time-wise and still get many leads online. You can also get a client to do prospecting outside of LinkedIn and jump on other platforms.
What your Sales Managers can do when you hire a Virtual Sales Assistant
The secret to becoming more efficient at work doesn’t rely on your ability to do more. It relies on your ability to do less of the right things. So with a Virtual Sales Assistant to take care of the nitty-gritty parts of the sales admin process, the next question now is what are now Sales Managers free to do with the time, focus, and energy they win back after outsourcing tasks to an assistant? Here are some of the activities you can now reallocate time to and get much more significant results.
Network, network, network
With Virtual Assistants now taking care of the day-to-day operations and ensuring that managers aren’t missing out on sales calls, sales executives now have the headspace and time to build the most valuable asset they have as sales pros— their network. Attend conferences, meet and greets, networking events, or join a networking platform like Clubhouse to meet new people who could become possible sales partners or clients.
There’s an old saying that says, “your network is your net worth.” This statement might sound like a cliche, but it’s so true, especially for someone in sales. So find ways to connect with others and look for fellowships, clubs, Facebook groups, online communities, and other circles to widen your reach. Also, take time to create persona avatars of people who could be part of a new market you can start networking with and offering your products and services in time.
Learn new sales strategies
Sales is an ever-evolving field with new strategies, sales channels, tools, and tactics popping out every time. When you outsource work that eats up significant time, you now have the space to keep learning. Your knowledge can either be your competency or cap, depending on whether you retool or upskill regularly. Allocate more time to learning the latest trends and sales trends by reading more books, taking up more online courses, attending webinars, or getting a mentor, and leave all the tactical work to a Virtual Assistant so you can give these learning moments undivided attention.
Develop value-giving materials
When working with a Lead Generation Virtual Assistant, you can create more value-giving materials that will help you, your department, and ultimately your company attract more leads. Get involved in the creative process and determine what lead magnets your team can develop to capture leads and build rapport with potential clients. You have a core insight that no one else has, a better touchpoint with clients. Offer that insight when your company develops marketing materials and other tools so that the company’s collective client acquisition process improves with time.
Train your sales staff
In cases where Sales Managers lead teams of other sales representatives, letting go of administrative tasks also awards them more time to reinvest into their team by downloading tactics that can help them convert on calls and sales pitches. You can also put in the time to observe your reps’ sales calls and offer coaching and teaching points. Doing that helps exponentially grow results by multiplying effectivity across the board and helping the company gain more results over the long term.
How to hire a Sales Virtual Assistants
The wonderful thing about outsourcing work to a Virtual Assistant is that the world becomes your oyster. At Outsourcing Angel, we love hiring Virtual Assistants in the Philippines because they offer a lot of upside to the company. For one, Filipinos have a fantastic work ethic. While not all applicants and past Virtual Assistants from the country have proven worth the trouble, those that have helped us create massive results in all of our business aspects, be it content creation, marketing, social media, operations, or sales.
If you’re looking to hire Virtual Assistants in the Philippines, we have created a strong pool and network of talents to deliver outstanding results for your Sales Department. We would love to give your our insight, knowledge, and expertise in this area.
To learn more about hiring Philippine Virtual assistants and how to outsource offshore, book a free discovery call with Heidi herself. She’d be more than happy to share more of her experiences with outsourcing and the many other success stories we have in our company after years of working with hundreds of happy clients and their Virtual Assistants.
We can help you hire a Sales Virtual Assistant
Book a Discovery Call with our Outsourcing Specialist Heidi and tell us all about your business needs so that we can find you a Sales Virtual Assistant that fits into your life seamlessly!
Virtual Assistance and the sales industry
The market of Virtual Assistants Australia has tapped into has grown over the years, seeping into all parts of the business, including sales. With how digital tools now work, a team no longer has to be in one place to collaborate and work together effectively. Technology is making virtual work easier with time, and it’s about time that your company started riding that wave.
The world of work is changing, and outsourcing to Virtual Assistants has given companies and their sales teams another way to maximise productivity. Don’t get left behind. Instead, consider getting extra hands and brains to help with the sales process and start focusing on work that brings you and your business more results just like it did for Heidi and hundreds of thousands of others who now start tapping into the gig economy by hiring remote staff.
