Recent years have seen small business owners across numerous industries engage the help of Virtual Assistants.
A Virtual Assistant can work with you digitally to execute countless tasks that otherwise wouldn’t make sense to assign to part-time or full-time employees; it’s allows you to access fantastic talent without committing to ongoing employment.
If you’re looking to work with a Virtual Assistant to grow your practice, here’s what you need to know.
What can be outsourced?
There are countless tasks and responsibilities that can be outsourced to Virtual Assistants – you’re limited only by your imagination.
But, more specifically, here are some ways other practice owners have engaged virtual assistants to great success.
- Reception duties – including phone calls to new and existing patients, managing correspondence like treatment plans, actioning retention and re-activation strategies.
- General administration – this could be anything from meeting minutes, training materials, project management, creating forms and reports as necessary.
- Bookkeeping and HR – creating rosters, managing time sheets and leave requests, tracking expenses, receipts and invoices.
- Marketing and content – newsletters, blogs, patient information sheets, infographics, managing Google and Facebook reviews.
- Personal assistant – email and diary management, booking travel, accommodation, and entertainment, birthday gift reminders.
As you can see, there’s a plethora of tasks that can be outsourced and some really strategic ways to free up time and maximise efficiency. It ultimately comes down to what will work for you and your practice.
Where do I find a Virtual Assistant?
If you’re looking for someone to complete a one-off job, there are many sites you can use to find and engage freelancers of various talents.
You will typically post a description of the job to be completed, freelancers will bid for the role and explain why they would be a great choice, and you simply make your selection.
However, if you’re looking for someone to work with on an ongoing basis or as a contractor, you then have the choice between hiring a Virtual Assistant directly or working with an agency, and working with someone local or overseas.
How to hire and onboard Virtual Assistant
If you’re going to be working with someone for a significant period of time, it’s worth taking the chance to get to know them and tell them more about you and your practice.
It’s not too different from interviewing and onboarding an inhouse team member – you’ll still want to know a bit about their personality, how they work best, tell them about the practice and your ideal patient avatar, and the team members they’ll be working alongside.
Logistically, it’s also crucial to outline the tools and technologies they’ll be working with and set up training sessions for any particularly tricky software.
Getting set up with passwords and different levels of access and knowing how to navigate software can be a massive headache for all involved, so best to get everything set up early on.
If you’re interested in learning more about Virtual Assistants for practice growth and scaling, you’ll want to check out this fantastic podcast episode with Rosie Shilo of Virtually Yours. Enjoy!
P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you grow your dental practice:
1. Grab a free chapter from my book “Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice”
The book is the definitive guide to patient retention and how to use internal marketing to grow your practice – Click Here
2. Join the Savvy Dentist community and connect with dentists who are scaling their practice too
It’s our Facebook group where clever dentists learn to become commercially smart so that they have more patients, more profit and less stress. – Click Here
3. Attend a Practice Max Intensive live event
Our 2 day immersive events provide access to the latest entrepreneurial thinking and actionable strategies to drive your practice forward. You’ll leave with a game plan to take your results to the next level. If you’d like to join us, just send me a message with the word “Event and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
4. Work with me and my team privately
If you’d like to work directly with me and my team to take your profit from 6 figures to 7 figures …. just send me a message with the word “Private”… tell me a little about your practice and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here
