5 Indispensable Virtual Assistant Skills

As the virtual assistant industry grows, competition between virtual assistants also becomes stiffer. These days, getting regular online work is getting more and more challenging. Becoming a trusted virtual office assistant now takes more time and effort than ever before.

In such a competitive field, how can you make sure that you’ll always have the opportunity to make money from home?

The answer: sharpen your skills.

When you are vying for online work, it’s very important to broaden your horizons. Ensuring that you have more skills, or at least that you are an expert in the skills that you have, can be your ticket to ensuring a constant flow of clients.

To help you know which skills to sharpen, here are 5 indispensable virtual assistant skills that can help you find regular online work.

Communication skills

Being a good communicator is arguably the most important skill that any office assistant or virtual assistant can have. Without the visual and tonal cues that come with face-to-face conversation, communicating your ideas and opinions in the online world is definitely more challenging. If you don’t know how to express yourself well, you can’t expect to impress prospective clients or convince the clients you currently have to hire you again for any future jobs.

Having excellent communication skills doesn’t just mean that you should have an impeccable grasp of the language either. Good grammar can certainly help, but you have to be able to communicate in a friendly but professional manner as well.

Computer skills

Since you’ll be working in front of a computer screen all the time, suffice it to say that you’re expected to have extensive computer knowledge as well – or at least develop them as you go. Know the software that you’re going to be working with and familiarize yourself with shortcuts, troubleshooting tips, and other knowledge tidbits that can help you work faster and more efficiently. Being an expert in spreadsheets, word processing, or presentation software can help you a lot.

You get plus points if you can troubleshoot common hardware or connectivity problems as well – this means that you can be trusted to work whenever your client needs you, and computer issues won’t pose any difficulties for you.

Time-management skills

The ability to manage time wisely is a skill that is incredibly useful. It’s also one that not a lot of people are gifted with. As an office assistant, you will be expected to work on a variety of tasks at once and somehow remain focused on each individual task as well. Obviously, you can’t possibly do two or more things simultaneously (at least not in the literal sense), but excellent time-management skills can help you give the appearance of doing so.

Independence (or the ability to work alone)

Since you will almost always be working alone as virtual office assistant, you definitely need to be able to work independent of supervision. For some people, working without a direct superior to constantly check on their progress is difficult. Some get uninspired or lax, some fear that what they’re producing is not up to par if not constantly checked, and some just enjoy being micromanaged. If you’re looking to make money from home, you definitely need to be blessed with the ability to work – and work really well – alone.

Learning skills

Being a fast learner is becoming increasingly valued in the virtual assistant world. As you will be expected to handle a wide range of tasks as a VA, you need to be able to understand instructions quickly and work fast to implement those instructions.

These 5 skills are just some of the most important skills that every VA needs to learn. There are plenty of other skills that can help you become a highly successful VA, but the ones mentioned above are absolute essentials. If you want to regularly make money from home, you have to work on shaping up these skills.

 

Next: 15 Must Haves For Virtual Assistants

 

20Four7VA recognizes the challenge of effectively managing an online business – and we are very eager to help. Our company specializes in eCommerce VIRTUAL STAFFING SOLUTIONS, providing customizable and scalable solutions to small, medium, and large enterprise business owners so they can focus on growing their business.

Ready to have access to incredible people with incredible skills in the most cost-effective way? Give us a call at our toll free number 1 (443) 856-4882 today!