How Virtual Assistants Enable Growth

Advisors with administrative support earn 2x

The Kitces Report found that advisors with administrative support earn twice those without it. This makes sense – 22 hours represent about half the workweek. If you can give advisors 2x more time per week to spend on client-facing activities, they can earn twice as much. And if you cannot find new advisors, providing admin support to your team to give them more time can enable you to grow with your current roster.

“Administrative work eats up so much of our time,” Oxnam said. “It makes sense to offload those tasks if you can.”

Administrative support is hard to find

But support is hard to find. There is a shortage of executive assistants. Labor Department statistics show that the U.S. has shed 2.1 million administrative assistant jobs since 2000, a gradual but massive decline. And job site Lensa found that administrative assistants are among the three most challenging positions to fill.

The shortage of executive assistants is particularly challenging for firms with larger teams that want to scale up support. According to LinkedIn, it takes 33 days to hire an administrative assistant. Stretch that time out for multiple executives, and you have a daunting challenge.

Enter managed executive administrative services for teams

When administrative work constrains growth, companies can outsource to experts – managed remote (virtual) assistant services. In a managed virtual assistant service, the service provider hires, trains, and supervises assistants – the assistants work for the service provider. Executive teams get a professional administrative layer of support without the time and cost of recruiting, hiring, training, and managing more people. Firms can:

• Hire faster – service providers maintain a bench of qualified, trained assistants.
• Scale more quickly – it is far easier to hire multiple assistants to form a cohort.
• Reduce overhead – the assistants are service provider employees, with no HR or performance management lift for businesses.
• Lower costs – assistants are engaged on a fractional basis, and you pay for hours used.
• Eliminate turnover – the service provider trains backup assistants to step in if someone leaves.

What can managed virtual assistants do for advisors?

Virtual assistants can perform many tasks that would otherwise reduce advisors' productivity. The beauty of a managed service is that this work happens in the background while advisors focus on growing the practice. Managed virtual assistant providers train assistants to do the following functions.

• Schedule meetings – it takes 20 minutes to schedule a business meeting. Multiply those minutes across your client base, and that adds up to a lot of time. Virtual assistants can book and confirm appointments to prevent no-shows.

• Inbox triage – email eats up about three hours a day for most professionals. As an assistant learns your business and contacts, they can be your gatekeeper.

• Document prep – it takes 15 hours to prepare a financial plan, the Kitces Report said. Virtual assistants can format templated documents like plans, reports, and reviews.

• Contact management – 500 business addresses change every hour. Assistants can keep all your firms' contacts organized in a single system, so you never struggle to find someone's information, and it is always up to date.

• Prospecting – advisors should spend four hours a week prospecting, according to Advisorpedia. Virtual assistants can search contact databases based on your ideal client, build lists, and launch email campaigns.

• Lead follow-up – more than 80% of people buy from the first business to respond to an inquiry, but most teams take five days. Assistants can make sure you get there first.

• Build and manage workflows – the Kitces Report found that advisors spend 32 hours onboarding clients in the first year. Much of that involves organization and scheduling tasks that assistants can handle.

In addition to helping senior advisors spend more time growing their business, virtual assistants can also support the growth and retention of new hires.

“There is a need for firms to hire junior advisors and grow them under a more experienced advisor who needs licensed help with their book of business,” Oxnam said. “I think there is absolutely a case for virtual assistants to free up those repetitive tasks - so the junior advisor does not get stuck in the weeds and can focus on the actual portfolio and client management side of the business to grow their careers.”

What virtual assistants cannot do

A virtual assistant can perform any repetitive business process that does not require a license. They cannot speak for you. And it is harder to delegate tasks that require professional or subjective judgment, like graphic design or content creation. For example, an assistant can format a brochure or sales sheet but not necessarily write it or design it.

Finding the right solution

There are multiple virtual assistant business models, including hiring a local freelancer, freelance marketplaces like Upwork, using a contracting agency, and the managed service model described here. The managed service model works well for financial advisories because the service provider works with you to ensure security and compliance requirements. Review sites like Investopedia and The Balance SMB provide helpful guidance for finding the right solution to help you recoup time to grow your firm.

Rob Vaughn is head of sales at Prialto, a provider of virtual assistant services.

Read more articles by Rob Vaughn