3 Ways to Use a Virtual Assistant to Grow Your Online Presence (and Sales) Having one or a team of reliable VAs working with you is a recipe for an enhanced business and quality of life.

We live in the information age, which is why growing your online presence (and, consequently, sales) is critically important for every business. A virtual assistant (VA) can help you generate leads and even prospect for you at a fraction of the cost of an in-house employee!

If the above statement seems unreal to you, let me share some of the ways your VA can grow your bottom line:

Lead generation and sales prospecting. A VA can search for ideal clients on LinkedIn. My VA keeps their contact information in our ideal client's database, engages with the ideal client's posts and sends them a connection request or a follow-up message.

Social-media engagement. A VA can help you engage with your audience in social media and turn your meaningful connections into valuable relationships.

Customer-relations management. A VA can help you with customer relationships by attending your meetings and taking minutes, updating your CRM with relevant information about your clients and/or prospective clients and creating templated proposals. They can even follow up with all of the potential business that's falling through the cracks and costing you money.

Related: Hiring Virtual Assistants is the 'New Normal'

Up your game with a VA

Having one or a team of reliable VAs working with you is a recipe for an enhanced business and quality of life. Plenty of people would agree with that VAs are a much needed sources relief amid this pandemic. A VA's job can range from answering phone calls and making reservations to keeping your email inbox and calendar organized.

Having a strong team of virtual assistants is a major lifesaver. Virtual assistants can always take care of smaller tasks so you can focus on the big picture. Having a VA allows you to free up your time and focus on the most important activities so you can thrive.

To be frank, I never really liked the term "virtual assistant," because it's too broad. It's better to hire people for specific skill sets. For instance, I call my virtual assistant an Executive Assistant. She does all my executive tasks, like responding to my comments on social media, scheduleing appointments and practically running my calendar. She is specialized in organizing my life and making me look good every day. I give her the opportunity to become the best in what she does, and she grows into more responsibilities over time.

Never hire a general "virtual assistant"; instead hire people that are specialized. Here's the truth about the success of my virtual team of specialists: I don't like people to do just mindless tasks. I want people to be smart. I want people to find better ways of doing things. I do not want to babysit people all the time on what they should be doing. I want someone who can proactively say, "Maybe there is a better way to do this." I would rather hire someone who is really good at one thing, than someone who's got a little experience in a lot of things.

Having a constant flow of leads on your sales pipeline is important for your business, and you don't have to do it all by yourself. I used to wear so many hats like most entrepreneurs. Today, all I have to do is tell people how awesome my team of 100-plus VAs is.