Hi there! 

My name’s Paula and I’m from Beyond the Maze. 

In this episode we’re going to be talking about how to use a Virtual Assistant to do your research. 

I’ve had a few clients come through recently trying to generate and create a big list of potential clients to be able to contact. 

You might be a speaker, for example, or you might want to have a product that you want to get out into schools or particular businesses or things like that. 

We have clients let us know they need a list of these people that they can get out and contact. 

Trying to find these lists can actually take quite a good amount of your time.  Research can involve things like going through Google, going through phone lists, if it’s schools, for example, going through Education Queensland or NSW Department of Education or Victorian Department of Education, going through their websites and finding out their details and information.  Not only do you then have a list of those things, but you will also want to know the right person to actually reach out to, so your email isn’t just going to fall into some email abyss that gets deleted or forgotten about or overlooked. 

You want to find the actual person and their email address, their phone number or contact information, so it takes a bit of time trying to find out all of that. 

We get asked to do this kind of job quite a bit, where we can take that time to look at those different websites and generally, depending on what sort of market you’re looking at or needing research for, we’ll find the heads of that market. 

For example, if it was a health industry, we’d find the particular Health Industry Association.  Or if you’re looking at going out into Catholic schools, we’d find the head of the Catholic schools or the head of the Lutheran schools, or the head of the state schools, and generally they end up having lists about where those contacts are.  We would normally get together a spreadsheet and put all the information in a spreadsheet – this is giving you some tips if you want to do it yourself on how to actually get these lists together. 

We’re getting that spreadsheet together for you and entering that information from the website into that spreadsheet or into a database, if you have a database to put that information into.  You can then take it one step further where you can actually have a VA contact that company and ask the details on who exactly you need to talk to about your specific thing and that can be put into your spreadsheet as well. 

By the time you get the research, you know it’s an up-to-date list, and it’s a vetted list if you’ve got us to ring as well, and it makes your time a little bit smoother and faster to actually get your information out there to the right person. 

Now, sometimes having an Australian VA might be a bit costly to get that done because it does have a bit of time involved to do those sorts of things, so getting an offshore VA might be the answer to that – it might be a cheaper option.  Here at Beyond the Maze, we have both. 

We have Australian as well as offshore VA’s that can help you with research so that we can work to your budget. 

It’s also a really great option to let us know much budget you have – so you might only have a budget of a few $100 and then we can let you know many hours of research we can give you for that budget. 

It’s a great little job to see how much you can get out of your budget and how much information you can get.  Maybe that will give you a kickstart to start promoting your business out there to the right people, and then it’ll bring in another lot of money to then do the next level of research.  Try just thinking about it that way. 

If you are looking at starting that type of thing, think about your budget and how much you have to start that research and then reach out to us, or another VA, to see how we can help you get that goal in place. 

I’m Paula from Beyond the Maze, and if you’d like to make an appointment with us to find out how we can support your business to move your business further forward, then book your obligation-free call here: https://beyondthemaze.com.au/contact/book-a-free-consultation/ .  We’ll be happy to chat with you.  

Bye for now.
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