10 Steps To Effectively Employ Virtual Assistants for Your Business

byDaveSw

5.6K followers

Updated 4 years ago

This is a subject that comes up for many affiliate marketers as they start to have success with their online business. There comes a point when you find yourself a bit overwhelmed, and that is when a VA can help take the load off...

Note that it does not HAVE to come up, as you can easily create a business that is not scaled up to the point where a virtual assistant (VA) would be helpful, but as you grow your business you will start to see that some tasks could easily be done by others...

When or if that happens...

Many entrepreneurs will feel that they do want to scale up their operation and that is when naturally they will look at tools and resources that will help them automate tasks and leverage the power such tools offer to do more with the resources they have in hand.

Much like paying for traffic, a quick way to grow your business (if done correctly) is through using a virtual assistant(s). This can help take your load of work off of areas that lend themselves to outsourcing to others and leave you free for other tasks that are your strengths.

Especially during the coming holiday period, where business ramps up and the majority of sales and profits are earned for the year, you may be able to use such services to sell more and increase your profits.

My Position About This Topic

I am in a unique position to be able to write about this, as over the years either I or the companies I have consulted with used outsourcing extensively. There are many advantages to using this approach to quickly grow a business.

Also, during the past years I have been on both sides of this type of service as a provider and as a consumer of such services... Outsourcing makes a lot of sense for almost everyone these days...

I have been paid ridiculous amounts of money to provide my expertise for a subject or a project (highest was $2000 a day plus expenses), and I have paid again and again for outside help with certain tasks for my own businesses (i.e. for content VAs, video services, customer service, etc.).

Currently our company offers such VA services to small businesses, and our focus is on the Mom & Pop operations that cannot afford to hire a full-time employee but could use some help with getting things done.

We also do work for some other target audiences such as busy managers who may need some PA (personal assistant) support, or businesses that need some specific complex tasks done that they cannot do in-house (i.e. video creation, chatbots, marketing campaigns, etc.).

I want to go over 10 considerations that you need to know about if you are outsourcing or hiring VAs based on my own experiences. These will help you define clearly what you need and help you measure results so you get what you are looking for when you deal with a VA...

Let's get started...

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1. Define Your Goals.

I cannot emphasize enough how important this step is. Without having a clear idea about what it is you need and expect to get out of using a VA or outsourcing, you are setting yourself up for disappointment and wasting money.

It pays to sit down and look at what it is you need to get out of a VA relationship, how long you want to use one, how is employing one going to help you and your business, and what is your budget. What can they do for you?

The more measurable and specific you make the goals, the better you will be able to see if using a VA is going to get you the results you are looking for. These specific goals also help the VA understand clearly what you are looking for.

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2. Identify Tasks to Outsource.

This seems simple enough, but I have seen some very bad VA assignments come across my desk, and it makes it hard for both sides when the tasks are not laid out and are not in line with the goals.

So the next step after you have determined your goals is to look at your operation and see where using a VA makes sense. Is it for content creation, social media marketing, customer support, or other?

Write the tasks down. Determine how many hours that you are going to be saving that you can use for other tasks, and by default you also know what you will expect from the VA. Be realistic, the VAs are not superhumans, they have limits as we all do.

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3. Consider Risks.

There are always risks with anything that you may do, and hiring a VA is no exception. Unless you have followed a process as I describe herein, it is likely that you will not be happy with the outcomes of using a VA. You may lose valuable data or have it corrupted.

Things like confidential information the VA may have access to, access to tools you may be using for your business (like your website backend, for instance), etc. are all of concern, and you need to plan for protecting these areas/data.

To mitigate these risks, you can provide temporary access using a special usernames and passwords that you later can delete, you can track activity/secure areas of your operation from the VA to make sure that only information that is needed is available, and make sure to leave yourself legal recourses through the contract you enter into, etc.

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4. Make a Budget.

This may seem like a no-brainer but in many cases it is not. This is where working with someone as you plan for the costs makes sense. Someone that knows about the VA business plus your business and can advise you on what is possible and at what cost.

In some cases, it is a matter of time versus budget, and the only way to get the job done in the time you need is to throw more money into the mix to bring in more help for the VAs. Each business owner has a unique set of requirements.

Therefore, negotiation will be a part of the budget process near the end point. Initially, it is pretty simple: I have x number of dollars to spend on this, and I think I can get x done for that budget.

Time will tell whether what you think is possible can work...

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5. Set up the Job.

By this I mean that now you need to put your ideas, goals, tasks and budget into a document that lays out the job for the VA. They will have a very clear picture if you do this of what it is you are looking for and at what price. So will you...

This can help get to the final stage as negotiations take place (highly recommended though not required) and clarification can be provided on any gray areas that may not be as clearly stated for the VA. This setting up the job step helps all sides.

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6. Find the Right Outsourcer for the Job.

There are a ton of providers out there these days, and you can go to some of the bigger websites and services to look for VAs and pricing, and you can also look for and go with other lesser known (but reliable) sources.

It pays to look around...

A simple Google search will get you started, and you might also look for some reviews of services that are found to see what other consumers/business owners think of a particular company or person.

Gather a list of prospects, then start to whittle them down through checking out what they are offering, and match that up against what you need. It will not take long to get down to a list of 2 or 3, and from there you can make a final decision.

Note that qualifying factors depend on the complexity of the task(s) that you want tthe VA to be able to do. If it is simple data entry, they do not have to have the same qualifications and it is easy to get someone.

But if your task is more complex or requires a deeper undertstanding of whatever it is that you need done, you are going to want to query the prospective VA to make sure that they can do the job properly.

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7. Make Contact.

Now that you have the top two or three VAs or services that you feel will best suit the requirements you have, the next step is to make contact with them. To keep things moving fast, you need not send your complete requirement document.

An initial query laying out in general terms what it is you are looking for will suffice, and asking the prospective VA or VA service whether or not they could provide the services within the time-frame and budget plus to the standard that you are looking for is fine.

Based on the replies, you can then decide to go one-on-one and get down to the details of what you need versus what they can provide and work out an agreement. This pre-qualification mail or call will save you time as those that cannot meet what you are looking for will be quickly eliminated.

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8. Get the Job Rolling.

Once you do have a company or a VA that you feel will work, you can move from the proposal stage (based on your statement of requirements) to a contract. Therein you will have clearly stated who is responsible for what and when.

These are fairly simple in the VA world, the contracts are not involving a lot of moving parts in most cases. If the tasks are more complex, you may want to have some legal help, but in general it is not needed.

Once the contract is in place, work can proceed as per the contract. Note that many companies or VAs offer "packages" of hours versus charging you by the hour for tasks (we do). This has advantages for both sides in many cases.

You as the consumer can use the bundles of hours for any task that the VA service may offer, while for the VA, they have the comfort of knowing that they have x number of hours booked and paid for. In our case, we prefer to use this bundles of hours approach.

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9. Measure and Track Results

This is important for you and also it is important for the VA. You both need to know what was done, when it was done, and how well it was done. There are some tasks that are quite easy to measure, while others are not.

Make sure that whatever tools that you use and the results you are provided give you a clear picture of just how well the VA has done the task(s). That way there are no hurt feelings on either side.

It can make for a long-term positive relationship too, as you as a business owner do not want to be going through the above process again and again. It is better to find a VA/VA service that you can work with on an ongoing basis to save you time and also get the results you need.

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10. Grow Your Team.

Over time, you can make the VAs that you work with a part of your team. They offer lower costs than full-time employees, can get the myriad of tasks done that a business needs to get done without a lot of the hassles (and costs) of a full-time employee.

Using VAs in a planned manner can make this possible, and the steps I have laid out will get you started in the right direction. This is just a quick laydown, but if you are looking to leverage the power of automation and resources to grow your business faster, this is one way to do it.

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Conclusion

The holiday season is upon us, the workload for business owners is increasing, this is the season where bottom line numbers can be massaged into profits for the year that may have been lacking, and outsourcing and using VAs is one way to take advantage of the times.

I do hope that you have gotten some valuable information and can use this short post, please let me know about your own experiences with using VAs in your business or perhaps businesses that you have worked for that have used VAs.

No doubt there will be some good experiences and some bad, but in total, they will point out why the process I lay out above makes a lot of sense. In my own experiences, I have seen terrible outcomes and very successful outcomes.

Cheers!

Dave : )