Hiring a Virtual Assistant

I wrote an article recently on “Virtual Assistant Value: Unlocking Efficiency, Productivity & Profitability”which gained a tremendous amount of traction and thought a follow up article from ‘real business owners’ who made the decision to hire a virtual assistant, would give a better perspective for my readers.

1. Was making the choice to hire a virtual assistant difficult? Please explain.

DD: Short answer is sort of.  I found myself not working “on” the business as much as it required, and I was spending more time “in” the business.  Doing this over a long enough period I found the choice to hire a virtual assistant an easy one to make.  I needed to get to the tipping point of enough things not getting completed timely to make the decision to hire a VA.  

PZ: This decision was not as easy to make.  I say this because we really wanted to hire someone stateside for this position.  The money did factor into the decision, but the time saved and so forth, outweighed the cost.

EK: No not at all. We spoke to several references that currently use a VA from the same company. The references all gave positive responses about their VA.

2. What factors did you consider when making the decision to hire a virtual assistant?

DD: The greatest factor I considered when deciding to hire a virtual assistant was getting comfortable with giving up some of the control I had on orders previously.  Committing to training was another factor, as it’s easy to say, “I’ll just do it, it will be faster.”  When the reality is by training the task creates more time in the long run.  

Here are some skills I expressed as skill requirements:

• Experience with our software platform

• Experience within the promotional products industry

• High degree of familiarity with Microsoft 365 and its suite of software

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Ability to “think”

• Willingness to learn and ask clarifying questions.

PZ: The biggest factor that went into this were a few things.  

• Language barrier, 

• understanding the industry, 

• how much time was going to be spent to train them.  

• Having a plan on what you wanted them to do was the hardest part of all of it.  

• Without having a plan, you were destined to fail.  If you have a clear definition of what you want the person to take off of your plate, then it makes it that much easier to lay out what you want them to do.  Be sure to write it down, as the VA’s in my experience are great at following directions and a plan. When they must stray from that plan and apply what they should do, that is where they struggle.  So having a plan and responses were huge.  We did video interviews and had a good understanding of the person we wanted to interview.  That helped narrow down the field.  

• We also had to decide if they were going to interact with clients or not.  

• Do you give them a phone extension or not? 

• How do you handle digital security?  

• What do you have in place to handle passwords?  

  • Like Dashlane or other password keepers?  

• Start considering what training program you want to put them through for their specific job task.  

  • The training does not have to be done by you either, some services offer training specific to our industry and others let you do it.  We have tried both and prefer the ones with no training in the industry and get them trained ourselves to our needs.  

• Do you want them to do product research, manage your calendar, handle writing thank you’s, handle proofing or mockups?  

• Handle sample requests?  

• Schedule vendor visits?  

• Book a squash game for you?  

The key is to have a succinct plan.

EK: Number one:  We wanted someone that could read, write, speak, and understand English very well.  Second:  They needed to know Excel and be a detailed oriented person.  Third: we wanted someone with the right personality that would fit in with our company culture.

3. How much time has it freed up from your day-to-day activities?

DD: Hard to quantify presently as I’ve only had my VA for a month.  I can already see benefits with order entry and proofing follow up.  With the freed-up time I’ve been able to get deeper into some company projects that have been stalled on my desk.

PZ: The amount of time it has freed me up is a huge multiple, we have 2 at any given time, for 40 hours a week, I am able to pass items and projects over the fence to someone else to handle, with some questions along the way.  So in essence, I have tripled the amount of time and my efforts to allow me to go do other things.  Having a virtual assistant allows me to focus on my revenue generating activities.  I have been a huge proponent of what is my time worth.  IF I can hire someone for less than my hourly wage, then I need to farm it out to get it done.  Also what tasks to you dread doing?  Those may be someone else’s favorite things to do.

EK: Not as much as we had thought or hoped. Our VA is still learning many of the details required about her job, so things are taking longer than anticipated. We hope this improves in the next few months.

4. What challenges have you faced prior to and now having your virtual assistant?

DD: Time both before & currently would be the constraint. Getting more things done timely was a reason I looked to hire a VA and now with one making sure I set the time to train what I’d like done & how.

PZ: Challenges we face in doing this is the amount of training time involved and the day to day time it takes to run an efficient and effective team meeting.  You are constantly answering questions and giving direction until they learn the process and system you want them to follow.  It is not easy; it takes several months like 4-6 so plan on the long haul.  Be sure you are giving your bonuses to the VA’s, because the living wage in their country is different than here, so educate yourself on the local wages and bonus structure and be willing to share that with them.  One hundred dollars, in US dollars, goes a long way in other countries.  

• Have regular check-ins with the team, they can learn from each other.  

• I would also recommend having a chat feature or way for the team to communicate quickly like Google Chat or Slack or other resources like that.

EK: IS: Our VA went to a 4-week training course to learn the promo business. However, we thought she would have been further along in learning and understanding the promotional products business. I made this work by intensively training her for hours a day by sharing my screen for the first few months. I was not expecting this. Now I am just checking and supervising her and answering specific questions.

5. What services would you recommend that you currently don’t have?

DD: I would love it if my VA had graphic design skills.

PZ: Virtuals, scheduling appointments and or one on ones, order follow up emails to make sure clients are happy with orders,  managing my inbox and passing out work internally; and production art.

EK: Artwork, graphic design, and social media posting skills.

6. What advice would you have for my readers who are considering hiring a virtual assistant?

DD: Hopefully there comes a point in your sales or leadership career where you aren’t getting it all done daily.  If you’re finding yourself frequently overwhelmed, frustrated, or feeling like not enough is getting accomplished in the timeline you’d like it to, evaluating a VA addition is worthwhile.  Ask qualifying questions about any candidates’ skills and provide some examples of work they would be doing for you.  

PZ:  Do your research, have a plan, work your plan, be ready to hire another one, as there tends to be a job-hopping thought and you should have a documented training plan to on board and off board quickly, and have the next one in the queue.

EK: Know exactly what the role of the VA will be when interviewing and make sure they have those skills. Be prepared to put in time to train them.:

My friends, if you are considering hiring a virtual assistant, please follow these bullet points:

• Do your homework, research multiple companies who provide this service,

• Ask other peers about their experience,

• Take the time to look closely at your specific business,

  • What activities would you like to delegate out?

  • What would be the cost savings?

  • How much time would you recoup to do more productive tasks?

• If you take the leap, 

  • Be patient,

  • Have a training plan in place,

  • Work the process,

  • Ask questions,

  • Set joint expectations.

  • …enjoy the extra time you’ll get back.

I for one am a big believer in delegating out to virtual assistants, the time savings and increase in productivity is worth every penny, Lastly, I encourage you to listen to my 30 Seconds to Greatness Podcast  https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/884516996 and my interview with Scott Nussinow, MAS on hiring a virtual assistant.

Until Next month, Continued Good Selling!  CQ

Many thanks to these business owners for their candid responses to our questions.

Drew Davis (OK to Use)
President, Specialty Incentives
Denver, Colorado

Paul Zafarana
Vice President, PICA Marketing Group
Detroit, Michigan

EK – Preferred to remain anonymous.