Featured Article by Marlon Sanders
Marlon’s In-Depth 16-Point Guide To Hiring Your First Part Time Virtual Assistant Based On How I Hired My Own Virtual Assistants.
Let’s talk about hiring your first part time virtual assistant:
– Can you afford it?
– Where do you find them?
– How do you work with them?
– How do you save 50% on their pay?
– What country should you hire them from?
– What if their work isn’t up to par?
– What skills do they need?
One of the big steps in your online career will be when you make that move to hire your first online assistant.
There are many ways to outsource your work. You can, of course, hire freelancers off of elance or other sites.
That’s good for one-off projects.
But very soon in your career, you’re going to want to hire a part time virtual assistant and later a full-time one. That way, they can learn over time how you think and what you want.
You get a higher quality result with less work.
As you know, Lisa worked for me for 7 years. I’ve had other virtual assistants. And now I have some employees. But I worked my way up to this point over time.
Here are my tips for finding and using your first part time virtual assistant:
1. Hire someone in Canada. They have high speed Internet and are Internet savvy. If you’re in the U.S., they’re on US time.
Lisa was in Canada. Rick Hanson did my technical stuff for many years. He’s in Canada.
2. Hire someone in your relative time zone.
It’s hard for me to work with virtual assistants in UK or Australia because of the time zone difference.
Whatever country you’re in, I think you need to look for someone in the same time zone. That way, you can collaborate on projects during work hours.
The cool thing is that if you’re a night owl, you can find a time zone where that’s someone else’s work day.
3. Grab a 50% discount on pay
The great thing about Canada when I started there with Lisa was I got a 50% discount due to the exchange rate. Over time, this wilted.
But when you’re getting started, look for that exchange rate discount.
4. Use your resources to find people
a. Craigs List — That should be obvious. I love using Craigs List.
b. Newspapers. I ran classified ads in several newspapers in Canada.
c. Post in forums. Post what you’re looking for in forums like Warriorsforum, Digital Point forums, the Rich Jerk forum, abestweb forum, Anthony Blake’s forum (ablake com). There are many other forums you can use, depending on the talent.
5. Do NOT be scared to hire someone if you have revenue.
As long as you have a profitable sales process, don’t be scared to hire someone part time. You’ll NEVER feel like you can afford it.
But as long as you have a product that’s selling, a target market and a lead generation process, you will very likely find it pays off.
You WILL be scared to death to hire that first person. But if you have a sales process that’s working, I really believe it’ll free up your time and let you concentrate on higher return activities.
Face it, answering customer service emails doesn’t make you any dough.
6. Hire talent over pay
I’d rather pay more and get someone really talented than pay less and get mediocre talent.
You want someone you don’t have to train. Trust me on this one.
7. Find someone with exposure to Photoshop and good writing skills. When you’re hiring that first virtual assistant, you need a jack of all trades.
Someone whose very computer savvy, has had a little customer service experience, good writing skills, and a little art background or Photoshop is great. It’s ideal if they can do the basics in Dreamweaver.
When I hired Lisa, she was already doing customer service for Internet Marketing Challenge but they let her go when Corey bought the company. She could do a drop shadow in Photoshop and had taken a correspondence course on html.
8. Call them first thing every day and plan the day’s work. Even if they’re part time, you need to review their work plan daily. Just call and go over the work for the day.
This is why I say you need someone in your time zone. In my opinion, Skype doesn’t cut it. You need to be able to talk over the phone.
And you need to be able to EASILY reach the person. If you have to email them and get a response overnight, this isn’t going to work out long term.
Yes, you can do that for repetitious outsourced projects. But the virtual assistant person is your RIGHT HAND. You need them on demand at least during set hours.
9. Here are some tasks you can have them do:
a. Fix html problems
b. Customer service problem solving
c. Compile pdf’s
d. Create reseller pages and contests
e. Respond to the needs of affiliates or jv partners
f. Create products
g. Design banner ads for affiliates
h. Write emails
i. Write postcards to resellers
j. Do things you don’t want to
10. Dictate your promo emails to your VA.
This is why you want someone you work with every day. You can dictate your promo emails to them.
Over time, they’ll learn how to type these up and you get promos out to your list just by dictating an email in your morning call.
11. Set rules upfront about days off, time off, emergencies and advancing pay.
a. Set a rule upfront that you don’t advance pay.
b. Set a rule on time off from work hours for personal errands.
Virtual assistants sometimes don’t see it as a job. And you have crucial tasks for the day when they up and announce they have a dentist appointment or need to take a family member to the Pharmacy. Whatever. Set the rules upfront.
c. Decide if there will be vacation time.
d. Have some form of non-disclosure agreement even if it isn’t legally valid. At least you can have a clear, unambiguous agreement.
12. Be quick to pull the plug.
If junk goes on such as their Internet goes down all the time, tasks don’t get done and you get excuses, critical mistakes are made, pull the plug.
13. You’ll know within one to two weeks if the person is good. A bad hire will want to take a month to get up to speed and research the tasks. A good person will hop right in and start doing work.
14. Let the person in your plans. Brainstorm with them. Let them experience fun and exciting tasks also. Don’t always just give them boring stuff. Find out what they love to do and see if you can work some of those things into their responsibilities.
15. Let them grow in the position.
If you see potential, talent or abilities they aren’t using, pay for them to get a little training and see if that talent will blossom.
I bought Lisa a Photoshop book and in 30 days she had gone through all the tutorials and was amazing. But she had an art background and tons of talent.
16. The hardest person you’ll EVER hire is your first.
I remember Corey (Rudl) telling me that once over the phone. And it was so true. And it’s true.
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Marlon Sanders is the author of “The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy.”
Give me a few minutes and I’ll show you how the Amazing Formula can sell your products like crazy! Whether you’re selling on the Internet or offline, the formula will work for your business!
Click here to take “The Amazing Formula!” for a test drive:
