You read about virtual assistants here on outsourcing-options and hear it when people talk about outsourcing. As you know you can outsource or get virtual assistants to a wide variety of tasks. Including but not limited to personal tasks like managing your email, talk to your parents and make the reservation at your favored restaurant, or business tasks like doing bookkeeping, promote your business and manage all your online web-presents. What thinks need to be avoided?
Don't you agree, one question is unanswered. Is it right for you? Is a virtual assistant right for you?
Instead of me answering this question for you, I rather encourage you to read what Judy Schramm, CEO of ProResource, has to share with you. Her seven questions are hitting the spot you need to answer yourself.
1. Do you know what kind of work you want your assistant to do?
Can you list up to 10 specific projects with which you would like help? Optimally, you want projects that are ongoing, such as managing your email or updating your web site, that will require five hours or more each week.
Can you come up with a few easy projects to start with? You’ll want your assistant to begin work on projects that don’t require in-depth knowledge of your market or your company.
2. Can you define what experience, skills and personality characteristics the ideal team member would have?
Ideally, you’ll want to look for someone with combinations of experience, skills and personality that are easy to find. For example, you might look for someone who is creative, loves graphic design and has Photoshop experience or you might want someone who is detail-oriented, loves working with numbers, and has QuickBook experience.
You don’t want to look for someone who is creative and loves to work with numbers, who can do both your marketing and bookkeeping. While I’m not going to claim there aren’t people out there with that combination of skills, they are few and far between. You want to make it easy to find the right person.
Think in terms of starting with one assistant and then adding more to do different types of work.
3. Can you provide the information your assistant needs to do these projects?
One of the main reasons projects aren’t done right is that the assistant didn’t have enough information about the project.
You need to explain:
- What you want done,
- Provide the background information, contacts, and data files needed to do the work, and
- Give a timeline and budget.
If you are so busy you can’t take time to provide all of this information, you won’t get the results you are hoping for.
4. Can you invest a little extra time to save your explanations?
Archiving your explanations about your industry, your company, and how you want things done saves you considerable time the next time you have a similar project or when you add the next person to your team.
5. Can you correct your assistant’s work?
If the work isn’t done perfectly the first time (and it probably won’t be), will you be comfortable explaining what was done wrong so your assistant can learn for next time?
6. Do you understand that you won’t gain free time immediately?
You need to allow time to train your assistant. In the beginning, in fact, it will take more time to explain what needs to be done than to do it yourself.
But if you can stick with it through the training process, you’ll get an assistant who knows what you want and does the work the way you want it.
7. Do you have a productive way to use the time you will gain?
If your goal is simply getting free time, you’re in great shape.
But if you need to get a return on the money you are spending to hire an assistant – increasing your revenue enough to cover the expense of the assistant – this is essential.
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