Hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) for your business is ONLY the first step in the process of leveraging your talent and your time. Ensuring you get the expected results from your VA, as well as setting up the working relationship between you and your virtual assistant is the main goal of the whole process.
Allow me to walk you through the details of managing your Virtual Assistant. The process is seemingly straight forward; just be aware that you also need to constantly adjust to the situation. Working with anyone – real or virtual – is a dynamic situation where adjustments need to be made at all times, every time. The key word here is resiliency.
Interacting with your Virtual Assistant is done by means of various new technologies and the internet. Setting up a virtual workspace for communicating with your VA is essential. The tools needed are readily available and cost anything from free ($free.99) to a fraction of what it would have cost to implement 4 to 5 years ago. I am going to cover some of the basic tools that your VA needs to have set up.
Here are 3 important basic tools to set up (and how to use them):
Email
Set up an email address where you and your virtual assistant can send and receive instructions and documents.
Set up a message system that will not confuse you or your virtual assistant. Example:
Instructions should be labeled as instructions, and should refer to a specific job.
Feedback should be labeled as feedback, also referring to a specific job.
In case your message is a mixture of both, separated the instruction set from the feedback set. And always refer to a specific item on the task list.
File names should refer to specific tasks so it will be easy for both of you to refer to instructions and track down feedback.
Email messages should have the date and time the message is sent for easy reference, aside from the task list item.
Chat client
Being able to communicate in real time is valuable in a virtual work environment. Make sure you and your virtual assistant have at least 2 chat clients available, so you have a back up in case one client goes into maintenance or offline mode.
During your chat, make a list of items you would like to discuss with your assistant. Having a list allows you to maximize the use of time, and makes both of you stick to what really needs to be discussed.
Voice and Web Cam Communication (VoIP)
Make sure that your virtual assistant has the necessary tools needed so you can make calls to each other directly. This will allow both of you to interact directly with each other especially when the task at hand needs to be explained to the VA in depth.
Since the quality and clarity of sound / voice during the call might be an issue it’s advisable to sign up with a reliable VoIP provider.
After each voice call, ask your virtual assistant to send you a summary transcript of your discussion so you can be sure that they fully understood the topics discussed during the call and they have a clear idea of how to execute the tasks.
I have just list some of the basic tools required but be aware that the use of additional tools is a given depending on the type of working environment, your business niche and your needs. You may provide all the necessary tools or ask your virtual assistant to acquire them.
System Orientation
After setting up the communication tools, you need to orient your virtual assistant on the systems and steps you use to complete tasks. Be as detailed as possible when presenting the system to your VA, but also be willing to allow your VA to be creative too and use their own initiative when completing tasks. Remember systems are meant to grow and evolve, hence encourage the VA to determine better ways of getting the tasks done.
If you need to explain something using a video, then by all means make one. If you need a document or spreadsheet formatted in a specific manner, provide your VA with your required format. Resorting to generalities and expecting your VA to sort things out for you will not do both of you any good.
Make a list of deliverables and your required timeframes. Make sure that if you were asked to do the same thing, you can do the same within the timeframe you require from our VA. The best way to determine what to realistically expect from your virtual assistant is to immerse yourself in the task before hand and fully document how long it takes you to complete it.
What to do when communication links break down
Web based communication links are as temperamental as the service providers and the reliability of power suppliers. PC hardware can act up any time. As Murphy’s Law states – Things can go wrong – and they will – at the worst possible moment. So you need to clarify this detail with your VA. Ask your VA to inform you through email (your VA can use another internet connected PC to get in touch with your). In case you are the one who has communication break down issues, inform your VA. The needs to be constant communication hence come up with contingency plans to handle this issue.
The most important item – “Synchronize your time zones“
I purposely left this point until now because I need to emphasize a point. Since you and your VA might be located in different time zones, make sure you agree upfront to a common time to communicate with each other and when work will be done. I call it “Time Zone Synchronization”, you need to consider that even though it might be day time at your place, it can be mid night at your VAs location.
Working late nights can affect productivity over time so I suggest giving your VA a day off during the work week so that they can get replenished and energized; do you know what happens to you if you keep working on the night shift over a long period of time? If you don’t then I suggest you give it a go and you will quickly understand the reasoning behind my point.
Conclusion (okay, I now have to end my rant!)
A Virtual Assistant is not a magician so don’t expect them to put together the entire system from the scratch for you. Your VAs output is greatly dependent on your orientation, and the systems that you have already set up. As they say – Garbage in, Garbage out. You might get a smart enough VA who can do wonders for you, but you will still have to set up the systems needed to execute and complete your tasks. Working with your VA will take sometime to mature. Changing a VA just because there are issues right at the start will get you no where. Unless that VA becomes so undependable and does something that’s totally out of order, be resilient with your VA. In 4 to 5 weeks, you will start to see your patience and resilience paying off.
VIDEO
MP3 Audio
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OWEN: So I’m about to start the second installment in my series, the first one I was talking about how to find the right Virtual Assistant and how to, where to find them from what to interview them, this series this topic is gonna be about how to work with your Virtual Assistant, essentially how to manage the right candidate once you’ve hired them.
So why is this important? It’s important because you need to have your Virtual Assistant deliver results, because that’s the main reason you’re hiring them in the first place. So part of management, having your Virtual Assistant understand your processes, and the systems that you need them to take over, you need to be resilient in the sense that you need to understand that, it’s a process where the Virtual Assistant is coming in and is going to learn everything that they need to get your job done so you need to be patient with them. And take your time to train them on all the processes and all the steps and everything that is required.
All interaction will be done via technology, in the sense that your communication will be done through technology in terms of emails, voice over IP and so on. So you need to familiarize yourself with the necessary technology and tools that you will be using to get your job done.
The three basic tools for communication are your email, your chat client and also your voice over IP. So let me explain email, with email you need to set-up an email for you and your Virtual Assistants to communicate and have instructions and feedback, go back and forth within the email. Make sure that each email that you send applies to a specific, I mean each email instruction or feedback applies to a specific task or job that you have the VA work on, also make sure that if you have file names or documents — you have files or documents that you’re gonna attach to an email make sure that they also apply to the way you name the files they also apply to a specific job. And also make sure that your email has the right date and time so that it becomes easy to reference in the future.
Concerning the chat client, you want them to set up your Virtual Assistant such that they have, you and your Virtual Assistant have the ability to talk in real, not to talk in real time, but to chat in real time maybe via Skype, Yahoo Messenger or even Google Talk whatever chat tool that you have available. Before chatting, because maybe you start chatting that can get carried away you wanna make sure that you list all the required items that you need to talk about when chatting so you don’t get carried away.
In regards to Voice Over IP there are times where you definitely need to have, talk over the phone especially in times where, its not something you can type by email or quickly get over by chatting so you might need to spend some more time explaining stuff to the Virtual Assistant, so Voice Over IP might be necessary. Because you need to make sure that you have good quality calls it is essential that you get the best Voice Over IP providers out there and at the end of every call make sure your VA sends you a summary of what you discussed because that’s gonna help you ensure that the VA understands what you talked about. This is just the basics there might more tools that you need depending on your field and what kind of job you need done.
System orientation and what this means is you having to train your VA on the systems that you gonna use to get stuff done. It also involves you detailing out the steps that are required for them to get your task done, because they need to be informed in very single detail be as elaborate with your explanation.
And give them chance to use their own initiative and be creative and in order to expand the system because every system is in itself should be allowed to grow and give the VA a chance to be able to figure out okay what are the best, additions to your already made system that they can implement to get better results.
Because this is a training that might get very involved in, you can make use of videos to detail out the steps you need them to carry out for your tasks. Also make sure that you have the documents needed for the job and the right format. Because its one thing to explain to the VA what you want them to do, but if you give them everything they need in the right format then it’s a lot easier for you to get what you’re already looking for.
Take the time to explain the deliverables because they need to know what is expected of them. So explain the deliverables. And also explain the time frames, when you expect them to get stuff done. The best way to do this is to have, to actually, before you get a VA spend time understanding the task, and trying to implement the task yourself so you’ll have a realistic expectation of what, how long it would take to get the task done.
You need to be proactive, in the sense that sometimes the communication lines might breakdown, so you need to set up a contingency plan by having your VA immediately respond to you and let you know, maybe some of the communication lines that you guys use are down or in your end where maybe your own communication lines are down, you need to be proactive and let the VA know because constant communication is needed between you and your VA in order to get the jobs done.
Also you need to do something that I call synchronization of time zones, it’s very important in the sense that you might hire a VA at a different time zone, maybe it might be day time where you live and for the VA that same time might be midnight. So you need to understand at what times exactly do you want them to work and at what times at a time that you want them to work, what time will it be in their own time zone, so you need to understand that.
And you need to plan ahead because since you’re having them, because of the time differences between yourself and the VA you need to make sure that everything that you need them to do, they understand at what exact time in your own time zone those jobs needs to be delivered.
I also say give the VAs frequent breaks because if you were to work night time over a long period of time, you gonna breakdown, so you want to make sure that the VAs are fully energized and replenished so give as many, as much breaks during the week. What I’m saying is maybe once every week let them have a day off, so they can replenished themselves and be able to do your task a lot more efficiently an effectively.
So in conclusion, you need to understand that your VA is not a magician, essentially you cannot expect the VA to understand everything you want them to do and get the job done hundred percent especially if you not spend the time to train them on your task and fully elaborate. I would say take your time to explain to the VA the goal and the reason for why they need to get the task done so they know the broader picture of what they’re actually doing. And then also spend the time to break down the processes and the systems into little bites so they can chew on each bite and understand, okay this is what I need to do to get the specific task done and this is what I need to do get another task done.
With that said I want you to go ahead to my blog and read the entire post and live your comments and suggestion because I wanna know what you think, Thank you very much, bye.
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