July 7, 2021 Comments 0 0 528 Views

Building a Team for your Business – Hire a Virtual Assistant

One of the biggest decisions you will need to make early on in you VA plans is what type of firm you really want.

There are 2 avenues you can go.

The first one is as a solopreneur. This will allow you to take on a certain number of clients/hours and you are done. It will allow you to live with a set amount of money per week or month.
The other is to build a Team VA Firm. This will allow you to either partner with someone with skills different from you to broaden your services or just an extra hand to allow a growth in your client base – hire a virtual assistant.

We personally have opted NOT to take on any virtual assistant jobs that we were not skilled at doing. We felt that this allowed us the flexibility not to being tied to a particular person or being held ransom.

If you decide to go via a TEAM route, if is best to start looking for the people you want to align with now BEFORE you are too busy and can not find the time needed to hire and train the right person.

Some things you will need to do to make sure your TEAM is going to run smoothly.

Training and Policies: It is important that you set aside the time now to decide what are your policies and work ethics and have those written down. Talk with your virtual assistant and go over holiday schedules, vacation policies, days/times off, turnaround times and anything else that is important to your business.

Do not just expect to send a piece of paper or an email and think that you are covered the job description. Business owners talk with your virtual assistant over the phone or Skype and make sure you have an open line of communication.

SOP: Manuals are boring- but are very important. You can write the manuals, screen shoot the manuals or make videos. We personally have videos of each of the tasks that we assign to a VA. They are hosted on a part of our server and the person and see them anytime.

Whatever means you choose make sure the VA knows they are there and that they are updated on a regular basis. If you are doing manuals via pdfs or screen shots, then it is important to make sure all of those manuals are in a common area that all VAs can access and update.

Time Tracking: It is important that you look and either buy or use a free time tracker. We personally use Togle for our time tracking needs. We also use Easy Time Tracker as well. Both have Free and Paid versions with different options.

Whatever the case- it is important to be clear with your VA on how you want time recorded in the full time or part time job. We personally require them to enter the Client name/ date/ description of work and time. This needs to be sent weekly to us so that we can re-bill our clients.

Pay: You will also need to decide how you are going to pay your additional team members. Decide early on whether you want to do weekly, bi monthly or monthly. Check our pricing page and see the price for all services graphics designing, web design, content writing or any customer support in part time.

We have listed our packages on hours you would choose. You can choose 40 hours per week or 160 hours as a full time or 20 hours as part time work. We usually bill our clients weekly and pay our Team every 2 weeks. This allows us to collect from the client first before pay.

If you are doing monthly, you may want your VA to report the time on a weekly basis so that you can budget the pay at the end of the month.

Structure: Before hiring a VA you will need to decide how you want then structured in your business. You can hire them as a sub-contractor or a strategic partner. Obviously, this will depend on the person you are hiring to determine which is a better option. If you are solopreneur it may make more sense to “partner” on an as need basis.

This would allow each of you to cover the person should you need a backup person. It would also mean splitting the client fees or deciding on another form of compensation. (ie bartnering) If you only need help for a limited time, than hiring a sub-contractor maybe a better way for you to hire.

Trial Period: We do free trail for 3 hours – just to check our services. This will allow to you properly test the skills. It is important that the VA knows how to do the job and not just say- sure I can do that.

Managing the Crew: There are several ways to help you manage VAs and tasks. We personally use ZOHO project manager. Although at this time, we are not so big that we take full advantage of this package at this time.

This will allow you to keep all of the tasks in one area and allow you to assign a task or for a VA to pick a task to do. It is important to decide how you want to run the task management.

There are 2 ways you can manage this –

By the VA taking over a particular client or
By you assigning tasks directly and the VA has no client relations

Firing: At one time or another you will need to let a person go. This can be for nonperformance or simply because there is not enough work /clients at the time. It is important to make sure you have open lines of communications with you team members and make sure if they are not performing that you give them a chance to correct the problems or if there is not enough work- see if they are willing to sit in the wings and assist when you have the extra work.

What is a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistants are skilled and savvy remote workers who can do anything an in-house assistant can do except grab you a cup of coffee. Virtual Assistants handle the 80% of your day that zaps your energy and time, leaving you with the 20% that really matters for small business.

But, What Can a Virtual Assistant Do?

A better question is What are you sick of doing or don’t have time for anymore? I’m sure the list can span pages and as you see that list in your mind imagine it being completely handled by your new VA.

Whether it’s organizing your inbox, administrative tasks, answering phone calls, managing your busy schedule, email management, data entry or doing research for a project or a customer services, a Virtual Assistant is completely capable of handling all the things that fall between the cracks, suck up your time or just irk you.

From small tasks like creating a travel itinerary, to large tasks like planning and executing a massive social media campaign – the team at 7 Virtual Assistant Services can help you to get the job done and free up your precious time.

Your Virtual Assistant will act as an administrative army of one by taking work off of your plate and freeing you up to focus on what you do best. Just ask anyone with a personal assistant if they’d ever go back to solo-entrepreneurship? No way! A Virtual Assistant enables you to enjoy the freedom of having a personal assistant at your fingertips from anywhere in the world while saving you overhead and hourly.

What Types of Virtual Assistants Are There?

We specialize in Mortgage Virtual Assistants, Real Estate Virtual Assistant, Medical Virtual Assistant, General Virtual Assistant and Virtual Executive Assistants. The Mortgage and Real Estate Virtual Assistants we assign for our clients are from India.

The Virtual Executive Assistants we find for our clients are based out of the USA or Canada. They are native born English speakers and writers and usually have 5-10 years experience as assistants to C-level executives. They can preform all functions an in-house executive assistant can, they just commute virtually.

Hire a Virtual Assistant Today, Work Less Tomorrow

Why Pick 7 Virtual Assistant Services?

7 Virtual Assistant Services is a virtual assistant company and our experienced Virtual Assistants can help entrepreneurs to achieve goals. Whether you need an outsourced Virtual Assistant to help with online tasks for an incredibly reasonable rate, or an in-country Virtual Executive Assistant to act as the ultimate Girl Friday – you can hire a virtual assistant at 7 Virtual Assistant Services.

Experienced Staff

Each team member at 7 Virtual Assistant Services has spent years in the VA industry and knows what to offer to our customers in their VA task.

Proven System

We’re constantly updating and perfecting our system that blends science and intuition to assign you a VA that fits like a glove.

Unbeatable Deal

Our cost effective services allows you to work with your new Virtual Assistant directly, without the hassle of paying a middle man every time you want something done.