You've made the decision to hire a Virtual Assistant. You're doing it.... you're asking for help! You are not going to regret it, I promise you.
But now that you've overcome the big fear of actually realizing your business is going to benefit from outsourcing a Virtual Assistant, you might be wondering how it's going to work when they actually come on board. If you've always done everything on your own, where do you start when it comes to delegating?
The first thing to consider is, what tasks take up the most of your time? Make a list of your day to day to tasks and go through them. Think about which ones you would like to continue doing. Is it worth your time to continue doing them or could your time be better spent on another aspect of the business? Think about which tasks would be beneficial to delegate to a VA.
It might be that going through your emails takes up a lot of your time consistently throughout the day. So, perhaps this could be a daily task for your VA to go through your inbox and filter out the important emails, draft up responses and stay on top of enquiries or orders.
The next consideration is what are your expectations? You need to think about how you would like to communicate with your Virtual Assistant, the time frame in which you would like the tasks done, and what you need them to know about your business.
Look through your list of tasks and consider which take priority and what the timeline for each task should be. Determine which tasks need completing on a weekly or monthly basis and in what way you would like them to be completed.
Your Virtual Assistant will walk you through all of this in the onboarding procedure, but it's worth having a think about it before then so you're able to communicate your requirements clearly as you start working together.
Have you thought about how you would like to communicate? From my experience, this differs with every single business owner, so there is no one correct way of doing this. Think about how you would like to stay in touch with your VA. It might be that you set up a shared Slack or Voxer channel to stay in touch throughout the working day, or it might just be that an occasional check-in call or email is enough for you.
I would always recommend scheduling a weekly or fortnightly Zoom call to check in with your VA and have a good catch-up about everything you've both been working on. This is super important in building your working relationship together and ensuring you are both on the same page about everything.
What resources will your Virtual Assistant need access to? If they are going to be helping you with emails, they'll need access to your inbox. If they're helping with your Website design, then they'll need to be set up as an admin on the site. Make a list of all of the resources that you will need to share with your VA and collate all of the login info together. When you start working with your VA they will have a procedure in place to share information like this, such as a shared online storage folder or an app.
It might be worth creating SOP videos or instructions to share with your VA, so they can use this instruction as a reference point when they start working on the tasks assigned to them. This can be easily done on an app such as Loom. Or, you can share your screen during a Zoom call and record the call as you talk through the various working processes.
Your Virtual Assistant will go through all of these considerations with you as you start your working journey together. So don't panic if you don't know the best methods to do things from here onwards, a good VA will explain it all as you get set up. Just take this as a starter guide to how things will go when you do onboard a Virtual Assistant, and think about what your priorities are in that process.
Once you have established what tasks are best delegated, understand your expectations and communication methods, and are both on board with the resources that you need, you will be well on your way to experiencing the growth that you desire for your business.
If you're interested in learning more about outsourcing to a VA, or have any questions about how it all works, hit me up and schedule a free disco call. I'm your girl and I'm here to help!
L x
Laura Mackenzie
Creative Virtual Assistant at Kelp Collective
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