Tag The Best Out Of Your Virtual Staff

Outsourcing your tasks to a virtual assistant (such as a web designer, SEO/SMM specialist or a general admin assistant) is a MUST if you’re a serious entrepreneur.  To become a serious entrepreneur, you have to assess the value of your time. How much are you worth per hour currently? Take your yearly salary and divide it by 2000 to get your per hour rate eg. if you’re earning a salary of $50 000 a year from your business, you’re earning $25/hour. How much would you like to be worth per hour, $50, $150, $300 or more? Decide what you want to earn per hour and then from there work on a plan to achieve it.

As an entrepreneur, there’s no limit to how much you can make, however, there is a limit to how much time you have in a day. There’s only 24hrs in a day for all of us. The value of your time really comes down to opportunity cost – the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action. These benefits forgone could be in dollars or otherwise such as time forgone to work on your income generating actions or time forgone with your family and friends. For example, if you have a web store, instead of uploading products to your web store yourself, you could outsource the job to a virtual assistant or a team of virtual staff from an offshore outsourcing company for $8-$10 per hour. You can then use the time you would have spent on the task to work on marketing strategies which will drive more traffic and leads to your web store.

To get your business to grow, you will need to let go and delegate. You need time to step back from your business every now and again to have a look at your business growth and make the relevant changes to navigate it on the right path if it’s off-track. However, often times, entrepreneurs get too emotionally connected to their business that they refuse to let go and delegate so they not only end up wasting their time doing the things that do not generate a worthy return on investment but they’re unable to see their business from a non-biased third person’s perspective.

Don’t overlook the most important aspects of your business which GENERATE INCOME by devaluing your time. Many entrepreneurs are guilty of trying to do it all on their own and this is one of the reasons why the average business makes less than $100k a year, has no plans for growth and fails within the first 5 years. If you’re doing work that someone else can do for $10 per hour, than that’s exactly what you’re worth as an entrepreneur, $10 per hour. And if you think you’re worth just $10 per hour as an entrepreneur, then you shouldn’t have quit your day job.

In order to succeed, you’ve got to have time to create and implement a growth plan for your business. Virtual staffing is a great tool that you can use as one part of your growth plan. As with all plans, always assess your risks and rewards. The risks and rewards are not the same for every person. The risks and rewards from outsourcing staff are very unique to your own circumstances and will depend on your goals, your objectives and your opportunities. If the rewards outweigh the risks and you have your finances in order, partner with a reliable outsourcing company to hire virtual assistants and you’ll see your business not only survive but thrive.

Running a business can be very challenging and requires a lot of know-how.  Business owners and entrepreneurs are often busy with paperwork and general admin tasks, unable to do the work they love, and more importantly they don’t have the time to concentrate on more relevant aspects of the company because of the numerous details of running a business.

One excellent way of addressing this concern is through outsourcing or hiring a virtual assistant.  Getting the work of a virtual assistant significantly helps entrepreneurs maximize their time and improve their business.  Some of the tasks that a virtual assistant can typically do is accounting, search engine optimization, bookkeeping, web design, customer service, technical support, marketing tasks, just to name a few.   The process of hiring a virtual assistant can be completed very quickly unlike the traditional recruitment process.

Once you have recruited your virtual assistant, the challenge is then to manage your virtual staff in order to achieve your business goals.

Here are some helpful tips to make your virtual staff a valuable part of your business:

               Setting Expectations

               Establish accountability.  You need to set expectations clearly about the results you want in measurable terms.  Specific goals should also be established.  Another important factor is also to set work values and ethics which should be practiced at all times.

               Delegate Tasks

               When delegating tasks to your virtual assistant, you need to clearly outline or list the task that needs to be completed.  It is also very important to include the details of each of the task and communicate the results that you want.

               Monitor and get regular updates

               Ask your virtual assistant regular updates regarding the tasks.  This is necessary so you can see exactly what’s being done and you can effectively communicate areas that need improvement.   This way, you can determine if your staff is productive and actually getting the job done.  Getting regular updates eliminates any  worries that someone may not be putting in their time and effort.

               Good communication

               Clear and frequent communication with your virtual staff builds good working relationship.  Communication can either be through phone, email, video or audio chat. An effective communication system plays a vital role in building a relationship with your staff, and ultimately, establishing trust and mutual respect.

Employing a virtual staff is a great asset and can benefit any enterprise if managed correctly.  With the aid of technology and effective work practices, it will be a win-win situation for both the virtual staff and the company.