When you hire a virtual assistant or a team of virtual assistants, their sole job is to free up your valuable time so you can spend it forging new relationships, striking new lucrative deals and in general: work on the things that are going to expand your business, instead of the menial day-to-day functions that are best delegated, such as administration and customer service duties.
While there’s bound to be a hiccup or two along the way, a successful relationship with your VA begins with you. Getting things off to a great start is key to getting the most out of them, so you can work on the things that matter most to your business and leave your assistants to do what they do best – lighten the workload!
1. Commit to being patient and kind to your virtual staff
A virtual assistant is the same as any other employee. Show restraint when your temper tries to get the better of you. Remember that just because you understand everything about your business, that doesn’t mean they will right away.
Give each VA at least two weeks of training, allowing for reasonable mistakes, before deciding whether they’re the right fit for you. Even if you’re eventually forced to terminate them and get someone new, it’s important to always keep yourself even-keeled and stalwartly patient in all your interactions with them.
2. Give clear instructions for every job
This goes double for new entrepreneurs, or managers who’re new to working with staff. Most relationships between VAs and the people who hire them fizzle out quickly due to a lack of communication, despite what you may think to the contrary. Communication is a skill that’s not inborn, it’s up to you to scrutinize the instructions you give with an un-biased eye for things that are ambiguous or that downright don’t make sense to anyone but you.
Spend time writing and even re-writing your instructions and ask people you trust for their honest input on each document’s clarity. If giving verbal instructions, it’s still important to write them out ahead of the conversation, then edit as needed and ask for input from others before dishing out the details to your virtual employee.
3. Set up collaboration tools
Working with a VA remotely means that you need tools to make collaboration painless. Emailing documents back and forth via email is so 5 years ago! Use online collaboration tools to streamline communication with your content-creation team to make on-the-spot corrections, offer constructive feedback, and otherwise monitor their progress right in the original content they’re creating.
For phone support and sales, you can use the cloud to keep up on how many queries they’re handling or leads and sales they’re making.
And by collaboration tools, the only solutions that make sense in this day and age are cloud-based tools like the free Google Docs, Evernote, or Dropbox. Or, use paid solutions like Asana, Trello, or the dashboard offered by the staffing agency you source your VAs through.
4. Touch base daily
Touching base can be as simple as a quick progress update email to ask them if they have any questions, and to get word on their progress. An even better idea, if language isn’t a huge barrier, is to schedule a Skype or Hangouts chat for 5 minutes a day.
The reasons for doing this are many. Here’s a few issues that can crop up if you don’t spend a few minutes talking to your virtual staff every day:
- They don’t clearly understand your instructions or goals for a project, and don’t actually realize they’re off-base (big time waster!)
- They are the type of person who likes to feel valued and appreciated, worth talking to (not just another cog in the company wheel.)
- They’ve disappeared and you’re sitting around thinking work is getting done when it isn’t (until the deadline date passes and you’re stuck scrambling!)
5. Encourage open communication
Your virtual assistant isn’t your family dog sitting by your heels, ready to jump into action on command. Virtual assistants are people and need to feel free to ask a question when one comes up and/or tell you when something just isn’t working, without fear of reprisal from you. If not, projects can drift off course quickly, to the point of being completely ruined. Set rules about when you’re open to be contacted, to make sure you aren’t interrupted at inopportune times, unless it’s something urgent.
Not to mention that open communication can lead to great ideas. Ideas about improvements to your process, products, customer service, marketing, etc. Sure, you’ll get some assistants who’ll insist on wasting your time with mundane questions and suggestions; deal with the problem firmly and patiently when such situations arise…
