Build a Virtual Assistant Team
What is better: A virtual assistant team or one great virtual assistant?
My Virtual Assistant Network may not like this article. However, I exist in that vague in-between region of helping virtual assistants become better marketers and a higher value to their clients vs helping business people use virtual assistants to improve their business process and get the best return on the money they spend.
So let me recommend something to you – do not hire a virtual assistant. Hire a team of virtual assistants. Not a pre-built team. Build your own.
Here is why.
- Not all your eggs in one basket.
- Focus on a few tasks for each VA
- Measure the effectiveness of each virtual assistant and expand or cancel based on individual performance.
- Get one experienced virtual assistant to manage the team of other virtual assistants
- If one person stops being a VA, you are not so dependent on one person. You can more easily replace a limited skill set and focused tasks instead of one person that has been running your entire Internet marketing strategy.
- You can leverage better pricing by expanding your work with someone slowly.
- A business can see how a Virtual Assistant performs on a small number of tasks before entrusting them with more tasks.
Building a team of virtual assistants is cost effective and more stable for you in the long run. It is also wise because you can hire the best VA for each task. Blog writers are not necessarily good at online advocacy or link building.
Define how you would like to measure the success of each virtual assistant and hire a virtual assistant manager to coordinate and send you reports. Of course, this only happens after you have a few VA’s that you have engaged and are working with.
This is even true if you are only hiring writers. Hire 3 to do 2-3 articles or blog posts each. Compare all the articles. Which ones are most likely to get linked to? Which ones are best for search engines? Then hire all three if they are good. Or hire the best one. But remember, if you only hire one, he could later stop writing, become exclusive with another client or raise his pricing. So having a team of writers is safer for you.
A virtual assistant can help you. A virtual assistant team can transform your business and help you exceed your goals in less time.
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Ditto! I so agree with you Ron… i’m a huge fan of spreading the work and the risk. Most VAs get so busy that it is really hard for them to ‘be everything’ to one client. And as you say, what happens if/when that VA (or VA team) can no longer work for you for some reason? Eeep.
As a business manager I always recommend exactly this with my clients. Have a number of people on the team who each have an area of specialty/responsibility… and if one leaves it doesn’t mean the whole thing falls apart.
Plus I find that the VAs themselves are able to get much more done when they have a specific role/task vs. trying to do everything and having some tasks naturally fall to the bottom of the to-do list (never to be done in some cases).
Thanks Tina,
It seems very obvious, but I think most people think in terms of hiring their one assistant to assist them. Like an executive assistant would do.
If you instead think of it as outsourcing specific tasks, it then makes more sense to build a team.
Hi Ron,
I very much agree with your comments. When I launched my virtual assistance business, one thng I was adamant about was not to try to be “one size fits all.” I can’t, nor want to do, be, and know everything.
Having spent a number of years in the corporate world, nothing is more frustrating than being expected to perform in areas that you don’t like or have expertise.
Focusing my attentions on areas of strength have been beneficial to the business and my clients and is an approach that is working well.
Thanks for taking on such a touchy topic.
It is really amazing what the internet is doing for the distribution employment. Rather than working for a single employer you can work with many.
Employers can look for talent in a very agile way.